The 25th anniversary of the State's worst industrial accident is due to be marked in the west Cork harbour of Bantry this morning when a Mass will be held to commemorate the 51 victims of the Whiddy Island disaster.
On the eve of the commemoration, the chairman of Bantry Bay Harbour Commissioners, Fianna Fáil councillor Mr Vivian O'Callaghan, said the coastal zone management system initiated in the area several years ago should be used as a "template" for similar environmental management systems around this island.
Bantry Bay had risen "like a phoenix" from the ashes of Whiddy, with a thriving mussel farming industry and reopened terminal, but protection of water quality must be paramount, Cllr O'Callaghan told The Irish Times.
The entire French crew of the 121,000-ton oil tanker, the Betelgeuse, including the wife of the French cook on board, and seven local employees of Gulf Oil lost their lives in the fire and explosion which ripped through the ship in the early hours of January 8th, 1979. A weakened tanker hull and incorrect ballasting combined to cause the fire and subsequent blast while the ship was discharging its 120,000-ton cargo of Saudi crude oil on a jetty off Whiddy Island.
The subsequent tribunal chaired by Mr Justice Declan Costello blamed two oil companies - Total, which owned the ship, and Gulf Oil, which ran the terminal - for the accident, and also censured Gulf for giving inaccurate information to the inquiry.
The ship was not fitted with a safety "inert gas" system to prevent explosions of the combustible gas that can accumulate when oil is being discharged as the procedure had not been standard when the tanker was built in 1968.
The terminal remained closed for nearly 20 years, during which time a thriving mussel farming industry grew in the area, with encouragement from Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM). Award-winning company Bantry Bay Mussels and Fastnet Mussels now employ about 150 people, mainly of Latvian origin, in mussel processing, and up to 60 are employed in mussel farming.
The terminal was reopened by the Irish National Petroleum Corporation in April 1998, using a single-point mooring system which allows tankers to discharge cargo via floating lines rather than a fixed jetty. The terminal is run by Conoco/Phillips, but is not as busy as it should be, according to Mr O'Callaghan. Under EU regulations, the terminal stores the State's required 90-day national reserve of crude oil.
Many relatives of those lost in the Whiddy disaster attended the 20th anniversary of the event in January 1999, having been flown over to the west Cork harbour by Total. They attended a religious service and visited the granite cross in the Abbey cemetery on the town's outskirts which bears the names of those who died.
Mr O'Callaghan said that today's Mass would be relatively "low key" in comparison to the 20th anniversary. The town and Whiddy Island had been badly hit by the accident, but there had been some positive developments, he noted. A coastal zone management system, known as the Bantry Bay Charter, was spearheaded by Cork County Council to ensure co-operation between tourism, fishing and fish-farming and oil interests, and published a strategy in 2000.
However, funding for the charter office was suspended last year, and the Government has not attached any great commitment to coastal zone management generally.
Mr O'Callaghan said that the Bantry initiative deserved more State support, and should serve as a template for the rest of the island.
"Bantry has been earmarked for much-needed sewage treatment, but as a State we have serious water quality initiatives facing us," he said yesterday.