Kh

THE KAPILANO 100
building next to the Park
Royal shopping centre in
West Vancouver looks like
a typical office building.

By Surj Rattan
News Reporter

But what happens behind closed
doors and darkened windows on
the top floor is anything bur typi-
cal. In fact, without prior knowl-
edge of who the people working
on the !2th floor are, a first-time
visitor might think he had just
walked in on some kind of
clandestine activity.

Dick Saunders is looking
through a set of binoculars. His
gaze is set on an oil tanker.

The vessel is sailing under the
Lions Gate Bridge on its way to
designated anchorage in Burrard
inlet before making its way to one
of the oil refineries located on the
eastern end of Burrard Inlet.

Saunders puts down the binocu-
lars and moves over to a radar
scope and begins ‘‘tracking’’ the
tanker.

A bank of closed-circuit televi-
sion monitors hangs over his work
station and provides images of the
marine activity taking place in the
Port of Vancouver. One of the
video cameras is mounted beneath
the Lions Gate Bridge.

In a back room, several men sit
in darkness as they monitor large
radar screens.

In another room, large com-
puters are busy keeping the many
radars functioning.

Welcome to the nerve centre of
the Canadian Coast Guard’s
Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), a
coast guard division responsible
for keeping marine traffic flowing
along Canada’s West Coast.

The VTS was created in 1974.
Its job is to ensure the safe and
efficient movement of marine
traffic, prevent pollution, make
navigational information avail-
able, encourage and assist shipp-
ing to operate within Canadian
laws and identify defective or
deficient ships.

And the job of the marine traf-
fic regulators, as they are called,
is never done. When the rest of
the office workers in Kapilano 100
call it a day at § p.m., VTS con-
tinues to operate — 24 hours a
day, seven days a week.

The North Pacific coastline is
divided into four VTS traffic
zones. Vancouver, based at the
Kapilano 100 buiiding, is the bus-
iest VTS centre in Canada. The
three other zones are Prince
Rupert, Tofino and Seattle.

All four VTS centres are linked
by teletype circuits and hot lines
to provide direct communications
between the facilities.

While the United States Coast
Guard operates the Seattle VTS
centre, both coast guards work in
close centact with each other
through the Joint Cooperative
Vessel Management Agreement
for the Juan de Fuca Strait area.

Canada and the U.S. signed the
agreement in 1979
All vessels longer than 20
metres, towing vessels over eight
metres and air-cushior: vehicles are
governed by the VTS centres.

The marine traffic regulators
act as the eyes of ships sailing the
Canadian West Coast. When poor
weather conditions reduce a ship’s
visibility, the VTS service «ally
kicks into action.

A marine waffic regulate’ at
any of the VTS centres can
monitor the movement of a vessel
on radar and car. ‘nake radio con-
tact with the sup if the marine
traffic regulator determines the

The water watch

West Van’s Coast Guard centre is Canada’s busiest

RICHARD SAUNDERS, a marine traffic regulator with the Canadian Coast Guards’s Vessel Traffic Services’ Vancouver zone, scans

the Burrard Inlet waterfront from high atop the Kapilano 100 building in West Vancouver.

ship is in danger.

John MacLeod, of-
ficer-in-charge of the Vancouver
WTS centre, says the amount of
marine traffic in the Vancouver
VTS zone is increasing every year.

There are currently about
250,000 ships passing through the
Vancouver zone cach year.

Marine traffic regulators under-
take an intensive nine-month
training program before they are
put on active duty in a VTS cen-

SECNE ARROWS
BE

a

INNER HARBOR ANCHORAGES

VAKCOUVER
TRAFFIC
CENTRE

chorages

Burrard ‘Inlet

tre. The Vancouver VTS centre
employs 48 people, 38 of them
work as marine traffic regulators.

The job allows no room for er-
ror,

“Wt takes a unique talent to do
this type of work. It's very similar
t being an air traffic controller,”
said MacLeod. ‘You have to
think quickly, especially in the
port.

“A ship could lose its engine or
its steering and it could be
aeround in two minutes. [t's

always a very critical situation
when a ship comes under the
Lions Gate Bridge.”

He adds that since the coast
guard started using radars to keep
track of vessels, there has not
been a major marine accident in
the Vancouver VTS zone.

The last serious accident to take
place was in 198) when a
freighter, travelling in thick fog,
struck a railway bridge next to the
Second Narrows Bridge, knocking
down a span in the middle of the
bridge.

“If we had radar coverage, that
accident would never have hap-
pened,’’ MacLeod said.

The Tofino VTS centre, located
in Ucluelet on the west coast of
Vancouver Island, helps foreign
vessels make a safe trip into North
American waters and guides them
into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

It then ‘thands’’ the ship over
to VTS Seattle to guide the ship
through the strait and into Puget
Sound.

if the vessel travels north into
Canadian waters, VTS Seattle
hands the ship over to VTS Van-
couver,

VTS Prince Rupert assists ships
plying the northwest waters of the
B.C. coast.

Vancouver VTS operators
monitor four radar scopes each
with two 56-centimetre radar
displays. One display provides a
general picture of the regulator’s
area of responsibility including
traffic lanes, coastal outlines and
overall navigational features.

The second display enlarges
more potentially hazardous areas
such as Active Pass, highlights
developing traffic congestion and
assists in search and rescue mis-
sions.

As a vessel] moves from one
radar coverage area to another, it
is automatically handed off to the
next radar console by a computer.

The entire operation is looked
after by a watch supervisor who
can monitor both radio com-
munication between the regulators
and the ships in his area and the

radar displays from his own con-
sale.

Pollution issues, particularly oil
and chemical spills, are of major
concern at the VTS says
MacLeod. He adds that in the
past the coast guard would receive
about 30 pollution reports a
month. That figure is now up io
100 reports a month.

“People are much more aware
of pollution issues,’* said
MacLeod.

Things were quiet during the
hour Saunders worked as the
regulator in charge of the Van-

Wednesday. July 3. 1991 - North Shore News - 3

NEWS photos Mike Waketield

building is an ideal location for
the VTS centre because it offers a
very good view of the port.
Because marine traffic depends
heavily on the services of the
VTS, MacLeod says it is vitally
important to have a_ back-up
system of computers and radars in
case of power failures.

VTS operations in the Kapilano
100 building also depend heavily
on diesel power. In the vent of a
power failure, the V7S centre is
able to continue operations.

“When this building was built,
it was the best location for us that

REG LIPSACK, Vessel Tvattic Services’ Vancouver zone opera-
tions supervisor, uses radar to keep track of a freighter entering
Burrard Inlet while marine traffic regulator Richard Saunders
maintains visual contact of the vessel from the KapiJano 100
building in West Vancouver.

couver Traffic Centre — which is
responsible for the movement of
ships in the port and at an-
chorages — including those in
English Bay. But MacLeod says
activity picks up at night and early
in the morning.

“The busiest time for us is at
night between 10 p.m. and mid-
night and in the morning, at
about 5 a.m. Those are our rush
hours,” said Macleod.

He adds that the Kapilane 100

there was. The Lions Gate Bridge
is the choke point in the harbor,
it’s the point of entry to the har-
bor.”’ MacLeod says. ‘With to-
day’s technology, you could be
anywhere. You could be anywhere
and bring your radar in on a tele-
phone line."

There are a total of $4 VTS
centres located across Canada.
VTS Vancouver handles as much
as 40% of the combined
workload.

Z
¢