Majority of fuel spilled into English Bay recovered: Coast Guard

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The Coast Guard says the cleanup of the spill has followed protocol, despite the City of Vancouver not being notified for almost 13 hours.

It says 80 per cent of the fuel has been recovered from English Bay. Roughly 2,700 litres spilled into the water. The Coast Guard adds the vessel in question was in Vancouver to pick up a load of grain. It remains boomed and dive teams are continuing assessment.

The spill happened yesterday at around 5 p.m., but city officials weren’t told about it until this morning. The spill is believed to have come from a grain tanker. Vancouver Fire says a boom has been set up around the ship and another boom is being towed around English Bay to collect pockets of spilled fuel.

It’s the jurisdiction of the federal government to deal with the spill and the Coast Guard alerted the province to the situation last night.

Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs says the city wasn’t given an opportunity to offer any input on response times and cleanup. “I think we will want to keep going back, as we always do after an incident like this, to make sure we have the best possible cooperation among all the agencies so if, in the event, there is a problem, we make an appropriate response and don’t have any gaps in our response time or approach.”

City Manager Penny Ballem says Vancouver needs to be an integrated part of any response. “Our first responders are actually contracted by the Port, both fire and police, to actually provide services on the water. So, we have a very clear role.”

The NDP’s Spencer Chandra Herbert says people were put at risk. “People were out there last night playing with their dogs, having fun in the water. Meanwhile, we were having bunker fuel oil, they still can’t tell us what it is, in our water, potentially causing harm.”

There’s concern the sheen could coat birds and marine mammals and poison shore dwellers like crabs.

Dr. Peter Ross with the Vancouver Aquarium has taken samples to find out what exactly this substance will do. “It’s important to get the fingerprint of the particular crude product in this case in order to identify the responsible party.”

The City of Vancouver has had many calls and tweets from people wondering how they can help with the cleanup. It is still working on whether volunteers will be needed.

Anyone who wants to help should call 3-1-1 and register their interest.

 

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