The place where fishermen returned the collected crude oil has a nice name, Golden Bay Bridge. To 35 year old fisherman Cui Zhanyou, it has become a bridge of no return.
On the evening of July 27th, when Cui was transporting barrels of oil to the collection center, his boat was overturned by rough waves. After days of searching, Cui’s family still could not find a trace of him. (more…)
Zhong Yu of Greenpeace bears witness to the Dalian oil spill (Photo: Greenpeace)
Twenty-two years ago, when my high school classmates unfolded a banner with the words “Save Our Seas!”, we put the Greenpeace logo on the banner. At that time, we were protesting marine debris littering the coasts of Dalian.
Now, twenty-two years since that unofficial Greenpeace banner hung in 1988, Dalian received its first official support from Greenpeace with the deployment of several Greenpeace teams to respond to the massive oil spill in Dalian.
Zhong Yu, senior action coordinator with Greenpeace China, was not prepared for what she saw nor for what she would encounter. Like many clean up workers and local fishermen, Zhong did not wear protective gear when she walked into thick crude oil along the beach. The photo of her wearing a red Greenpeace T-shirt and blue jeans was the first telling image from Greenpeace bearing witness to the Dalian disaster. (more…)
Firefighters responding to the scene of the Oil spill in Dalian, China (Photo from Netease)
To Chinese firefighter Jiang Hui, his Darley fire truck was his darling. Jiang had been a driver with a $1 million fire truck since his unit purchased it three years ago, and he liked this American brand.
Jiang was among the earliest squads to reach the burning and smoky scene in Dalian. While shooting water and foam to the fire, the blazing crude oil quickly rushed near their feet. The tires of the fire truck caught fire. Jiang jumped into the truck and tried to move it, but the flame started to engulf the fire truck. Another firefighter ran to the truck’s front side, pulled Jiang out of the cabin and dragged him away.
The heat was too hot to bear. While some firefighters shot water canons towards the burning oil tanker, others had to shoot water towards the front line of firefighters to cool them down.
“Water, Water!”, “Foam!” were the shouts of the firefighters mixed with the sounds of continuous explosions and blazing noise of fireballs.
A Dalian TV cameraman, Lu Jianwei, captured a short conversation of a firefighter, later identified as Xu Zhiyou, talking to his wife over the cell phone. “Dear, I might not be back, treat mom well, treat our child well!” On the other side of the line, his wife must have asked why. “Don’t ask, no time, I will stop here.” Then he turned off the phone and rushed towards the fire. (more…)
Site of explosion - Dalian New Port
When firefighter Sang Wu got the assignment from his director, Sang could see the tears welling in the director’s eyes. His assignment was to turn off the valves of the oil tanks, each containing 100,000 cube meters of crude oil, which were fueling the flaming pipelines. This was the scene on the night of July 16th, 2010, in Dalian New Port where the oil pipeline exploded. Sang Wu and his two other fellow fire fighters might have just accepted a suicide mission.
Because of the explosion and the fire, the electricity to the port was cut off. Turning off the valve was a tiresome endeavor. What would normally take just a few seconds, would take Sang and his teammates 80,000 turns manually. After turning the wheels 320,000 rounds in total, Sang and his teammates sealed off the valves of four of the closest oil tanks after eight hours of labor.
Throughout the night of July 16th, over 2,000 firefighters from 14 major cities of Liaoning province raced to the scene of explosion. The site is a base for storage of crude oil and chemicals. Fifty-one toxic chemical tankers were linked up in the area near the explosion. The closest tanker was less than 100 meters away from the burning old tanker. If it had not been for the courageous actions of the firefighters, the tankers could have exploded and the city of Dalian may have simply turned into another Bhopal.
Dalian oil pipeline explosion and spill
On July 16, an oil pipeline in Dalian, owned and operated by ChinaPetrol Group exploded while loading oil off a Libyan tanker.
The Financial Times reported today, “The disaster began last Friday, when two pipelines exploded as high-sulphur crude was being unloaded from a Libyan tanker. State media said firefighters were on the scene within three minutes and more than 2,000 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze, which raged through Saturday morning.”
According to Chinese media report, the explosion has caused 1500 tons of oil to spill, reaching an ocean area of 50km with pollution likely to spread to 100km. John Amos from SkyTruth made the above satellite image of the Dalian Spill. (more…)
