Spill tracker developed

During a recent marine oil spill exercise at Akitio, the complexities of local currents became a small challenge for the team. Over a 'lemonade' that night, we got talking about the possibility of tracking the spill. We had most of what was needed, it was just a matter of putting the bits and pieces together.

The heart of the unit is a 'Spider' from SpiderTracks. We had one of these sitting on the shelf for an emergency or any of the team that wanted to track a 4WD or quad bike outside our regular GPS/cellular network. We bought a Pelican case, a 12V 4.0Ah battery and a cig socket.

The case naturally wanted to float on its lid so we mounted the Spider face down in the bottom of the case and the battery on top. This will make recharging simple too. Once we had the gear in the case, it was a little less likely to self right to float on the lid, so we added a metal plate into the lid. Once this was done, we couldn't force it to float the wrong way up... we needed the Spider to be either facing the sky or on its side, but not upside down.

We've left the unit running to test battery life and got 47hrs 50min with an automatic ping every 5 minutes. The Spider sends its location via satellite and we can tailor the ping rate depending on our needs from the SpiderTracks website once the unit has been deployed. We could track the location in real-time from the website.

We're not exactly sure whether the unit will track exactly the same as oil on water but we figured it will be close enough for us to know where to send the teams doing a reccy. Wind might have a little more influence on the unit - but it won't be much. The next step will be chucking the unit off a bridge and tracking it down the river - simulating throwing it from an aircraft.

One of the team here is also a marine SAR advisor... he reckons it might also be useful for search and rescue type activities too - we'd happily make it available to help out.

Group ECC activation

The Manawatu-Wanganui CDEM Group's Emergency Co-ordination Centre and Tararua Emergency Operations Centre were both activated for the tsunami response over the weekend. There was plenty of lead time for this event albeit with the waves first arriving reasonably early on Sunday morning. The Group response was similar to that for the Samoa event however evacuations were not recommended. All arrangements and personnel were in place to respond if evacuations were considered necessary after observations had been made at the Chatham Islands. In the end the community opted to move away from the foreshore and did so in quite an orderly fashion.

The Akitio webcam was adjusted to increase the refresh rate from about hourly to every minute. This gave us a good idea of sea conditions and whether there were people around. It's nice to actually use the camera for its intended purpose. We also kept a close eye on the GeoNet de-tided gauge (which is still showing signs of tsunami slosh today [yes that's my technical terminology]).

We did have a few problems updating the text on our webpage - but we're working on that. We also received an overwhelming number of e-mails and attachments. I think the introduction of the EMIS will go a long way to improving the sharing of information between Groups and MCDEM and minimising the number of e-mails that I'll just mark as read.

All-in-all, a much better effort on the public front this time. Still a number of operational improvements that can be made (and we're working on that). Here's an animation of wave propagation that you might like.

Akitio alive and well!

Well, it might have been a while in the making, but the latest webcam is now up and running. The Akitio camera is working from the boat club at the southern end of the beach. This view is one of the early shots from the camera. The transmission speeds are excellent and the site provides us with a good view of the road. The idea is that we will start getting a better handle on the effects of waves on the local community. Factors such as wave height, swell direction and tidal conditions all influence the end result. There have been instances when logs were thrown up on the road.

Here is the link to the camera on the Horizons Regional Council website. We may have a few issues with lens flare due to the beach running basically north/south - but we'll see how we go.