Recent Sinking & Previous Derelict Vessels in Squirrel Cove

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - On Sunday, June 2nd, a 50 foot vessel sank near the Squirrel Cove dock on Cortes island.

"There was quite a lengthy,  involved, process with the Coast Guard and Transport Canada. I am very happy to say  that the vessel has now been removed and environmental remediation has taken place, but that was quite an exciting event for the Harbour Authority," explained Jenny Hartwick, Harbourmaster for the Harbour Authority Cortes Island (HACI).

"I always want to stress this to the community., the 1st thing you do when you see a vessel that you have concerns about either because of an environmental spill or because it looks like it's about to go down or has gone down, is to call the Coast Guard ROC (Regional Operating Centre of the Coast Guard). It is their triage centre, which is based in Victoria. And the number for that is 1 800 889 8852.  They provide 24/ 7 coverage. When you call that number, you will reach a live person.  That person will collect some information from you. They'll ask for pictures to be sent. They may ask for length of vessel and information about the particular situation. They will craft their response around the information that's provided.”

"In this case, when the boat went down the owner happened to be on site and was there immediately."

"We actually have our own summer Coast Guard IRB station, the inshore rescue boat (IRB boat) in Cortes Bay. They access the water through the Seattle Yacht Club.”

“We were able to get an extremely fast response because there was a very local crew that didn't have far to travel to do the initial assessment. Somebody came by relatively quickly, and  the decision was made to boom the vessel.”
 
"The Coast Guard made the decision to act on that vessel immediately because of the size of the vessel and the potential for hydrocarbon pollution and contamination."

Cortes Currents: Have there been occasions when the Coast Guard didn't respond quickly. I'm thinking of the derelict boats at Squirrel Cove a couple of years ago.  

Jenny Hartwick: "A couple of years ago, anyone who's familiar with the Squirrel Cove Dock would have noticed that there were 3 derelict boats which sat on shore for a significant amount of time.”

"Like I said, the very first step in the process is always to call the regional operating center, the Coast Guard ROC will always respond to every call.  It may not be an immediate physical response, but they will always evaluate every phone call that comes in. In the case of the boats sitting on the shore in Squirrel Cove, they physically visited those vessels. They removed any potential hydrocarbons. So they felt that there were no immediate concerns of environmental damage and at that point in time, those vessels were triaged and handed over to Transport Canada.”

"The unfortunate  situation is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of derelict vessels on the BC coast. When a boat gets added to the Transport Canada inventory, It's added to that list, but there's no guarantee that it's going to end up at the top of that list.  It can take significant time for a boat that ends up on that side of the program to work its way to the top where we finally see some action.”

Cortes Currents: What's the Harbor Authorities role in this kind of situation.  

Jenny Hartwick: "One of the really important things to note is that the Harbor Authority’s jurisdiction is extremely small and is limited only to a very small  water area surrounding the docks themselves. The minute a vessel leaves the dock and gets outside of that lease area, we, as a Harbour Authority, lose our ability to act on it. Those boats were sitting outside of our water lot and we no longer had the ability to use our legal and environmental programs to act on them."