Bourbon

Pollution Control & Fire Fighting

Cutting-edge equipment to control risks.

Thanks to the highly-experienced teams combined with hi-tech machinery, protecting the environment is a routine operation.

Qualified teams.

The teams are highly-qualified in pollution control and recovery techniques used to deal with surface pollution, as well as in dealing with damaged tanks, etc. They have gained their experience at sea, sharing it with experienced crews and constantly improving their expertise through internal training. It takes five to ten years at sea to really learn how to deal with this sort of operation.

Specialised vessels and equipment.

In order to ensure under the best conditions 24 hours a day and 7 days a week their duty of environmental protection, all the vessels of Les Abeilles fleet are equipped with tanks of dispersing agents, pumps and pollution containment booms, etc.

The two tugs, the Abeille Bourbon and the Abeille Liberté are fitted with fire-fighting equipment. They are classed as FiFi 2 (Fire Fighting class 2), in other words, they have fire-fighting water cannons with an output of up to 8,400 m3/hour at a range of over 100 metres, together with a water sprinkler system to protect the tug.

Effective operations.

Les Abeilles ensures the coordination of all the operations needed to control pollution effectively:

• setting up floating booms (or sea serpents),
• spraying of dispersing agents,
• pumping out any fuel still in the tanks,
• transferring such fuels to a recycling centre,
• cleaning the water surface with skimmers, followed by treatment in settling tanks,
• removal of hazardous materials on board the vessel that might otherwise spill into the sea.