14 DAY TRIAL // Five ships sank into the Black Sea due to high waves and powerful winds. One of them was an oil tanker and first estimations point that it spilled about 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil. Ecologists and environmentalists called this an "ecological catastrophe". The tanker was carrying about 4,000 tonnes when it was hit by the storm, any spill larger than 700 tonnes being considered large.
Waves as high as five meters and winds up to 108 kilometers per hour battered the helpless cargo ships, in the Kerch Strait separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. Three of the sunk ships contained sulphur. Also 20 sailors are still declared missing and fears are growing due to the worsened weather conditions. Several other ships are also missing.
As the threat of the storm became imminent, the ships from the port of Kavkaz were evacuated to a Russian port 1,200 kilometers south of Moscow. Ten others were forced to remain in the port because of the storm. A cargo ship sank 300 kilometer west, having 17 sailors aboard, of whom only two have been rescued and 15 are still missing. Other five sailors are missing, from a ship that sank in the Kerch Strait.
It will take a long time for the spilled oil from the oil tanker to be cleaned up and the consequences could be felt for more than a year. So far prosecutors investigating this case have opened a criminal inquiry for the pollution.
The oil tanker called Volgoneft-139 was virtually torn apart by the storm. Thirteen crew members were found on the stern of the ship and were later rescued by helicopter. The main objective of the two countries Russia and Ukraine that have teamed up in an effort to minimize the impact of the disaster, is to find the missing men, after which they can start the cleaning of the large oil spot when weather calms down. So far efforts to start the cleaning operation have been limited by the weather conditions.
Another oil tanker was damaged during the storm, Volgoneft-123, but it suffered from an "insignificant spill".
Birds seeking shelter on the shore near the center of the storm were covered in a mixture of oil and seaweed. A flock of about 1,000 rails, a species of wetland bird, were huddled on the beach, unable to fly because their feathers were coated with oil, some of them were not able to stand and the wild dogs took advantage of this and attacked them.
The last large oil spill took place in November 2002, when a Liberian oil tanker, named Prestige broke in half and spilled a colossal 64,000 tones of fuel oil into the waters, along the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, onto the shores of France, Spain and Portugal.
The Volgoneft-139 was carrying fuel oil from the southern Russian city of Samara on the Volga River to an oil terminal in Ukraine, according to agency reports quoting a Russian official.
