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Tanker grounded, but no oil spill

The Colombo Queen, a 497-tonne tanker registered in the Union of Comoros, lies stranded about 50m off Pingtung’s scenic Jialeshuei coastal park yesterday. PHOTO: TSAI TSUNG-HSIEN, TAIPEI TIMES

A foreign oil tanker ran aground off Pingtung County late on Saturday, but at the moment poses no threat of an oil spill, the Pingtung County Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday.

The Colombo Queen, a 497-tonne oil tanker registered in the Union of Comoros, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, went aground about 50m off Pingtung’s scenic Jialeshuei coastal park amid strong winds and high seas whipped up by approaching Tropical Storm Linfa.

The National Rescue Command Center said the tanker, which was carrying 39,000 liters of fuel oil and nine crew members, sent out distress signals at about 8pm on Saturday.

The command center alerted rescue teams in Kaohsiung and Pingtung, but rescue helicopters in those two counties were unable to fly because of the bad weather.

STRANDED

It then called a Coast Guard Administration (CGA) unit in Taitung County, where winds and waves were lighter because the tropical storm was sweeping toward the Taiwan Strait to the west of Taiwan.

Upon reaching the area in the early hours yesterday, the CGA patrol boat found the stranded oil tanker but could not spot any of the crew, who had abandoned ship in pitch darkness.

The patrol boat itself was taking a heavy pounding, but just before it gave up the search, a bolt of lightning struck, providing a flash of light that was enough for the rescuers to spot a life raft with all nine men aboard, about 5.5km from the grounded tanker, a CGA official said.

Aung Win, the Burmese captain of the Colombo Queen, said he had tried to steer the tanker away from the coast but the winds were so strong that the vessel was blown toward shore and the engine finally gave out.

“Thank Taiwan and thank Allah,” Aung Win said.

Meanwhile, in Pingtung, county officials were meeting over fears that the stranded tanker might cause an ecological calamity to the Pingtung coast similar to a disastrous oil spill in January 2001, when the Greek-registered bulk carrier Amorgos ran aground off the coast of Pingtung’s Kenting National Park, spilling roughly 1,150 tonnes of fuel oil into the water.

Fears

Three kilometers of coastline, from the Lungkeng Ecological Preserve to the rocky cliffs at Oluanpi, were seriously polluted.

The ensuing clean-up work among the coral reefs, carried out be local residents and 1,600 military personnel, was extremely difficult and it took six years for the 60-hectare Lungkeng Ecological Preserve to recover, as well as years of fighting in international courts for Taiwan to get any compensation.
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