10km oil spill as ship sinks in Swedish storm

10km oil spill as ship sinks in Swedish storm (8 November 2006)

Oil leaking from a cargo ship which went down in bad weather has created a
slick some ten kilometres long of the Swedish coastline.

The roll-on, roll-off freighter, the Finnbirch was on its way to Aarhus in
Denmark from Helsinki last Wednesday when crew radioed for help saying the
ship was taking on water in high seas.

The 8,500 tonne ship was carrying around 250 tonnes of heavy oil and a
further 10 tonnes of machine oil when it sank and while all but one of the
crew were rescued, the bad weather hindered an assessment of the potential
environmental damage at the time of the accident.

How much oil escapes from the ship will be determined by how badly damaged
it was when it sunk and an assessment has so far been impossible.

Subsequent air reconnaissance by both the German and Finnish coast guard
have identified an oil slick up to ten kilometres long and 400m wide
trailing from the wreck.

Full story at http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=12232&channel=0