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14.11.07
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Damage Control
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By Dmitry Babich
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Widespread Consequences of the Weekend Storm
The consequences of this weekend’s disastrous storm in the Black and Azov Seas are only now becoming apparent. Special cleanup brigades have started operations to contain and remove the oil spill from the beaches of Russia’s Krasnodar Territory. The scale of the leak is still being estimated, but according to the more pessimistic projections, 1300 tons of oil fuel and 6800 tons of industrial sulfur from the four Russian vessels shipwrecked on Sunday and Monday may be enough to cause irreparable damage to the Azov Sea – a shallow gulf-like extension of the Black Sea on the border between Russia and Ukraine. Ten ships in total sank or ran aground, as six more Ukrainian, Georgian and Turkish vessels also sank – mostly near Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to visit the areas affected by the disaster, which may have not only environmental, but also economic and even political fallout. Besides the frightening death toll – six sailors are confirmed dead and there is less and less hope of finding alive 14 more missing seamen – the prime minister will have to deal with some long-term problems the disaster has caused.
The first problem is the proximity of the Ukrainian border. Most of the shipwrecks happened in the narrow Kerch Strait dividing Krasnodar Territory from the Crimea. In 2004, this area became the site of a contentious dispute between Russia and Ukraine, as the Ukrainian side accused Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachev of building a dam in the Kerch Strait in a bid to make the Ukrainian Tuzla peninsula a part of Russian territory. Ironically, the dam played a positive role this weekend in preventing the huge waves from a much deeper Black Sea from destroying the infrastructure around the Azov Sea.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who also visited the disaster area and met with his Russian colleague Zubkov on Tuesday, tried to play down a possible conflict with the Russian side. Yanukovich limited himself to saying that the Russian-Ukrainian agreement on the Kerch Strait needed “a revision” which would provide for “measures aimed at removing the consequences of possible natural disasters.” Yanukovich also said that “both sides breached the rules,” but added that Russian and Ukrainian authorities will analyze these violations later.
The second problem for Zubkov is the proximity of the disaster area to the Russian city of Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Traditionally, the Kerch Strait and its surroundings were seen as a storm-safe area. In fact, one of the reasons of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s reluctance to relocate from the Crimean Sebastopol to Novorossiisk, a port on Russia’s Black Sea coast, is that Novorossiisk is seen as a much more dangerous place in terms of storms and currents.
But the recent storm, the worst in the Black Sea’s recorded history, showed the sea’s unpredictability by destroying a number of structures on Sochi’s beaches, thus casting in doubt the future of several Olympic venues which were planned to be built there. The huge waves scattered the heavy concrete cubes protecting Sochi’s yacht club, and one of the sailboats sank in the rough seas right in the port of Sochi.
So far, Zubkov ordered a special commission to be created to investigate the causes of the shipwrecks, which led to such widespread environmental damage. “You can’t blame everything on the weather,” Zubkov said. “The commission will find out whether everything that happened was fatal and unpreventable or whether it was a result of untimely and disorganized actions of the state services responsible for preventing disasters.”
The assessments of the environmental damage differ. As the estimated total amount of the oil spill reached 2 thousand tons, several ecological groups expressed concern about the fragile Azov Sea. “When just 200 tons of oil products spilled into the Onega Lake, the ‘stain’ on the water surface reached 7.5 square meters,” said Alexei Kiselyov, coordinator of Greenpeace Russia’s toxic substances division. “You can imagine what will happen when you have ten times more oil spilling.”
Meanwhile, Vladimir Komchatov, the head of the State Oceanographic Institute, operating under the auspices of the Rosgidromet federal agency, responsible for the cleanup operation, gave a somewhat more optimistic forecast. “The rough seas won’t allow the oil products to reach the seabed,” Komchatov was quoted by Vremya Novostei daily as saying. “As for sulfur, it does not dissolve in the water at all, which will make the cleanup operation easier.” |
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