Full City response debrief at EOW

As a side event of the Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference, Sea Alarm organised a debrief with most of the responders that were part of the international team that assisted in the oiled wildlife response in Norway, following the Full City oil spill incident. The main conclusion from the debrief was that the team without doubt had made a very strong contribution to the success of the Norwegian response. While UK responders were unfortunately not able to make it to the meeting, team members from Germany and Belgium joint the Sea Alarm staff for the evaluation. Apart from a number of improvements that could be made for future interventions, it was clear that this concept of international response has a lot of potential. For countries such as Norway, where local expertise is available but relatively thin, an international response team can provide the important continuity to the response and management support and supervision based on previous experience.

Sea Alarm is determined to continue supporting experienced responders and enable them to mobilise quickly to site if requested by a local stakeholder. The debriefing gave useful ideas how Sea Alarm’s role can be further optimised. These ideas are in the process of being incorporated into Sea Alarm’s international emergency response system.