The Lithuanian Armed Forces proceeded to incident aftermath control on April 1 after completing the search and recovery of the M88A2 Hercules and four deceased U.S. servicemembers from the bog. A task force assembled for the aftermath control at the General Silvestras Žukauskas Training Area conducts planning and organisation of the works and maintains constant communication with the Environmental Protection Department under the Ministry of the Environment and the Lithuanian State Forest Enterprise. The widened and heavily used roads that were required during the recovery operation have already been taken care of using capabilities of the Lithuanian Armed Forces.
“The Lithuanian Armed Forces informed the Environmental Protection Department about the potential damage to the environment at the General Silvestras Žukauskas Training Area in Pabradė while the operation was still ongoing. On the same day as the last deceased U.S. soldier was recovered from the swamp, the Lithuanian Armed Forces called in the civilian company it already had a contract with for oil product spill emergency localization and neutralization services which immediately started pumping the contaminated water and spraying oil product dissolvents,” said Officer in charge of the aftermath neutralization operation Lt Col Saulius Ivanauskas.
The civilian company is currently cleaning the basic volume of the swamp water and developing an environmental damage neutralization plan as requested by the Lithuanian Armed Forces, while waiting for the assessment of the damage to the environment from the Ministry of the Environment to draw on for further action. The Lithuanian Are Forces also wait for further pipeline condition assessment and laboratory results from Amber Grid AB to handle the environmental damage that potentially might have occurred.
The search and recovery operation which started on March 25 will only be completed fully when the lessons learned are fully processed and integrated into Lithuanian Armed Forces algorithms.
Photo credit: Sgt SPc 1 Tomas Kavaliauskas.
