RUSSIA: Rescuers search for missing seamen, tackle oil spill, after storm havoc

Rescue officials said on Monday (November 12) that three people died in the storm that struck the narrow Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea on Sunday, sinking a small oil tanker and at least four freighters and leaving other ships stranded on the shoreline. Birds seeking shelter on the shore near the centre of the storm were covered in a treacly mixture of oil and seaweed -- the first evidence of what one Russian official called an "environmental disaster." At Novorossiisk, Russia's No. 2 port for exports of oil and oil products, officials had ordered tankers not to dock because a new storm was on its way. Reloading of oil from damaged tankers was also suspended in the Kerch Strait later on Monday. The worsening weather was also hampering rescue operations, said Anatoly Yanchuk, a rescue department chief at Russia's Transport Ministry. "Three bodies have been found, 37 people have been rescued and we are still looking for five seamen, though the chances to find them alive are getting slimmer," Yanchuk told reporters in the port of Kavkaz overlooking the strait. "Unfortunately, weather has gotten worse in the afternoon as had been forecast, so we had to cut down the number of ships taking part in the rescue operation. But large tug-boats are still in sea, " he said. The oil spill came from the Volgoneft-139, a small Russian oil tanker which broke in two during the storm when it was off the Ukrainian port of Kerch. Officials said it had spilled at least 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil. In cold weather, the thick, treacly substance may sink to the seabed instead of dispersing, making the clean-up harder. The tanker was carrying 4,000 tonnes of fuel oil in total when it was hit by the storm. A spill of over 700 tonnes is considered large, but the biggest ones run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands. At the coastal settlement of Ilyich, halfway between Kavkaz and Novorossiisk, about 100 workers were on the beach using shovels and a bulldozer to scrape globules of oil off the sand. A flock of rails, a species of wetland bird, were huddled on the beach, unable to fly because their feathers were coated with oil. Some were unable to stand.

ITN Source | November 13, 2007

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