Oil spill clean-up underway on South Africa’s west coast after the weekend break-up of grounded Panama flagged cargo vessel
Coastal clean-up operations are ramping up on South Africa’s west coast after an oil-spill caused by the break-up of a grounded Panama-registered general cargo vessel, the MV Ultra Galaxy due to battering by massive waves associated with a cold front that enveloped the western and northern Cape regions this past weekend, the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) reported on Monday.
According to SAMSA this immediately led to the deployment of the country’s Oil Spill Contingency Plan to mop up the oil spill in the adjoining coastal area, and which entailed the massing of manpower that initially involved some 125 people sourced from the local communities.
The national plan is managed by the country’s interim Incident Management Organisation (IMOrg), a virtual organisation chaired by the Department of Transport (DoT) and SAMSA, as the co-chair and secretariat.
Launched in 2017, with its membership drawn broadly from across various sectors of society inclusive of State departments, private sector industries as well as non-governmental institutions, it is South Africa’s preparedness forum for joint Government and industry response to oil spills within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of approximately 1.5-million km² across the Atlantic, Southern and Indian Oceans.
Reflecting briefly on how the dreaded break-up of the 124.56-meter-long general cargo vessel, built in 2008, occured at the weekend, after a couple or so weeks since its grounding on 09 July 2024, while en route to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania with fertiliser cargo onboard, and with salvage work having already begun, SAMSA attributed it to bad weather.
