Selendang Ayu: Freighter ran aground in the Aleutians

[linnea]

Well, here is a Somebody nice update from the Aleutians...Hell of nasty oil spill.  The freighter cleaved in twain, people!



I got to read the news on our local television show on Wednesday night. The rescue chopper crashed, and amazingly the crew survived. The crew of the Selendang Ayu was not so lucky. Despite their journey through the fuck*ng cold Bering Sea, they had NO survival suits on board--just lifejackets. Six of the crew are missing and presumed drowned. God, this is such a tragedy.

Bunker c is a super thick and viscous fuel. There was another freighter, the Kuroshima, that ran aground in 1997 very close to my town. You can still walk from town out to Summer Bay and find tarballs of bunker c.

USCG site about the Selendang Ayu
BBC news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4081151.stm

It is almost surreal to be in the midst of this. When I first got here, I wrote a hazard mitigation plan and did a lot of research on the Kuroshima. This incident is so much worse. Damn.

[AugustWest]

Wow.  Just, wow.

[CortJstr]

When I first started reading this I was all, "cleaved in twain" is a fun expression. You're so cute! Then I actually saw the picture and got to the part about the drowned people and now I just feel bad.

[wombat]

We heard about this on the news this morning and my husband immediately asked if we'd heard from you lately, Linnea.  I am sure he'd love to know how the snow is right now.

I heard them mention that they were having trouble searching because there are only five hours of daylight right now.  Oh my.

[slink]

Holy shit. That's insane. How long before people realise that the sea is not a good place to be?

Ack. Must suck to be in the middle of it. All sounds pretty shitty.

[Asherdan]

A 738 ft. ship broken like a toy.  440k/gal. of fuel spilled.  Runt aground after engine failures last Tuesday.  6 people still missing.

Those are the things that just leapt off the page at me.  What a cock up.

[V-Adore]

Holy shit. That picture looks like a Photoshop -- if I saw it without context, I'd call it a bad 'shop. And yet...

Truth is often more terrifying than fiction.

[linnea]

It makes me feel terrible. The remaining crew are here in town while the investigation is ongoing.  I just got paid today, so I am going to take some of my grocery money and buy some socks and clothing to donate to the crew, and some phone cards so that they can call home. A bunch of other people in the community are getting together such items to give to the crew. The freighter was sailing under a Malaysian flag, but most of the crew was Filipino and Indian.  I think that there were 26 crew, and as the news reports have mentioned, six are unaccounted for.

The captain and a Coast Guard rescue swimmer were on the fuck*ng freighter when it snapped in two. I cannot believe that they made it.  When the rescue chopper crashed, local police and EMTs rushed to the scene. On the police scanner, we at the local broadcasting station heard that the ship had broken in half. We relayed the information to the AP and other news organizations.

The city has set up a makeshift morgue for when their bodies wash up...it just grieves me terribly to think about all this.  As I said, they didn't have any fuck*ng survival suits, only lifejackets. A lifejacket is designed to support maybe 40% of your weight.  There is a three-hour window that you have to rescue survivors out of the Bering Sea. After that, the lifejacket and the person's body sink. Only after decomposition sets in does the person's body float back up to the surface. I am so angry that the ship did not provide survival suits for its crew. That is just wrong.

Okay, all this death and environmental degradation is weighing heavily on my mind. On a lighter note...hee! <3 CJ, "cleaved in twain" was the phrase that first popped into my head when I was in the Elbonia local broadcasting station and news reports were flowing in on Wednesday night. I have no idea where it came from, but I must have read it somewhere.  Is it from a famous poem?

wombat and everyone...that is my Somebody nice in the Aleutians update. Thank you for thinking about me!  Every time I see your nickname, I always think of Lore Sjoberg Fitzgerald's review of the word "wombat":  It is awesome because it has a "wom", a "bat", and an "omba"!  <3

[CortJstr]

wombat and everyone...that is my Somebody nice in the Aleutians update. Thank you for thinking about me!  Every time I see your nickname, I always think of Lore Sjoberg Fitzgerald's review of the word "wombat":  It is awesome because it has a "wom", a "bat", and an "omba"!  <3

And that makes all the difference!

[linnea]

Aw christ, it's "Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg", isn't it?  I totally fucked that one up.

http://www.bookofratings.com/marsupials.html

<3 <3 <3

[wombat]

Don't feel bad, that's a name that was born for fuck*ng up.  And such a lovely link it is.