Friday, July 17, 2009

What have we learned?

The wreck of MSC Napoli on the Devon coast of England will soon be history, and probably forgotten by most. The January 2007 event, in which a huge container ship was intentionally beached in Lyme Bay to prevent a major environmental catastrophe, should have taught governments around the world a valuable lesson.
Was any one paying attention?
The United Kingdom has a SOSREP - one person, reresenting the secretary of state, who is wholly responsible for dealing with shipwrecks and potential shipwrecks. This person has total authority over all governement agencies and resources. It is laregly because the SOSREP at the time exercised good judgement and allowed the ship to be beached, that there was minimal environmental damage from MSC Napoli. The ship had started to break up in bad weather, and was sure to be lost, but she weas beached, and her cargo salved or retrieved. Now her wreck has been removed.
Other countries have been slow to listen to the lesson of this incident, including Canada, which still has too many people who think they are in charge.
Read more on this in Piet Sink's newsletter.

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