More revelations today serve to show just how unthought is the entire Department for Transport / MCA proposal to turn the national coastguard service into a cut-and-shut operation – with all of the dangers of a wonky chassis.
Emergency incident reports: Ballycastle to Belfast via Clyde
For topographical reasons, with cliffs and headlands, the north east corner of Ireland cannot communicate directly with Belfast Coastguard.
We’re talking about a stretch of coastline from the Giant’s Causeway on the north coast to Cushendall on the east. These are notoriously dangerous waters on a wrecking coast, open to the long fetch of the exposed Atlantic.
This coastline includes the unsheltered coasts of Rathlin Island, in the Atlantic; and the Causeway coast where some of the Spanish Armada ships, like the Girona, came to a dreadful end on the rocks. It has strong overfalls off its series of dramatic headlands.
It is at the southern end of the traffic separation zone in the North Channel, one of the most difficult passages for smaller boats or for large ones suffering loss of engine power. Thus runs between Machrihanish Light on the south west of the Mull of Kintyre and Tor Head on the Northern Irish coast, then bending away to the west around the eastern coast of Rathlin Island and into the open Atlantic.
In the case of any maritime incident requiring urgent reporting, people living on this coastline cannot alert Belfast coastguard to the emergency. Their only route is to contact – guess where? – Clyde Coastguard, who then report to Belfast.
So what happens when Clyde Coastguard is shut down, as it is planned to be by the end of this year [2012]?
Someone out walking on Tor Head sees a westbound cargo ship entering the North Channel separation zone and suffer what seems to be a loss of power, starting to drift eastwards in a strong westerly wind, across the path of a bulk carrier coming south in her correct lane through the zone.
Clyde Coastgard is gone. They can’t get through to Belfast Coastguard. They’re on foot in a remote place with a long walk to to a landline.
And, by the way, ‘Belfast’ coastguard is not, as one would imagine, situated at Belfast harbour – but at Bangor on the County Down coast, on the southern shore of the entrance to Belfast Lough.
This matters in the case of the accuracy of the geographical picture in the mind of the underinformed personnel at a remote call centre or distant retained coastguard station responsible for the coordination of an ongoing incident.
Hello Fareham.
You appear to be talking about mobile phone reception. In the scenario you describe communication with the coastguard would be from the ships direct to the coastguard via VHF. The ship that has lost power is going to be aware of the problem far earlier than some mythical clifftop walker with a dodgy mobile phone signal.
As for Belfast CG being ‘closed for the weekend’ well, this simply doesn’t happen. Belfast is open for business 24/7/365
I’m afraid that when it comes to maritime communication and SAR procedures you really don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about.
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The fact that Belfast was closed for the weekend is fact and not fantasy.
As a yachtsman who sails frequently in N. Irish waters and hears Belfast Coastguard operating 24/7/365 via Ch16 I find this claim quite incredible.
If this happened then it is unprecedented, and I would like to know who dealt with all the traffic Belfast normally deals with over that period. I think you are havering.
Would you mind disclosing the source of this extraordinary piece of information?
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We have learned that shorthand information led us in one direction where what we were being told was that it was the Environmental Health Agency in Belfast that was closed for the weekend and that calls to it were re-routed to a destination in England – where the operator did not know where Bushmills was and had to have recourse to Google Maps.
We have therefore removed this part of the article because it did not belong there.
The information came in a conversation on coastguard issues and we, not unreasonably. interpreted the phrase ‘Belfast was closed for the weekend so..’ as referring to the coastguard station. It did not.
This was essentially our mistake and we apologise for the misleading passage.
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The very idea that Belfast Coastguard would be shut for the weekend was absurd, yet you stuck to it even when I pointed out that this part of your report must be wrong.
After a fiasco like that I can see no reason why anyone should trust anything you have to say about the Coastguard.
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“We have learned that shorthand information led us in one direction where what we were being told was that it was the Environmental Health Agency in Belfast that was closed for the weekend……”
Easy mistake to make. So that part of your story was based on nonsense.
Can we now turn to the other bit of your story about hill walkers in Antrim carrying maritime VHF radios so that they can call up Clyde Coastguard? This is fascinating stuff. What was the source for this particular gem of information?
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We are upfront about any mistake we make and will continue to be as a matter of policy. We also make very few.
This response is simply facile and – dangerously – demonstrates an inability to understand the nature of communications today.
If you were out for a day’s fishing in a small boat with no VHF but a few flares and were swamped by a rogue wave – you would be very glad of the lone walker in a remote place with a mobile in their pocket – who might be the sole observer of your distress flare.
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You were talking about a cargo ship and a bulk carrier, not a wee fishing boat with no VHF.
But never mind . . .
Do tell us what relevance the lack of a mobile phone signal in parts of Antrim has to whether Belfast or Clyde coastguard – or indeed a call center in Fareham – is the non- recipient of the unmakeable 999 call? If there is no mobile signal there is no mobile signal, and which coastguard is responsible for which bit of coast is utterly irrelevant; the mythical clifftop observer is equally powerless to report the incident.
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You make less sense with every post on this subject, and are in no position to lecture others about treating this subject in a facile and dangerous way. There are many on here who know vastly more than you about this subject, and I think it is time you admitted that.
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“This response is simply facile and – dangerously – demonstrates an inability to understand the nature of communications today.”
Possibly, but having spent 40 years in the telecommunications industry, as well as being familiar with, and qualified to use, maritime VHF, perhaps your response is a little wide of the mark.
You brought this upon yourselves when you wrote that a walker in Antrim “can’t get through to Belfast Coastguard” and would contact Clyde CG. Well, how would that work?
If they have a mobile phone with a signal a normal 999 call would be routed through to the appropriate CG as normal. Your example about only being able to contact Clyde CG would only stand up if they were using a marine VHF handheld. Which they wouldn’t be carrying anyway.
So, sorry if I have have upset you, but the story just does not stand. It looks as though somebody has been winding you up.
Please feel free to be rude to me again.
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Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool
Than open it and remove all doubt
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Better to remain polite than to play the oaf.
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It is a known fact that Regional Maritime Coordination Centers do on occasion have their 999 calls re-routed to other MRCC’s.
With the prospect of 50% of the original MRCC’s being closed, this gives rise to loss of Local Knowledge in the geographical sense, topography sense and of assets & facilities.
Systematization cannot replace well trained experienced coordinators.
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Rerouting a 999 call does not imply that Belfast Coastguard was closed.
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I’m with Scots Renewables on this. The day of the “Coast Guard” sitting on a cliff using the Mark One eyeball, with rockets, flags and breaches buoy to hand are long gone – gone the same way as storm warning masts and cones on harbour walls – obsolete. Communication procedures for the dissemination of maritime information and co-ordinating Search and Rescue (SAR) are truly international. It is a myth to think that the person in a glass box looking out over the Clyde knows every nook and cranny up the West Coast. For that they will continue to call on and rely upon the local community to provide back-up and final delivery of services, be it Police, Fire, Lifeboat (RNLI) or volunteers. Failing that they fall back on the Armed Services and the commercial sector to provide backup for rapid response and specialist services.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/the__mca_performance_indicators_2012-13.pdf
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While not wishing to comment on the possibility of Belfast Coastguard being closed for the weekend, I have called Belfast Coastguard on VHF from near Glenarm and had no reply. Eventually Clyde Coastguard answered and advised that there is a dead spot there where Belfast Coastguard aerials can’t receive. However, I understand that no aerials will be removed when Clyde Coastguard close down so the one on the Mull of Kintyre will be monitored by Belfast.
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