When a 28 -year -old volunteer named Nikolai climbed on a sandy beach on the coast of the Russian Black Sea in a Hazmat dress just before New Year, it was so overwhelmed by the amount of an oil film often that it has almost broken.
He and other volunteers had the task of shutting through the flooded sand of oil, but “the scale is too big,” he said.
Two weeks after the new year and four weeks after the escape, President Vladimir V. Putin recognized the extent of the disaster and sent high officials to face the largest oil spill of Russia over the years, which has brought some of the most beaches popular of the country.
The oil was released by two Russian elderly oil tankers who were damaged during a strong storm in the Kerch Strait on December 15th. At least 2,400 tons of oil were lived at sea, Russian officials said.
The disaster in the Strait, which separates the Crimea peninsula from continental Russia, raised questions about the fact that the ships asked the so -called shadow fleet that Moscow uses to evade the penalties on its oil industry, sometimes using ships in poor condition .
One of the ships, the Volgoneft-212, divided halfway and sinked, killing a crew member. The other, the Volgoneft-239, took place near the port of Taman. The two ships were loaded with a total of 9,000 tons of oil for heavy fuels and the authorities now work not only to clean up the coasts, but also to try to contain further spills from the ship that has run.
Russian officials originally said that the escape was contained, but immediately after the disaster, floating oil sightings and paved birds along the Black Sea coast of Russia were reported.
Thursday, Putin ordered a report on the condition of the Russian oil tanker fleet and also asked a deputy prime minister to review the Russian legislation that covers the shipments of oil by sea and river and to examine the “scientific progress on the cleaning of similar disasters , “Said his press office.
Last week, the Ukrainian Navy warned that the oil from the escape could reach the Costa del Black Sea of Ukraine near Odesa and Mykolaiv, but the Ukrainian environmental ministry said a day after it did not see any immediate threat.
Nikolai was among hundreds of volunteers who lent a hand to cleaning. An entrepreneur from Moscow had seen information from photographs and videos published by residents and local officials and went to the city of Anapa while approaching the new year.
In a telephone interview with the New York Times after returning home, he said he had spent a week open the oil that was washing on the shore. He asked that his surname was not used because he fears that he could lose state contracts.
Individuals and companies intervened to provide Volunteers with Hazmat tutes and some basic equipment, but the task has been discouraging.
“I had seen the photos before my arrival,” said Nikolai. “Yes, it seemed bad, but it’s different when you see it in real life. Take the shovel and collect that black stain of oil, and it looks just a drop in the ocean. “
The air along the coast was so heavy with the oil fumes, Nikolai said, that she felt stunned and weak after walking there without a respirator.
The cleaning teams responded to oil leaks along a coast of almost 500 miles, collecting over 160,000 tons of sand and grounds contaminated, as well as 25 tons of “liquid containing oil,” said the Ministry of Russian emergency situations this week this week .
But the escape risks becoming a “long -term environmental disaster”, according to Greenpeace Ukraine, who criticized the slow Russian response and warned a deadly impact on the Marine Life of the Black Sea.
Environmentalists say that the escape is particularly difficult to clean up due to the load of the oil tankers. The heavy fuel oil, unlike normal normal crude oil, does not remain on the surface of the water, but instead he sinks on the bottom.
“If it is not promptly removed from the surface, it remains waiting until it is biodegraded by marine microorganisms,” said Natalia Gozak, director of the Ukrainian Greenpeace office. “This can request decades.”
The lack of an immediate response means that large contaminated sand masses must be excavated, essentially guting the portions of the beaches around Anapa, according to Georgy Kavanosyan, an independent Russian environmentalist and hydrogeologist who arrived on the scene two days after leaking.
“Oil began to sink into the sand on the initial days because there were not enough rescuers there,” said Kavanosyan.
The satellite images published by Mr. Kavanosyan showed two elongated stains near the oil tanker who have agrarian, indicating new oil spills from it after two small earthquakes in the area during the weekend.
“That ship is a bomb that Ticchetta,” he said. “The most important thing right now is that oil and extract the ship.”
The officials reported having collected most of the oil from that escaped last Monday.
When Mr. Putin finally spoke of the disaster, he described it as “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years”.
Putin has ordered high shipping officials to supervise the efforts. A task force created this month brought several ministers to make plans for cleaning and reconstruction, as well as for the removal of the oil tankers.
The long -term effect of the oil leakage on the wildlife remains to be seen.
So far at least 58 dolphins have been found, said the Dolfa Dolphin Rescue and Research Center on Saturday. The group sent a team at sea last Friday to reach the sinked oil tanker and confirm the relationships that oil was still filtering from it.
“Contamination was along the entire path,” he said. “Just five kilometers from the shore, the common bottlenose dolphins and the firefers of the port swim in oil film and small hamlets of fuel oil, with our great regret and alarm.”
At least 6,000 birds denied by oil have been caught and cleaned by volunteers, but it is unlikely that many survive, the experts said. It is likely that the escapes kill tens of thousands of local birds, according to Greenpeace Ukraine.
Russian oil companies have increasingly aimed at using dilapidated oil tankers who are not regulated or insured by western companies.
The president Volodymyr Zelensky from Ukraine and other Ukrainian officials suggested that the two 50 -year -old tanks were part of the Russian shadow fleet, which emerged after the western nation moved to punish moscow economically for the invasion of Ukraine.
But Elisabeth Braw, an elderly member of the Atlantic Council who wrote several articles on the Shadow fleet, said that the ships were “old hand -wrapped ships” that were lacking in different characteristics of the shaded fleet ships, which generally operate in the Baltic and sailing Sea under the flags of other countries.
Both oil tankers involved in the escapes are owned by Russia and one of them had its suspended license and should not have been authorized to navigate, according to the Ria Novosti press agency state property.
Questions were also raised about why the oil tankers, originally built for river navigation, were admitted to the sea in winter storms in the first place.
Cassandra Vineyard Reports contributed by Kyiv, Ukraine.