Russia Begins Safety Review After Massive Black Sea Oil Spill - Reuters

[hatrack]

Good idea!!!! :eyes:

KAVKAZ PORT, Russia - Russia's government launched a review of shipping safety on Tuesday after a tanker broke up in a storm, releasing thousands of tonnes of oil that clogged beaches and choked seabirds to death.

A once-in-a-century storm on Sunday in the northern mouth of the Black Sea sank five ships, including the oil tanker, crippled several others and triggered what a local official described as an ecological catastrophe.

Workers with shovels and rakes were scraping up a thick layer of black sludge that washed ashore from the tanker. Some birds, their feathers caked with oil and unable to see, blundered onto a nearby road and were crushed under vehicles. The storm killed three seamen. A new storm on Tuesday grounded helicopters searching for five sailors still missing.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said the narrow Kerch Strait, between the Black Sea and Azov Sea, had seen the "biggest mass sinking of ships in the history of modern Russia".

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45317/story.htm