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The clean-up work continues on Saturday along the Blekinge coast, where the Coast Guard, Sölvesborg municipality and the county government have received help from the Home Guard. Image from October 26.
1 / 2Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT
The Home Guard has joined the oil cleanup along the Blekinge coast. A salvage plan has been drawn up and is awaiting approval.
– When it is approved, you can proceed with the salvage, says Valdemar Lindekrantz at the Coast Guard.
Over the weekend, the coastguard has strengthened its resources along a mile-long stretch of coast between Hörvik and Lörby Kladd in Sölvesborg municipality. About 30 Home Guard soldiers and about 20 of the Coast Guard’s aspirants are participating in the clean-up work.
– We continue to look for oil at sea without finding any. The one we come across is the one that comes ashore along the water’s edge, says Valdemar Lindekrantz, communicator at the Coast Guard.
During Saturday morning, a total of 25,000 liters of oil and oil waste had been cleaned up. How much has leaked in total from the grounded ship Marco Polo is still unknown, but the Coast Guard expects that more oil may reach land in the next few days.
The cleanup work is made more difficult by the fact that the oil has sunk to the bottom in the cold water.
Salvage plan presented
It was on October 22 that the passenger ferry ran aground in Hanö Bay in Blekinge on its way from Trelleborg to Karlshamn. On board there is another 300,000 liters of oil in tanks which are so far undamaged. According to the Coast Guard, the risk of new emissions increases the longer the ship is at rest.
The shipping company TT-Line has now hired a salvage company that presented a detailed plan for how the salvage is to be carried out. The next step is for the Coast Guard and the Swedish Transport Agency to approve the plan before work can begin.
Empty oil tanks
According to Valdemar Lindekrantz, it is unclear how long an approval may take. During Saturday, personnel from the Coast Guard were on board the ship to go over the plan together with the salvager.
– Before pulling the ship free, you will want to empty the undamaged tanks of fuel. In order to drain the thick oil, it must be heated to a certain temperature before it can be pumped over. There are many uncertainty factors, but everyone’s goal is to move on as quickly as possible.
During Saturday, a tanker arrives at the site to prepare for the emptying of the remaining oil. Two oil trawlers borrowed from the EU’s maritime safety agency EMSA have been launched and are supposed to be used to catch oil that has sunk below the surface of the water.
FACTS The Marco Polo oil spill
The passenger ferry TT-Line Marco Polo, which is flagged in Cyprus, was on its way from Trelleborg to Karlshamn and then continued to Klaipeda in Lithuania.
On Sunday, October 22, the ship ran aground. The alarm came at 6.25am.
In Hanö Bay, the ship had first run aground and started leaking oil.
It then continued for another three nautical miles, which corresponds to five to six kilometers, before it ran onto new ground and got stuck.
Already on the same day, the oil reached land at Hörvik in Sölvesborg municipality. Since then, clean-up work has continued along the coast and at sea.
Two people from the crew are suspected of negligence in maritime traffic of the normal degree.
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