Counting The Cost

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 13

Counting The Cost

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, March 31. The tanker Torrey Canyon’s encounter with the Seven Stones Rocks looks certain to prove Britain’s costliest peace-time disaster.

And the legal wrangles, over who foots the bill for what, could go on for years. The Government has already spent at least £1 million on initial clean-up operations. The final cost of detergent has been estimated as high as £l3 million. The air strikes are known to have cost many thousands of pounds, but they did provide first-class training for the service pilots involved. The London insurance market was carrying 40 per cent of the risk for the tankerinsured for a total of £5.9 million. The 120,000-ton cargo was separately insured for about £600,000. But probably the biggest—and most difficult to estimate —slice of the total cost will be the intangible effects on the tourist and fishing trades

on which south-western England relies so heavily. Some six million people could usually be expected to take their summer holidays along the stretches of coast most likely to be seriously affected by the oil, according to the British Travel Association.

A further eight million normally spend their holiday at resorts which could be affected if the tides and winds move the oil slicks further eastward along the south coast, or if boom defences, now being hurriedly constructed at harbour entrances and river mouths, prove ineffectual. The big headache will be sorting out the compensation —-if any—for the thousands of people whose livelihood has been affected by the disaster.

The indications are that the Minister without Portfolio, Mr Patrick Gordon Walker, will be given the task of coordinating work on the flood of claims expected.