‘The intensive traffic of fuel carrying trucks poses the threat of an environmental accident; therefore, it is necessary to master the emergency response skills’, said Raimondas Ramanauskas, Head of Mažeikiai Fire and Rescue Board for Protection of Facilities.

The new equipment for collecting of petroleum products off the water by the Mažiekiai RRB for Protection of Facilities was procured by ORLEN Lietuva. It is quite a number of years already that the Company has been providing the rescuers with expensive equipment which is used for emergency responses all over Lithuania.

‘The newest equipment provided to the rescuers will enhance environmental safety in the entire region’, stated Jacek Komar, Press Officer of ORLEN Lietuva.During the recent few years, the Company, which is managed by the Polish Oil Concern PKN ORLEN, has provided the fire fighters with special equipment for the value of approximately 1.5 million LTL.

The exercise, which took place next to the dam on the Varduva River, was held last Thursday and followed the scenario of a simulated incident where a fuel carrying truck collides with a motor car and, as a consequence of which, two persons are injured as well as 1,000 liters of fuel is released into the water. The response operation involved 7 emergency service vehicles and 40 officers of Mažiekiai FRB for Protection of Facilities, also first medical aid service, police and ORLEN Lietuva Security Subdivision. During the exercise, the road was closed, the gasoline tank truck was fenced with warning tapes, and, in order to rescue the would-be casualties, a motor car was cut into pieces.

The supposedly spilt fuel was being collected with the help of floating barriers stretched out using boats; this prevented the spread of the pollutants on the surface of the water. Then, two special pumps (skimmers) were immersed which collected the petroleum products into an on-shore tank of the capacity of 15 tons. Upon collection, a special vehicle transported the released pollutants over to the waste water treatment facilities of ORLEN Lietuva Refinery.

According to R. Ramanauskas, Head of Mažiekiai FRB for Protection of Facilities, such an operation, depending on the part of a day and weather conditions, would actually last for 2 to 3 hours.

In addition to mass media representatives, the emergency-services-involving drill close to ORLEN Lietuva was also observed by officers of emergency response departments of Mažeikiai, Akmenė and Telšiai municipalities, also fire fighters, police officers and environmentalists from Panevėžys, Šiauliai and Klaipėda.

In the afternoon, the journalists were provided the possibility to get familiar with the fire preventing systems operated in the territory of ORLEN Lietuva, the largest refinery in the Baltic States, also to watch the demonstration of the fire engines (the only of the kind in the Baltic States) and technical capabilities thereof.