A completely non-existent oil spill in waters off Townsville has over 150 people racing to clean up nothing. Learn more about the drill, and how they’re doing it.
Wildlife need urgent care after 200 oil barrels leak into Poole Harbour.
For two days more than 150 personnel from across Queensland have been fake-cleaning a fake-spill in real life.
The scenario: two ships have crashed off the Magnetic Island coast, spilling tonnes of fuel into the water.
This completely non-existent oil is then recorded in a software monitoring system which predicts where the oil is travelling based on real weather conditions.
Maritime Safety Queensland (MSQ) general manager Kell Dillon was on the beach to oversee the two-day drill.
Gold Coast Waterway Authority team leader Glen Jackson and MSQ Gold Coast’s Rob Small clean a Townsville beach in protective hazmat suits.
“We’ve got over 150 people out here, seven boats, and a lot of boons,” Mr Dillon said.
“It’s going very well.”
Multiple agencies are involved in the MSQ drill – including wildlife rescues.
“There is equipment for cleaning wildlife which has been pulled out of storage and is being used to wash soft toys,” Mr Dillon said.
“They have their own wildlife emergency protocol for cleaning and rehabilitation that they’re drilling too.”
MSQ general manager Kell Dillon with one of the boons, currently protecting the shoreline of Pallaranda
The first part of the drill is ships practising how to drag long inflatable ‘boons’ across the ocean’s surface.
“There is quite an art to driving those two boats because they can accidentally break the boon,” Mr Dillon said.
“The orange barriers float on the surface and seal off the oil, which is sitting on top of the water. Once the barriers have surrounded some oil we put skimmers in to suck all the surface water into tanks.”
Two boats drag a ‘boon’ between them. The long orange inflatable forms a barrier and stops oil from spreading across the ocean’s surface.
Since there is no real oil in the water, the drill only involves maneuvering the boons and pumps are not being used.
MSQ’s new software system, named ‘Guardian’, has been meticulously tracking the make-believe oil spill and alerting crews to where the pollution is headed.
Because of the winds on Wednesday and Thursday, the ‘oil’ drifted towards Townsville beaches and a cleaning post was set up on Pallarenda.
Ground crews were placed at Pallarenda and practised raking through sand and shedding their hazmat suits in a safe manner.
If the winds had been different, staff would’ve been drilling cleaning protocols on Magnetic Island’s rocks.
“If oil lands on a beach people get stressed about it because it’s not nice to look at, but for us it’s better, because we can just go along with a loader and take the top off,” Mr Dillon said.
“When oil washes onto rocks or mangroves that’s when it gets really hard to clean.”
Townsville has experienced small spills before, but most of those were low-level diesel accidents, according to Mr Dillon.
“Normally it’s more low-level diesel, which is easy to deal with because diesel burns up in the sun,” Mr Dillon said.
“Drills like this keep us sharp and at the top of our game.”