Authorities in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region have declared a region-wide emergency as efforts to tackle the aftermath of a devastating oil spill intensify.
The spill, which has persisted for 10 days, resulted from two ageing tankers caught in a storm on 15 December, leaving one vessel split in half and the other aground.
The fallout has heavily impacted the coastline around Anapa, a popular summer resort, coating sandy beaches and causing severe harm to marine life, including seabirds, dolphins, and porpoises.
The governor of Krasnodar Krai, Veniamin Kondratiev stated that the escalating pollution required a region-wide emergency declaration.
“Initially, according to the calculations of scientists and specialists, the main mass of fuel oil should have remained at the bottom of the Black Sea, which would have allowed it to be collected in the water,” he wrote on Telegram.
However, rising temperatures have caused the oil to surface, spreading further across the beaches.
Efforts to assess and mitigate the damage are ongoing. A crisis centre leading the clean-up reported that the bow of one of the tankers, the Volgoneft-239, has been located underwater, and divers are set to investigate potential leaks as soon as weather permits.
So far, surveys have covered over 256 square kilometres of coastal area, and 25 tons of oil-water sludge have been removed.
Volunteers assisting with the oil spill clean-up have called on Russian President Vladimir Putin for additional support as they struggle to manage the environmental devastation spanning over 35 miles of coastline.
In a video message directed at both the president and prime minister on Tuesday, the volunteers expressed frustration over the inadequate response from local authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar region.
“Local authorities are not coping, they do not have the resources for this. The only resource is ordinary people with shovels; such a catastrophe cannot be defeated with shovels!” one volunteer said in the video.
They also urged the federal government to deploy resources and specialists to the area and appealed for foreign expertise, warning of the spill’s potential international consequences.
“It was recently announced that 5,000 volunteers and rescuers are working to eliminate the consequences. We believe that in such a vast disaster area, even 50,000 people with shovels cannot solve the problem and save the situation,” the volunteer added.
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