All crew members of a Russian-flagged oil tanker damaged during a heavy storm were rescued on Monday, completing rescue efforts that were delayed overnight due to bad weather.
Volgoneft 239 was damaged alongside Volgoneft 212, which split in half and sank, when the tankers were caught in a storm in the Kerch Strait on Sunday, causing an oil spill and the death of one crew member.
Both tankers were carrying around 8,600 metric tons of mazut, a low-grade heavy fuel oil used in power plants in the former Soviet Union, the state-run news agency TASS quoted an anonymous emergency official as saying.
The Russian government said Monday that a “partial leakage” of oil products occurred, with an inter-agency cleanup effort being prepared.
One crew member of the Volgoneft 212 tanker was killed due to hypothermia and the other 12 were rescued earlier on Sunday. Law enforcement authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the incident.
On Monday, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said five Volgoneft 239 members were rescued near the Krasnodar region village of Volna after it increased the number of first responders. The ministry said less than an hour later that all 14 people on board the tanker were brought to shore, completing the rescue mission.
Russia’s government said Natural Resources and Environment Minister Alexander Kozlov and Svetlana Radionova, head of Russia’s natural resources watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, had arrived at the site to assess the extent of the damage.
Rosprirodnadzor said it was taking measurements with the Marine Rescue Service to analyze the extent of the oil spill.
Russia’s fishing regulatory authority Rosrybolovstvo said the measurements were needed in conjunction with aerial surveillance for a comprehensive study of the scale of the damage.
“After the weather normalizes and disaster relief efforts are completed, an assessment of the damage to marine life will be given,” Rosrybolovstvo said.
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