Pax River Prepares for Hurricane Season
By Mallory Lengel
Assistant Publisher
As this year’s hurricane season approaches our Naval Air Station trains and prepares for the worst.
For two weeks this month, the Naval Air Station PAX River ran drills on base. Emergency responded to mock emergencies, and practiced hurricane watch, assessment and preparation procedure, according to Capt. Ben Shevchuk, commanding officer.
During the first week of HURREX/CITADEL GALE 13, Navy personnel performed hurricane preparation exercises, such as personnel accountability, securing loose gear, placing sand bags at basin areas and closing valves to the drainage basins surrounding fuel storage tanks.
Every fuel storage tank is surrounded by a basin with the capacity to hold 100% of the fuel contained in the tank plus sufficient freeboard for a hundred year rain, said David Wick, supervising port operations manager at Pax River. During the drill’s second week, exercises included a fuel spill drill run at the fuel farm on the base.
Emergency personnel responded to a fake spill caused by a drainage basin valve being left open and a tree falling and damaging one of the fuel farm’s 600,000 gallon tanks. Civilian firefighters from the NAS Pax River Fire Department responded to the call, stemming the flow of contaminated water into the west basin which feeds in to the Patuxent River. Other emergency personnel responded at the west basin marina containing the “leak” and cleaning the water.
T
he base has three small boats prepared to deploy booms to contain an oil spill with additional boom available at the marina. These boom boats can prevent a spill from spreading and reaching the river while emergency responders use vacuum trucks to remove oil from the water.
Throughout the summer the base is at a constant state of readiness 5, the lowest level of readiness on the Tropical Cyclone Conditions of Readiness (TCCOR). As a storm approaches additional action is taken to ensure the safety of personnel and equipment.
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