Oil slick from sunken ship heading for French coast

BREST, France: French authorities are bracing for the arrival of an oil slick that is creeping toward its southwest coast and should make landfall on Sunday or Monday.

The 10-kilometre by onekilometre oil sheet was first spotted by a French naval aircraft on Wednesday afternoon, after a fire aboard an Italian cargo ship that sank Tuesday 300kms west of the town of La Rochelle.

In addition to 2,200 tonnes of heavy fuel the ‘Grande America’ had onboard, it was also transporting 2,000 cars and 365 shipping containers, 45 of which held dangerous materials, including a hundred tonnes of hydrochloric acid and 70 tonnes of sulphuric acid.

“There is a risk, so we must do everything to reduce it and to reduce the impact of pollution of our coasts,” Environment Minister Francois de Rugy told BFM news channel.

The 214-metre long ship was sailing from Hamburg, Germany, to Casablanca, Morocco, when a fire broke out on Sunday.

All 27 people on board were safely evacuated before the it sank. Forecasts show fragments of the slick reaching parts of the Atlantic coast by Sunday or Monday.

French authorities aim to limit the impact of the spill by deploying four ships and preparing for a cleanup operation on land.

“This shipwreck is problematic,” said Christian Buchet, director of the Centre of Ocean Studies at the Catholic Institute of Paris, in an interview with RTL.

“Everything that burned – the containers, the drums of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid – that doesn’t disappear. It goes up into the atmosphere.”

The cause of the fire is unknown, but it is believed to have broken out on the car deck before spreading to a container, according to JeanLouis Lozier, head of the regional maritime authority. — AFP