The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny proud­ly host­ed emer­gency respon­ders from across the Great Lakes at their Cleve­land Ship­yard facil­i­ty for a U. S. Coast Guard Pre­pared­ness Response Exer­cise Pro­gram (PREP) one-day oil spill exer­cise.  The PREP is designed to test and improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion, plan­ning, and emer­gency response pro­fi­cien­cy among var­i­ous mar­itime com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment stake­hold­ers in the event of an actu­al oil spill.

The high­ly suc­cess­ful exer­cise was spon­sored by the U. S. Coast Guard’s 9^th Dis­trict Head­quar­ters and coor­di­nat­ed by the USCG Marine Safe­ty Unit Cleve­land.  The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny sup­port­ed the USCG by pro­vid­ing a base of oper­a­tions for the exer­cise, while Inter­lake Steamship Com­pa­ny moored the M/V DOROTHY ANN and barge PATHFINDER along­side The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny facil­i­ty as a sim­u­lat­ed dam­aged vessel.

This hands-on sim­u­la­tion of an oil spill pro­vid­ed par­tic­i­pants with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to use and val­i­date a vari­ety of response plans, as well as to place oil deflec­tion and con­tain­ment boom in the water around envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive areas.

The exer­cise was based on a sce­nario in which a large ves­sel strikes a sub­merged object in the Cuya­hoga Riv­er, dam­ag­ing the ves­sel and dis­charg­ing approx­i­mate­ly 40,000 gal­lons of diesel fuel into the river.