Good Point Clif !

I finally got to look at the Weed video of the last Cape Vincent Town Board meeting.

 I thought Councilman Clif Schneider brought up a very good point regarding the recent grounding of a ship on a shoal just off Tibbetts Point.  He mentioned that this apparently was not the first time a ship had gone aground there and touched on the potential dangers.

His point also brings up some other  things to think about in this regard.

He also related this event  to a potential  an emergency if a ship went aground and released a substance like oil or a chemical just upstream of DANC’s regional water line.   As Schneider pointed out, this line supplies critical water not just for CV but for a lot of people in our region.  Schneider questioned whether the nav aid buoy might be left in longer on the shoal as the shipping season gets read to close for the winter to avoid further groundings that could turn into a real disaster.

We tend to think of ships drifting by as a  romantic scene giving our community an international seaport flavor.  But like any other technology they can have considerable dangers attached.

The relevance of Schneider’s point is reinforced by the recent release of a chemical in a river water supply in W. Virginia and the emergency that created for several hundred thousand people for many days.

Obviously not all shipping carries grain or other relative harmless cargo passing very close to our community.

If you have been around the 1000 Islands a while you might  remember the barge that went aground in 1976  fog near Alex. Bay down river and leaked a lot of crude oil.  I remember the mess and the cleanup.  I remember standing in front of the Edgewood Resort in A-Bay seeing the oil smeared all over the rocks.  Cape Vincent dodged a bullet that time!!!

Now during this discussion Supervisor Hirschey asked… “don’t ships have depth sounders?”

I' m sure they do have some depth monitoring equipment, however, if you think about it by the time a sounder on a ship tells you it is getting too shallow it’s probably way too late to stop or steer a massive ship out of danger. Don’t know if it is accurate but I have heard it takes almost a mile to fully stop one of these big ships.

Now ships have radar, but without the big metal buoy to reflect back a signal the shoal marker would not show up on radar.

I don’t know how this accident off Tibbetts happened.  But in this technology age of sophisticated satellite  Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and digital mapping I find it hard to believe a ship would not have that instrumentation on board. I teach wilderness navigation to all kinds of agencies including GPS. And in addition have used GPS and marine navigation in my own boating and sea kayaking.

Even if the buoy was not in the water a GPS and mapping chart plotter system  should show you exactly where you are within a few feet in relation to the shoal, and where you are headed, and it is all real time within a few seconds using satellite signals.

Not only that,  you can enter the shoal as a "danger" waypoint that shows on your chart to be avoided, and the GPS will show you if you are headed toward the shoal or too close.  If at anchor the GPS should also have an alarm to indicate you are drifting if your anchor does not hold, say in high wind for example.

So it will be interesting to see why this ship went aground.

This stuff is even available to the average boater.  Garmin Inc, the leader in GPS uses has very sophisticated marine chart plotters.  And some at reasonable cost  and others very expensive.

What these GPS systems do is show your location real time on a marine chart.  They tell you how fast you are moving, and the direction as well as other critical navigation information.  They can even record a track of where you have been so you can back track your exact route if you want to.

But you don’t have to spend  big bucks to have very sophisticated nav info at your fingertips.  That is why I can’t imagine a ship would not have this stuff to avoid dangers like shoals even though a buoy is not  there marking the danger.  And GPS is not effected by weather, fog  or darkness.

Of course, still a well trained, experienced and alert human has to be operating these instruments to make them work to avoid disaster.  In SAR we even teach cases where operators who should know how to use GPS and mapping, didn’t an caused serious accidents or delayed emergency response.

 I hope Cape Fire is reading.  I have taught GPS to a number of fire depts. as well who were not up to speed on GPS  as they should have been.  For example if you are going to be out on the water, maybe at night, helping rescue or search for someone, and other agencies like Coast Guard or Sheffif are involved, it could be critical to understand GPS and coordinates etc for example.

Also emergency service GM OnStar often uses coordinates to indicate where a driver may be.  And most new cell phones have GPS that will give a Latitude Longitude coordinate directly to a 911 center if you are in trouble and don't know exactly where you are on land or water. 

These coordinates could be given the Coast Guard and by boat or helicopter and their GPS they can respond directly to your location, police and fire should be able to do the same...that is assuming they know what to do with the coordinates and enter them in a GPS correctly.  My experience in SAR with other agencies says this is not always the case unfortunately and has caused some real dangerous issues in emergency response!

