Dear Editor:
Re: Tankers Could Strike Bridge, Engineers Warn, Nov. 23 news story.
The entire population of planet Earth, including your retired engineers, know that when mankind and machinery are in close proximity there is a potential for accidents to happen. This is true with any form of transportation, but when a group of concerned professional engineers claim that increased volume of tanker traffic from the proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline would result in bridges being knocked down, it is really stretching credulity.
The lone accident they refer to occurred on an extremely foggy night of Oct. 13,1979 in Vancouver Harbour, when a Japanese log carrier hit the CN Rail bridge tower; there was a harbour pilot on board, but no tethered tugs.
I worked a huge chunk of my life on deep-sea vessels of all kinds trading world-wide, and retired as master of a chemical tanker; having been in hundreds of ports, and passed under hundreds of bridges without incident, as have many more millions of seafarers like me.
It is pertinent to note that tankers have transited Vancouver Harbour for the past 103 years without a single accident, nor an oil spill, being recorded.
The state-of-the art navigation equipment and instruments used today on ships and on shore were not invented in 1979, and today each tanker carries two highly trained harbour pilots, and has three tethered tugs. When these retired CPE members say that increased tanker traffic is “a very risky project,” their claim does not hold water.
This is fear-mongering at its worst, even though the CPE denies that, in comparing chalk and cheese.
Bernie Smith
Parksville, B.C.
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