By Jill Lawless
London: A cargo ship hit a tanker carrying jet fuel for the US military off England’s east coast on Monday, setting both vessels ablaze and sending fuel pouring into the North Sea.
One crew member was missing, the cargo ship’s owner, Ernst Russ, said in a statement.
The coastguard later said the search for the crew member of the Portuguese-flagged cargo ship Solong had ended.
Officials said 32 casualties were treated by ambulance crews, but by mid-afternoon only one person remained in hospital.
British MP Graham Stuart said he was concerned about the “potential ecological impact” of the spill. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch was investigating the cause of the crash.
The US-flagged chemical and oil products tanker MV Stena Immaculate was at anchor near the port of Grimsby on Monday morning after sailing from Greece, according to ship-tracking site VesselFinder.
The Portugal-flagged container ship Solong was sailing from Grangemouth in Scotland to Rotterdam in the Netherlands when it struck the tanker’s side.
US-based maritime management firm Crowley, which operates the Stena Immaculate, said the tanker “sustained a ruptured cargo tank containing Jet-A1 fuel”, when the container ship struck it, triggering a fire and “multiple explosions onboard”. Fuel was released into the sea, the company said.
The Stena Immaculate was operating as part of the US government’s Tanker Security Program, under which a group of commercial vessels can be contracted to carry fuel for the military when needed.
Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the alarm was raised at 9.48am. Humber Coast Guard asked vessels with firefighting equipment and those who could help with search and rescue to head to the scene, about 250 kilometres north of London.
Footage aired by British broadcasters and apparently filmed from a nearby vessel showed thick black smoke pouring from both ships.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said details of the crash and its cause “are still becoming clear”.
Martyn Boyers, chief executive of the Port of Grimsby East, said he had been told there was “a massive fireball”.
“It’s too far out for us to see – about 16 kilometres – but we have seen the vessels bringing them in,” he said.
“They must have sent a mayday out. Luckily there was a crew transfer vessel out there already. Since then, there has been a flotilla of ambulances to pick up anyone they can find.”
Abdul Khalique, head of the Maritime Centre at Liverpool John Moores University, said it appeared the crew of the cargo ship had not been “maintaining a proper lookout by radar” as required by international maritime regulations.
Greenpeace UK said it was too early to assess the extent of any environmental damage. The crash took place in a busy fishing ground and close to major seabird colonies.
Scientists said the environmental impact might be less severe than with a spill of heavier crude oil.
“Whilst the images look worrying, from the perspective of the impact to the aquatic environment, it’s less of a concern than if this had been crude oil because most of the jet fuel will evaporate very quickly,” said Mark Hartl of the Centre for Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University.
The aftermath of the crash between cargo vessel MV Solong and oil tanker MV Stena Immaculate.Credit: Getty Images
Mark Sephton, a professor of organic geochemistry at Imperial College London, said jet fuel disintegrated more quickly than crude oil, and warmer temperatures sped up biodegradation.
“In the end, it all depends on the rate of introduction of fuel and the rate of destruction by bacteria,” he said. “Let’s hope the latter wins out.”
AP, Reuters
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