Minibytes by Al Allen Training typically includes classroom sessions, workshops, drills, field exercises, etc. Regardless of the format and location, there are some basic guidelines that help make such training effective. My own observations on this topic draw from about a thousand training sessions over the past 5 decades. Conducted in well over 75 countries, […]

Minibytes by Al Allen Why is it that some lessons, often the most humbling, seem burned into memory? As I completed Blog #6 last month involving the controlled burning of oil, I was reminded of a few such humbling lessons, and decided to tell you about two of them this month. The first learning experience

Minibytes by Al Allen And now…, for controlled burning! Yes, I am personally excited about this option because it has challenged and humbled me in so many ways over so many years. Even back in grade school, and later as a career move in the 1980’s, I could feel the incredible potential for “combustion”! We

Minibytes by Al Allen Unfortunately, some people still consider the use of chemical dispersants and the controlled burning of oil as “alternative” oil spill response options. Decades of research, controlled field trials and experience during actual oil spills have proven that the application of chemical dispersants and the use of controlled burning can easily match

Minibytes by Al Allen Putting it simply, most oils float on water. Well…, a few don’t; some float for a while; and many disappear with time due to evaporation, decomposition, and/or natural mixing within the water column. So far my discussions have not been specific to any one type of oil (i.e., crude oil, diesel,

Minibytes by Al Allen In 1969, just a few days after the blowout on Platform A in the Santa Barbara Channel, California, I stood on Sterns Wharf, watching crude oil slide into the Santa Barbara Marina. It had been a week since the spill started, and yet the best efforts that seemed possible at that

Minibytes by Al Allen The rate at which one can encounter a specific volume of floating oil is one of the most important parameters in the overall assessment of a given response system’s ability to access and eliminate spilled oil. Regardless of the type of system under consideration (i.e., skimming, burning or applying chemical dispersants),

Minibytes by Al Allen Kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes are terms used in the world of computers involving information storage or system memory. If a byte is described as 8 Bits (a “Bit” being the smallest unit of information a computer uses), then it seems reasonable that a “minibyte” could be an expression of a small amount