Weather delays

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34156, 18 May 1976, Page 17

Weather delays

race with oil

(N.Z.P.A.Reuter—Copyright) LA CORUNA (Spain), May 17.

A race to stop thousands of tonnes of crude oil escaping from the leaking tanker Urquiola and swamping north-west Spain’s valuable beaches and shellfish beds has been held up by heavy swells.

Salvage workers and divers, hoping to pump the remainder of the grounded vessel’s 110,000-tonne cargo to another ship, had to abandon the tanker yesterday when conditions made their work too dangerous. Informed sources said the swells brought inflammable crude oil gases to the surface and threatened to suck the divers inside the wrecked hull.

As Spanish Navy ships sprayed heavy oil slicks with detergent in an attempt to stop further damage to the area’s already blackened beaches, chiefs of the Rotterdam-based firm conducting the salvage went to a meeting with Spanish Naval authorities.

The sources said that unless the weather improved, plans to pump the remaining oil from the 59,723-tonne UrqJola then tow the wreck away from the harbour entrance, might have to be reviewed.

The salvage experts said that it was not yet possible to tell how much of the original cargo remained aboard, how much had been burnt, and how much had leaked into the sea. But shipping sources said that as little as 20,000 tonnes might be left.

Spanish Naval authorities originally estimated that between 80,000 and 90,000 tonnes were still aboard, that only 5000 tonnes had leaked out, and that the rest had gone up in flames when the tanker grounded five days ago.

T“ fiords surrounding La Coruna, an important shellfish centre and a growing tourist spot, have already been seriously affected by oil pollution. The worst hit beaches have a five-metre broad band of oil on the sands and thick black clots in the water spreading up to 65 metres out to sea.

The shellfish beds are the livelihood of about 6000 families along the estuary at La Coruna.

Maruja Rey, a representative of the women who collect clams, mussels and oysters at low tide, told city officials at the week-end: “We fisherwomen live off what we put into our baskets every day. We have no savings, and now we have no shellfish.”