Black Sea coast faced with disaster
Ecological catastrophe looms as fuel oil from sunken vessel kills birds and fish.
“The damage is so huge it can hardly be evaluated. It can be compared to an ecological catastrophe,” the Interfax news agency quoted Alexander Tkachyov, the governor of Russia’s Black Sea region of Krasnodar, as telling regional officials.
“Thirty thousand birds have died, and it’s just impossible to count the loss of fish.”
‘Warnings ignored’
The dead “may have been crew members of [a] dry cargo ship Nakhichevan that sank in the port of Kavkaz,” a spokesman told the Interfax news agency.
Environmentalists, who have been given public support by Viktor Yanukovich, the Ukrainian prime minister, said the incident raised questions about safety standards for shipping in the region.
At Novorossiisk, Russia‘s second-largest port for exports of oil and oil products, officials had ordered tankers not to dock because a new storm was on its way.
The worsening weather, forecast to last until Tuesday evening, was hampering rescue operations, said Anatoly Yanchuk, a rescue department chief at Russia‘s transport ministry.
“We will continue efforts to find those five missing, but the chances of finding them are now smaller,” he said in the port of Kavkaz overlooking the strait.