I read last week’s letter from Ms. Saxby, and I must admit I was very disappointed at the effort to link both the bunker fuel leak in English Bay and the unfortunate fire at Squamish Terminals to the current Woodfibre LNG proposal.
When looking at the events over the past couple of weeks, it is clear that there is some work to be done at the federal level regarding spill response and where jurisdiction lies for these rare spill incidents. If there was one positive that came of that accident, it would be the B.C. government renewing its call for more robust spill response from the federal government along the British Columbia coastline. While the writer was quick to point to a failure of our provincial government, it is actually an issue for their federal counterparts, and will surely be a hot topic for candidates in the upcoming federal election.
As for the massive fire at Squamish Terminals, I would like to first tip my hat to our dedicated local fire department. With a force largely composed of volunteer firefighters, they performed admirably in containing the fire and quickly brought more resources to bear in a timely manner, including a fireboat dispatched from Vancouver to assist. It’s those secondary resources where Squamish would actually benefit from the proximity of the Woodfibre LNG facility. As Woodfibre LNG has indicated publicly, the facility will have a tugboat with firefighting capacity moored at the plant, and in a situation of either a marine or close upland fire, this boat could be deployed to assist our local firefighters.
Risk is inherent in all our daily activities – personal, business, and all points in between. With that constant risk, we have two very clear choices: One is that we can try to bubble wrap our existence and look for meaning in accidents that have nothing to do whatsoever with the local situation. In doing this we take the easy way out, ramping up the fear factor with little real danger. While this may play out well for a cause, it is not helpful for those seeking accurate information.
The second option is to look at the risks and use our collective intelligence to plan the mitigation of those risks. To that end, Woodfibre LNG has submitted more than 90 pages outlining how they would respond in a myriad of situations as part of the Environmental Assessment submission, and one cannot ignore the safety track record when it comes to transporting LNG, which includes thousands of sailings without incident.
Clearly, accidents happen. Our job is to take the lessons learned and apply them, not to run and hide.
Nate Dolha
Squamish
