On tuesday 21st, it emerged that the focus of the Salvage operation was switching to breaking the vessel in 2. When this story broke, the public was given assurances from the Salvage Master that the break up would not put the remaining 500 tonnes of fuel oil at risk, but rather that the part of the ship containing this fuel would break off, more or less neatly, without spillage...
Having been following the developments closely, along with GONHS and other concerned citizens, the Environmental Safety Group wasn’t convinced that this operation would be as straight forward as the authorities were portraying. We became very concerned that we might have an oil spill on our hands and there was talk of mobilising a volunteer team to be ready to help clean up in the event of a spillage.
