By Rick Wright

Staff Writer

For two days last week, more than 1,000 people used sea, land and air resources to contain, clean up and respond to the effects of a major oil spill in Casco Bay.

The spill wasn’t real. It was a simulated exercise designed to test the ability of emergency responders to coordinate their reaction to this type of disaster.

“We were able to integrate the response team that participated in this exercise very well. There were no turf issues. Everyone was able to focus on the task,” said Lt. Commander David Sherry of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Sherry is Incident Management Division Chief at the Coast Guard station in South Portland. The station hosted the event, officially called Spill of National Significance or SONS for short.

“We all came out of this drill with a good appreciation for the amount of personnel, resources and planning it takes to respond to an incident of this size,” Sherry said.

Sherry said simulation planners are now evaluating the exercise to determine what worked well and what needs to be improved. But overall, he said, “it was a tremendous success.” 

Casco Bay was selected in November 2008 for SONS 2010 after an assessment based on lessons learned from past SONS exercises and the 2007 Cosco Busan incident in San Francisco Bay.

The Cosco Busan was a container ship that spilled oil after striking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The accident was similar to the Julie N oil spill that occurred after that ship struck the Million Dollar Bridge connecting Portland and South Portland in 1996.

Last week’s exercise involved a collision 15 miles east of Portland Head Light between a tanker laden with oil and a fully loaded car carrier ship. The accident caused 2.3 million gallons of crude oil to be spilled into the Gulf of Maine.

The mock catastrophe was made worse when the car carrier sank in the channel off Cushing Island and threatened nearby coastlines of Cape Elizabeth and South Portland with leaking fuel and diesel oil.

On the water, several agencies deployed many types of equipment to recover spilled oil and protect shorelines.  The Coast Guard cutter Marcus Hanna was stationed at an anchorage off Fort Gorges with its oil-skimming system.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection contributed its skimming barge, Aucocisco. The Maine Responder, owned by the Marine Spill Response Corp., also participated in the drill.

Air support was provided by a Canadian aircraft called the DASH 8. Parked at the Portland International Jetport, the Dash 8, with its oil spill detection capabilities, was available for aerial surveys of the fictitious spill.

“Mainly, the role of this aircraft is pollution prevention from ships and the protection of the marine environment,” said Louis Armstrong, national manager of Transport Canada’s Aerial Surveillance Program.

A few miles from the Portland waterfront, a simulated oiled wildlife cleaning and care center was established at the Maine DEP office on Canco Road in Portland. It was run by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Experts from the International Bird Rescue Research Center were on hand to show volunteers intake, cleaning and animal care procedures for birds victimized by oil spills.

“Historically, in terms of spills, 90 to 99 percent of the animals that are recovered would tend to be birds,” said Curt Clumpner of the Bird Rescue Center.  “Generally in spills, what’s most affected and are able to recover are the birds.” 

Clumpner also said turtles, otters, beavers, and seals can be affected by oil spills.

The simulation was directed and controlled by a command post at the Holiday Inn By the Bay in downtown Portland. Several hundred participants coordinated tactical and support resources to respond to the fake catastrophe.

Alex Dawson, a marine technical adviser from the Shell Oil Co., was one of the players at the command post. His group’s primary task was to get the oil still aboard the damaged tanker transferred to another ship so it could be offloaded at the Portland Pipeline pier in South Portland.

“We’re the first on scene to analyze the situation around the vessel. We contain the remaining oil in the tanks. We do structural analysis with a naval architect and then we come up with a safe plan to transfer the remaining oil off the vessel,” Dawson said.  

Held every three years, the event includes representatives from all levels of government (local, state, federal) plus industry officials from around the world.

The largest event of its kind, this was the first time SONS was held in Maine. The last time it was done on the East Coast was 1997 in Philadelphia.

 Rick Wright can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 237 or news@inthesentry.com.