The ongoing clean-up and salvage operations in the Wadden region have been scaled up to emergency level four, and Leeuwarden mayor Ferd Crone will be coordinating the response.
Translation by Traci White
The aftermath of the container spill has been scaled up to GRIP4, which is level four of the Coordinated Regional Incident Management, a nationwide emergency management procedure.
Leeuwarden mayor Ferd Crone will serve as the coordinating director of the disaster response and will work in coordination with the Regional Policy Team. Dagblad van het Noorden reports that the emergency level designation means that national agencies will also be involved.
The decision to scale up the response was due in large part to efforts by the mayors of the impacted islands, who had publicly criticised the lack of central coordination over the past week.
GRIP4 is the second highest level in the emergency management system: GRIP5 indicates a national emergency, and GRIP4 is for emergencies that are impacting multiple provinces and safety regions. The last time that GRIP4 was declared in Friesland was in January 2012 in response to flooding which posed a threat to the province’s dike system.