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People in the Navy Canadian Sailor Vice-Chair of NATO sub safe groupBy Sarah Gilmour
Canadian Commander William Irvine has found himself to be the right-hand man of an international submarine safety group.
NATO’s Submarine Escape and Rescue Working Group invites members and non-NATO countries to share ideas and develop standards for safe submarine expeditions. It has attracted many more members in recent years, following the incidents aboard HMCS Chicoutimi and Russian submarine K-141 Kursk.
“There has been a real push to globalize … it’s more than a NATO working group now, it’s international,” said Cdr Irvine.
Under the elected French civil engineer chair Bernard Micaelli, Cdr Irvine will vice-chair the group’s annual meeting this July in Istanbul, Turkey.
Cdr Irvine describes the annual meetings as a synergy of ideas to develop international standards.
“We bring the Canadian viewpoint to create sub [marine] standards for escape, rescue and hatches,” he said. “We work cooperatively on developing technology.”
Cdr Irvine said he regretted missing last year’s meeting in Brussels because he was in the hospital, and is very eager to attend the 2006 meeting.
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