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Summary
Exercise "Barossa"
- Adelaide
11 June 1998
- Exercise "Barossa" provided an excellent opportunity for personnel from South Australia to exercise their draft oil spill contingency plan and to work as a response team without the real pressures of an oil spill. The true value of the exercise lies in the learning points highlighted by Umpires and Observers alike, and provides an excellent opportunity for improvement of some key areas of future responses.
- The opportunity for members of response teams from out of State and from overseas to learn from the exercise was also most worthwhile and this, combined with the lessons learnt by South Australian personnel, fully justifies the time and cost involved in planning and running such an exercise.
- A number of areas were identified where response procedures can be improved namely:
- Command, control and communications.
- Oil spill response planning and strategic development.
- Financial control and record keeping procedures.
- Administrative arrangements.
- Media arrangements and briefings.
- Occupational Health and Safety Issues.
- Wildlife response and prioritisation of sensitive areas as well as liaison with concerned stakeholders.
- There is an urgent need to address the South Australian administrative and financial control procedures that were identified as being particularly ineffective. Failure to address these aspects promptly could leave South Australia particularly exposed in a genuine major incident.
- Communications were identified as another area for improvement, particularly in the Incident Control Centre and local command centres where there were very few facilities for individual response co-ordinators to communicate key milestones or achievements to others, too little interaction between key individuals, and no clear pathways for requests for assistance. There was also no clear delegation of responsibility, allowing vital tasks such as foreshore inspection to be forgotten for approximately seven hours.
- Exercise "Barossa" was a success and the Exercise Steering Committee is to be congratulated for their part in providing a valuable learning opportunity for a range of oil spill personnel.