Rescuers found the bodies of three sailors, presumed to be from the ship Nakhichevan.
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A Late Warning of Catastrophe Ahead
// Azov Sea shore coated in fuel oil after storm
The first information came in yesterday on the scale of the ecological disaster in the Strait of Kerch, where a tanker carrying fuel oil sank the day before. About 50 km. of the shoreline has been polluted, killing 30,000 birds and soaking that many more in fuel oil, according to ecologists' estimates. Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to the scene. Local authorities have already placed the blame for the events on the captains of the ships. They, in turn, claim that they received the first storm warnings when their ships were already sinking.
According to the Emergency Situations Ministry, weather conditions in the area remain difficult. All yesterday a strong storm continued there and storm warnings were issued again for the night of November 12. Wind speeds of 20-25 m./sec. (45-55 m.p.h.) were predicted with gusts up to 29 m./sec. (65 m.p.h.). because of this, rescue workers in the area remain idle. The rough weather may clear the spilt fuel from the waters of the Strait of Kerch as well, however.
Seven ships were wrecked in the Strait of Kerch last weekend because of the storm. Port Kavkaz was the center of the havoc, with four ships sinking there. They were the oil tanker Volgoneft 139 and cargo vessels Nakhichevan, Kovel and Volnogorsk. About 2000 tons of fuel oil and several tons of sulfur were released into the water as a result of those shipwrecks. Several other ships were damaged or grounded as well.
Almost all the sailors involved were saved. Eight of the 11 people on the Nakhichevan are considered missing, however. The Ministry of Emergency Situations' Southern Regional Center says that the bodies of three sailors were found on the morning of November 12 near Tuzla Spit and are assumed to be those of sailors from the Nakhichevan.
The damage to the region became clear that morning. About 1200 tons of fuel oil spilled from Volgoneft 139. By Monday evening, only 160 tons of the petroleum product had been cleaned up and taken to a special containment facility at the Sirius oil refinery in Temryuk District.
Estimates of the damage differ among agencies. Oleg Grebenyuk, deputy head of the State Fire Service, part of the Ministry of Emergency Situations' Southern Regional Center, stated that “The fuel oil will be maximally completely collected and we do not expect any serious consequences.”
Coordinator for the public organization Northern Caucasus Ecology Watch Andrey Rudomakha, however, said that the magnitude of the pollution was colossal. “I have talked to residents of the villages of Chushka, Volna and Taman,” he said. “They say that the entire shoreline of the Tuzla and Chushka Spits and the area near the villages of Ilyich and Priazovsky on the Sea of Azov are covered in oil. Oil spots were noted on the shore a kilometer from Volna, which is locate don the northern part of the Taman Peninsula on the Black Sea. That is to say that the oil has already polluted 50 km. of shoreline.” Rudomakha says that the are of the oil spill indicates that much more than “the officially announced 1300 tons” was released. Sergey Zaitsev, head of the Temryuk district administration, said that efforts to collect the oil from the surface of the water were ineffective. “The petroleum products are being collected from the surface layer of the water at this moment,” Zaitsev said, “but petroleum products carbonize and sink to the bottom, saturating the shellfish.” The Crimean branch of the Green Party of Ukraine issued a statement that noted that the petroleum products and sulfur “will poison the sea and cause a severe lack of oxygen, which will lead to massive destruction of the aquatic flora and fauna.”
Krasnodar Territory Governor Alexander Tkachev called the spill an ecological disaster at a meeting of the territorial administration. “Thirty thousand birds have died and the number of fish that have died is uncountable,” he noted. “The damage is so great that it is hard to assess. It can be called an ecological catastrophe.” Tkachev said that one of the main causes of the catastrophe in the Strait of Kerch was the foolhardiness of the ships' captains, who “received storm warnings and hoped for luck.”
Most of the owners of the ships sunk in the strait say that the captains bear no responsibility for the situation, and the cause was an act of God and late warning from the coast guard of the approaching storm. There are indications that most of the vessels that sank were simply not designed to withstand such conditions. Alexander Zhuravlev, director of OOO Port Turaevo, the owner of the Volnogorsk, based outside Moscow, told Kommersant that the ship, built in 1965, “was in normal condition and was operated by an experienced captain and qualified crew.” But its technical specifications show that it was capable of withstanding waves of up to 2 m. high. Those in the Strait of Kerch reached 6 m. Zhuravlev also said that the captain received a storm warning only 15-20 minutes before the ship sank. “Even if the Volnogorsk had made it into the open sea, the same fate would probably have awaited it,” Zhuravlev said.
They have a similar point of view in Rostov-on-Don at OOO Dondizelservis, owner of the Nakhichevan, which was built in 2005. “We have serious doubts that Capt. Nikolay Tishchenko is responsible for the sinking of the ship,” a spokesman for that company said. Capt. Alexander Gladkikh of the steamer Svyataya Elena also says that the Kavkaz coast guard issued a warning to leave the port too late. Gladkikh said that that order was received only after the cargo ship Volgoneft 123 ruptured at about 8:00 a.m. November 11. There were more than 50 ships in the Strait of Kerch at that time, and their captains simply had no time to take them to safety. The ships speed in good weather does not exceed 11 knots (about 20 km./hr., or 13 m.p.h.).
The prosecutor's office changes its position somewhat on the possible guilty parties yesterday. While the captains had been held fully responsible, the prosecutor has now stated that it intends to check “whether warnings about a storm and its strength were issued appropriately.”
Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov is to visit the scene of the catastrophe today by order of Russian president Vladimir Putin. He has been instructed to investigate the situation personally and take all necessary measures.
Oleg Rubnikovich; Viktoria Makarenko, Rostov-on-Don; Zair Akadyrov, Simferopol
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 13, 2007
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