Last September, port employees in Saint-Florent participated in an «anti-pollution» fighting exercise in the Tino-Rossi port of Ajaccio.

Six hundred litres of diesel fuel escaping from a pleasure boat and spreading into the Tino Rossi port of Ajaccio. This is the «catastrophe scenario» imagined this Thursday afternoon for a full-scale exercise. As soon as the – fictional – alarm was given, about ten port agents tackled this hydrocarbon pollution. The aim was to familiarise themselves with a technique known as «first response».
The men are unrolling fire hoses, installing floating pumps and containment booms. The strategy is to encircle the polluted area, then tackle the product with XXL absorbent pads.

The exercise, organised at the behest of the Ajaccio Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Corsican Environment Office, took place in the presence of officials from the ports of Bonifacio, Propriano and Saint-Florent, who were invited to observe the operations.