December/January editorial:

It’s been a hell of a year for logistics and supply chain management in New Zealand, when you consider we’ve had to cope with the Rugby World Cup and the Christchurch earthquakes.

Another disastrous event, still ongoing, and one with its own unique logistical challenges, is the wreck of the Rena. I was lucky to attend a very interesting presentation from one of the Maritime New Zealand team involved with managing the Incident Command Centre (ICC). The numbers are staggering.

Around 600–800 people have to date been involved in the oil spill response team, including members of the ICC and people in the field undertaking beach clean-up and wildlife response. Over 110 NZ Defence Force personnel are providing support to the oil spill response, doing beach clean-up and conducting aerial and on-water operations, with others available at short notice. Over 40 people are working in the wildlife response team, including DoC personnel, veterinarians, ornithologists and those with experience
in the capture and treatment of oiled birds. Experts have been flown in from Australia, the UK, US, Netherlands and Singapore, with offers of assistance and equipment coming from around the world. Almost 8000 volunteers are registered in the volunteer database.

On board the Rena itself, over 1000 tonnes of oil has been recovered through fuel recovery operations, with about 360 tonnes to go; 1733 tonnes of oil was on board the ship when it grounded, and some 360 tonnes of oil was lost overboard. There were 1368 containers on board at the time of grounding, 121 containing perishable foodstuffs and 11 with dangerous goods; 88 containers have to date been lost overboard. The number of vessels and aircraft attending the recovery is now approaching 20.

Somewhere amongst all these numbers are a number of highly skilled, extremely competent and very patient logistics managers. If you thought you’d had a tough year at work, spare a thought for those working in the ICC and the fluidity of their job as they work against tide and time to recover the vessel and its contents and spare the environment.

On behalf of all of us here at FTD, I wish you all the very best for Christmas and the New Year. See you in 2012.

Until next time …

Lynne Richardson, editor

 

 

 

Read more articles from the December January issue here »