But look below and you will see a photo of an app I have on my smart phone and tablet. It costs about $20 dollars as I remember and I have charts for the St. Lawrence and all of Lake Ontario, so if you figure in the cost of that many charts, $20 is a screaming deal!!! It will track my location real time.
Of course if you are interested in this type of app make sure your phone or tablet has a GPS.

 

        Pictured above is a great marine charting and GPS app I use called "MX Mariner"  available for  download for Android smart phones and tablets.  I'm sure Apple will have similar stuff.

However any smart mariner will still have some paper maps and know how to navigate safely without any of this technology. 

But Schneider’s comment brings up some other important points.  For example what would you do if the regional water system was out of service in a disaster or emergency?  Since I am in emergency services here in AZ on a SAR team we respond to more than just lost people. 

We once had a 140 vehicle pile up on I – 40,  train derailments with toxic chemicals, tornados,huge snow events, etc and our biggy…forest fires.    Here in Flagstaff and when I am in CV I stock pile at least 10 to 15 gallons of water for emergency and have other emergency supplies ready. 

In many disasters you will see people who just didn’t believe it would happen to them, and don’t have any preparation or plan at all.  Hurricane Katrina is a prime example.  Emergency services can’t do everything in an emergency or disaster , and  consider that their systems may be severely crippled as well. 

We all have a responsibility for at least some ability to self rescue or basic survival if nothing else at least for a few days until emergency help might arrive.

CV has also been host to various emergencies, ice storms, micro bursts, etc  And on the risk scale these are considered low probability – high consequence events.  In other words they don’t happen often but when they do the consequences are probably going to be  high and dangerous. As a result we tend to forget on not make emergency planning a priority.

I have mentioned before to community leaders the Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) program. The town should partner with the village and county and maybe other towns to look into this volunteer program to aid community’s in emergencies and other events.

And the fire dept. ho hopefully understands the ICS system since emergency personnel are encouraged or even required to know the Incident Command System (ICS)  our town leaders should also understand the basics.  Especially as I heard councilman Byrne indicate he and others were involved in declaring a state of emergency.

ICS is a system for managing emergencies or even other events, that are large but are not necessarily emergencies.  It was developed by California fire fighters, since wild land fires are huge events that can spin out of control if not managed effectively.

So good point Clif, … you touched on an important topic and think further down the road on the communities readiness for numerous other emergencies the area could face.

Everyone , including community leaders, should consider what you would do if cut off from the daily services we all take for granted. And what if your emergency services were damaged and could not respond immediately.  I have to do this on a regular basis, not only because of my SAR activities but  because my wife and I camp in very remote desert locations sometimes 10 days or more at a stretch with no services other than our truck, and sometimes long stretches with no cell service. It is an interesting exercise to prepare for this activity.  For example if you take medications, especially  if they are critical like diabetic medications other health issues. Do have enough to last you if the community is cut off in an emergency?

 It might helpful for community leaders and the public to engage in something we do in SAR called scenarios.  What if?????  For example what if an oil barge moored to the CV break wall exploded or caught fire and the floating oil fire was creeping  toward shore.  We often don’t like to consider these things, but it may be critical that we do.
 

And for anyone who wants to better understand the GPS system and its potential in emergency and other events system I am usually available in CV in the summer and early fall.

                         Below, amazing technology available to the average person...GPS!
                                  Actually a military system available to civilians.

Shown on  the left is an android smart phone with  GPS app which gives the exact location of the phone.  I  have blocked out the full coordinates for my house for obvious reasons.  On the right is a common Garmin handheld GPS set up to take me too a waypoint I have entered (follow the arrow) and other information.

As you can see, even without a buoy if a ship had had the basic GPS on the right and entered the Tibbetts shoal as a waypoint, and set up a "Goto" it would have shown the exact direction to the shoal, the exact distance, bearing, and the ship's speed and heading all updated every few seconds. This could all  be entered in the  data boxes.  And the arrow would show the exact direction to the shoal.  And as long as the GPS stays on, on a simple map it will show a line that is the ,exact track the ship has taken and depending on the software will show a line as to where the ship is headed.

Hard to say what cause this ship to run aground, but it would seem that very sophisticated information should have been available to them.

We use this GPS information in SAR all the time at night and in terrible weather.  If we find our victims and they need quick medical attention we  can give a helicopter or other ground teams our exact location and they can then enter it in their GPS and fly, drive or hike to our location.

GPS is not just a techy toy for us. It's a life saving technology.  If we find an injured subject in a remote location and we can't effectively tell others how to get to us and then evacuate  that person to  medical help, then all the fancy emergency room equipment isn't going to help them much!