MALLIPO BEACH, South Korea - Residents and emergency workers used buckets to remove dense crude oil from South Korea's western shore as the Coast Guard struggled in high waves and strong winds to contain the country's largest oil spill Saturday.
The oil was reaching scenic and ecologically sensitive areas. At Mallipo — one of South Korea's best-known beaches — tides of dark sea water crashed ashore, while the odor could be smelled a half-mile away. Hundreds of troops, police and residents were engaged in cleanup efforts there.
Oil was still trickling out of the tanker hit Friday, but Kim Woon-tae, a Coast Guard official, said the last of three holes would soon be sealed completely. The Coast Guard headquarters had said Friday that all three punctured containers on the tanker were plugged.
The region is popular for its scenic beaches and is also the site of fish farms, a national maritime park and is an important rest stop for migrating birds.
Mallipo, about 95 miles southwest of Seoul, is one of the hardest-hit areas in the oil spill, which occurred Friday when a barge carrying a crane slammed into the supertanker, causing it to release 2.7 million gallons of oil into the ocean.
The spill involved about twice as much oil as the country's previous largest in 1995.
The oil reached shore Saturday morning, contaminating about 4 miles of coastline, said Jung Se-hi, a spokesman at the Coast Guard headquarters in Incheon. Strong winds and prevailing currents spread the oil slick overnight to an area about 1 mile wide and 10 miles in length, he said.
Environmental activists expressed anguish over the situation.
"It's helpless," said Lee Pyong-gook, an activist with the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement. "It's a sea of oil."
Lee said the region is a major stopover for migratory snipe. "It was fortunate that those birds have yet to arrive," he said, adding however, that some seagulls had been tarred by oil.
The Coast Guard sent 67 vessels and six helicopters to the site Saturday in an effort to clean up the spill, said Kim Woon-tae, a Coast Guard official who is stationed in the region.
"We're doing our best to remove the contamination as quickly as possible, but it will take some time to clean up the shore because it needs to be done by hand," said Kim, who is stationed in the region. Kim also said it was difficult to predict how long it will take to remove oil from the sea.
The size of the leak reported by the authorities would be about one-fourth that of the 260,000 barrels, or 11 million gallons, of oil spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
The tanker, the Hebei Spirit, and the other vessel, owned by South Korea's Samsung Corp., were in no danger of sinking, the Coast Guard said. There were no casualties in the accident.
The tanker was at anchor, around 7 miles from Mallipo, and carrying about 260,000 tons of crude oil — about 1.8 million barrels — to be loaded into boats from a nearby port when it was hit by the South Korean barge, said Kim Tae-ho, another Coast Guard official.
The barge, which was being towed from a construction site by a small tug boat, lost control after a wire linking it to the tug was cut due to high winds, waves and currents, he said.
Kim said the Coast Guard planned to question the barge's captain as to why he was sailing through the area despite the stormy weather.
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Associated Press writer Jae-Soon Chang in Seoul contributed to this report.
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