The Progressive Democratic Party has congratulated Gibraltar's Emergency Services and others for their hard work and efforts in responding swiftly, effectively and gallantly to the grounding of the Federa, the subsequent crew rescue operation and the control and cleanup operation. Unfortunately this is the third major incident just off Europa Point in less than a year. There have also been similar incidents in the Bay of Gibraltar the most recent of which was the grounding of the Tawe. "Clearly incidents such as those require investigation and lessons must be learned from that even though last week?EUR(TM)s storms serve as a reminder that merchant shipping is always at risk from nature," said the PDP. "The recent spate of incidents now raises the tally of ships grounded to five in just over a year (i.e., Fedra, Tawe, Sierra Nava, New Flame and Samothraki). ?EURoeGiven the amount of shipping traffic and perilous weather conditions there clearly is a serious risk that sooner or later a major oil spill catastrophe could occur in the Bay of Gibraltar. Neither Gibraltar, nor Spain can afford or allow such a tragedy from occurring, destroying our coastline and damaging our economy?EUR? said the PDP?EUR(TM)s Environment spokesman Dr. Gavin Gafan. ?EURoeNot only do we have a duty to help protect our homes, environment and ecology but we also need to demonstrate to the international community that as a mature entity we have adequate safeguards to prevent such accidents from occurring as frequently as they have done in the past.?EUR? "The last two incidents cannot and should not be used in a politically partisan way. It should serve as a hard reminder of the environmental risks that we run because of shipping and the need to take proper precautions and be able to respond with significant resources in an emergency. It makes sense for there to be increased cooperation, better use and pooling of resources between Gibraltar and Spain to deal with such incidents. "Equally the Federa incident needs to be investigated and monitoring techniques for shipping traffic reviewed. It is important to understand whether the incident was contributed to by safety failures of the vessel itself, human error of the crew or because there is a need to do anything locally to improve the availability of warnings to shipping in the Europa Point area." source: gibfocus