When MSC Baltic III ran on the Cedar Cove coast on the west coast of Newfoundland in February, the first concern was to eliminate the 20 crew members safely.
The ship is massive, 207 meters long and 30 meters wide, and the Coast Guard in the area immediately entered rescue mode. But an operation of this size was larger than anything they have seen in decades.
“It is not something we deal with every day. We have treated a lot with, you know, smaller boats: 65 -foot boats are easier, smaller amounts. When this ship arrived, I said: ‘My God, this is huge,'” said Bruce English, a high -level response officer who has been with the Canadian coastal guard for the last 30 years.
“This is the greatest incident in which I have been involved.”
The cargo ship felt after lost energy on board. With the crew unable to drop an anchor in the midst of the strong winter winds, the ship fortunately went to a cove with a relatively accessible point of a beach, which caused him to reach it is easier for rescue and cleaning equipment.
An urgent operation is being carried out to contain heavy oil within the MSC Baltic III, grounded on the Terranova coast and being beaten by the North Atlantic. For the National, Peter Cowan of CBC obtains an exclusive look at the cleaning of cargo shipwrecks, one of the largest that Canada has faced in decades.
“It is simply surprising that this ship has entered this location,” says English. “The entire length of the coast is beautiful, but it is quite resistant and dangerous and it would have been a different ending if it ended elsewhere.”
The ship was loaded with 472 containers, with everything from textiles to food to whiskey, but the biggest concern was to make sure that the 1,600 tons of fuel were removed safely without filtering the ocean.
Cleaning efforts
Six months have passed, and the process of eliminating fuels is complicated and takes a long time. Until now, most of it has been launched and pumped on the ground, the work done by the owner of the ship, the Mediterranean shipping company. The environment and Canada climate change are supervising that it is done correctly. “And there is much more work to do,” said English.
The oil must be heated with steam so that it is less thick, a process that could take up to seven days. Then it has to be pumped at different tanks on the deck of the ship, pumped to barges and then transferred to another ship before being carried.
The dangers associated with the process are potentially extreme for the environment. And Tarballs have already been detected, small fuel fragments of the ship, on the beach, a reality that is being closely monitored by the possible damage they can cause.
“Every time it has a hydrocarbon inside the marine environment, there is always a problem or impact potential at a level of the ecosystem with the little ones … insects that birds or fish can eat to the food chain,” said Mark Dalton, Senior Senior Environmental Emergency Officer of ECCC.
The chemistry of the Tarballs must be paired with specific fuel tanks even on the ship so that the cleaning crew can determine what tanks could be dripping.
Dalton says they need to understand the chemistry of the Tarballs so that they know “how that oil could be seen if there was a catastrophic release of the same source,” says Dalton.
Worried communities
Among the most interested are the hundreds of families who trust fishing as their main source of income in these waters.
Jeff Childs fishing in the area and was one of the first on stage when the MSC Baltic III ran hicmed.
“This is our lobster terrain right here,” says Childs. “What you see, all this is lobster land. If this oil does not come out, you know, before the hurricane season, there is the potential to break and we could still have a spill.”
Childs refers to the hard conditions in the water that are just around the corner with the hurricane season from autumn, a deadline that has exerted additional pressure on cleaning.
The Coast Guard agrees. “Do not be mistaken about it, if it is in this type of coast, it will be extremely difficult to make, especially during the winter months. Even getting access to the boat has already dropped to 50 percent of the time,” said English.
The cleaning operation has already eliminated ninety percent of the ship fuel, but the 10 percent that remains still represents a significant risk if it is not properly handled.
The representatives of the first Qalipu nation of the area are closely observing cleaning and have advocated being part of the operation, saying that an oil spill in these waters would be catastrophic.
“It would be absolutely devastating,” said Chief Jennifer Brake. “In all of Newfoundland, we have people who have had our waters to feed and sustain ourselves, and we don’t want that to change.”
Meanwhile, interest in shipwreck has taken tourists to the cove to take photos and see the ship closely. And city officials say that restaurants and hotels in the area have been more busy than in the previous summers.
With the cleaning that it is expected to take months to complete, the residents of the area expect it to continue without problems until the ship floats or breaks into pieces and are eliminated in Cedar Cove.
