NationStates Jolt Archive

"We interrupt this program for a breaking news announcement. An LA Icenese ship, the SS Base, has spilled a huge 70 thousand tonnes, or 70 million kilograms of crude oil along the coastline of Navira, a tiny island province of The Phoenix Militia. The spill apparently occured whilst the ship was transporting Combatech robots to a small nation in the southern hemisphere. More shall be reported as we find it on Channel 6, Turra."

Millions of television viewers watching the finale of the popular LA Icenese television show, Bohemian Apes, heard this message during their favourite program. Some were non-apologetic; others simply said "Stupid government,"; whilst some even worried for their safety. The Militia had a prodigious military, with a manpower of more than 870 million and a budget in excess of 40 trillion. LA Ice had a mere 170 million men at best times, and a budget between 7 and 8 trillion. It seemed likely that the Militia would not try to sort it out over a coffee and a cigarette, per se.

----------------------------------

"Oh, fuck."

When the Captain, Mike Mendez, saw the oil behind the SS Base, he proclaimed something he vowed never to do on the job. He was one of the most uptight men on the LA Ice's Navy division; he never drank, never smoked, and never sniffed. He completely let loose when he saw the huge spill of oil.

"STOP THE SHIP!" he shouted. The huge tanker slowly halted. "All crew to the stern, urgently!"

The crew walked from each area of the ship, coming in little a clumps. When each saw the huge pool of crude oil behind the ship, they gasped in disbelief. Muttering to eachother, they spoke of what happened. The radar, nor the map, did not show any nearby hazards. Could it be an attack?

"We'll have to stop here. Travel quickly to the port. Where are we, anyway?"

"Navira, an island under the reigning of The Phoenix Militia."

"Fuck indeed."

OOC: Sign up at http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=488846, signups are still wanted!

Kilika Iohunukonu, a 37 year old reservist in the Coast Guard, sat precariously on the edge of his outrigger canoe, dipping his feet in the clear, tropical sea while tending his fishing rod. Despite what his grandfather taught him about fishing, he decided to leave the hand made, simple fishing pole that he built when he was a boy and instead used a store bought rod and reel along with canned sardines as bait. The fish didn't seem to be biting, but he didn't seem to mind, relaxing, listeing to music on his little portable radio, whistling along, enjoying his holiday weekend.
Everything was going as he had planned when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, a huge wave came crashing down, overturning his canoe and pushing him under the water. To his suprise and disgust, he came up spitting not salty seawater, but thick, black and toxic crude oil. Kilika dog paddled to his canoe, and righted it. He found the bright orange radio still worked and contacted shore.

"This is Chief Petty Officer Iohunukonu of the Coast Guard Reserve calling Light House Five Two" he radioed.

"Light House 52 here, Go ahead Chief" a voice answered.
"I am near long beach, about 2 miles out and I have an incoming oil spill, it seems to strech as far as I can see, my boat is not it good shape, but I think I can make it back to shore, suggest you contact The Fleet." he
said.
"Thanks for the heads up Chief, I'll report this right away"



It was of course too late, by the time the Light House was able to make contact with the Admiral in charge of the Naval assets in Navira, the spill had reached the shore. Luckily a lifeguard with a sharp pair of eyes thought fast and yelled 'sharks sharks!!', which clearted the water and the beach quicker than yelling 'oil spill' would have, so none of the thousands of swimmers would be affected.


By the time the Coast Guard cutter, PHX Orca, made it to Long Beach, it quickly saw that its equipment would not be enough to stop the flow of oil to the shore, although she deployed her skimmers anyway. Already a pair of Rooster Class Frigates followed by another Cutter were rushing towards the source of the oil at 35 knots, once they got in visual range they sent out hail.

"This is the Frigate PHX Sphinx, hailing SS Base, you are spilling oil into Phoenix Militant Waters and are hearby ordered to weigh anchor and prepare to be boarded. Additonal relief vessels ar en route. My men will alsol be able to offer you some assistance in sealing the leak" The Captain said in a brisk tone.
As he was speaking, 3 SH-65A Dolphin helicopters and 5 rubber boats had departed the ships and were heading toward the tanker. Some of the crew carried assault weapons, but most of them had tool kits to help deal with the leak.

OOC: I'm here, IC post tommorrow

"This is SS Base, reporting to the Frigate PHX Sphinx and Coast Guard. The leak appears to be caused by either coral or an enemy attack. Anchor dropping as we speak, we give you our sincere apologies," the Captain spoke into the radio.

"Go tell the folks back at home. They're not gonna be happy, but we still have to."

A private went into the cabin and spoke to the LA Ice Navy Emergency Centre.

"We've got a code 82, crude oil spill here, position 155° 36' West, 19° 12' North."

Deep in the heart of one of the small concealed bunkers that lightly sprinkled Mondoth, a computer was running a fast and dirty image recognition program on a wide panoramic created by one of Mondoth's new Odin class surveilance sattelites. The image showed a distressing alteration of Albedo from previous shots and was quickly run to a diagosis program that made sure that the sattlite and the analysis computer were running properly, then forwarded the image and computer created annotations to a human reviewer. The reviewer spent a few minutes translating the computer annotations into human language before popping an eyepiece in and looking over the image manually. Once the reviewer spotted the blotch staining the ocean and traced it to a ship, the problem became instantly clear.

The information spent a few hours in the pipeline and when it reached the Mondothian EPAthe story was already being plastered on the news.

Message to LA Ice and The Phoenix Militia
From:Eastern Mondoth Trust & The Mondothian Environmental Protection Agency
Via: DFC-9755797& DFC-769832
RE: Oil Spill

We have recently become aware of the oil spill that occured off the Naviran coast and would like to offer our assistance. An Environmental emergency action team can be on site in a few hours and support ships can arrive by tommorrow. An oil producing nation ourselves, we believe that a combined effort may be more likely to avert disaster in a case like this and luckily have response units stationed nearby (to protect one of our own shipping routes from such disasters).
We await your response anxiously.

OOC: SO I lied, but i'm only 3 hours late...

To: Mondoth
From:TPM NAVY
Please dispatch you emergency action team at once, any help we can get at this time is appreciated. We have enough assests in the area to provide support for all maritime activity in the region indefinitely so please spare your support vessels.


----

To: TPM Reconnaissance Service
From: Field Marshall Seville
Divert (3) Three KH-11s over LA Ice and (1) KH-1 over Navira immediately.

bump

To TPM Navy

Our response units are en-route, please expect their arrival within the hour.


The response group consisted of three medium sized converted dredgers. Each had a powerful suite of clean-up systems including tanks full of a special bio-agent that breaks crude oil into discreet, environmentally safe molecules. Unfortunately, the bacteria could only be released in minute quantities for fear that it might go through an unexpected and decidedly un-healthy growth bloom that could do more damage than the oil.
Other tools were more conventional, including sprayable agents that could defuse the more ecologically damaging aspects of an oil spill to yield more time for clean-up from other avenues, such as the dozen or so empty storage tanks ready to be pumped full of water/oil mix which could be reproccessed back into oil for a small profit.