A 2,300-liter slick of diesel from the sinking of a barge in a Galapagos port was "Mastered", the authorities of Ecuador, who had activated an emergency plan to protect this World Heritage archipelago, announced on Sunday 22 December.
"The situation is under control and a set of actions have been taken to mitigate the possible impacts (of the accident) ", said the communication service of the Presidency of the Republic in a press release. "The intervention operation has mastered the slick (fuel) ", he said.
The accident, which left one injured, occurred at a port on the island of San Cristobal. A crane collapsed when a container was loaded onto the barge, and the barge, destabilized by the impact, capsized and sank, as did the crane.
# Sancristobal | El @parquegalapagos y @armada_ecuador colocan barreras de contención y paños absorbentes para reduci… https://t.co/d3xsppfKlQ
Military and environmental personnel "Have put restraint barriers and absorbent cloths to reduce the environmental risk due to the sinking of the Orca barge, with a stock of 600 gallons of diesel", Galapagos National Park (PNG), responsible for the protection of this nature reserve, announced earlier on its Twitter account. "This is how we avoided the dispersion of any product that could leave the boat", underlined the presidency in its press release.
"The recovery of this diesel is underway and the process of afloat (from barge and crane) will come later "Norman Wray, the representative of the executive on the archipelago, told the press.
Already a shipwreck in February 2018
"We observe an fuel spill, the crew members of the barge launch themselves into the sea to save their lives", said ECU 911, the security service for the islands, 1,000 km from the mainland and endowed with one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet.
The same boat, whose function is to transport fuel and construction materials to the islands, had already been wrecked in February 2018, due to the decompensation of weight in a port along the Guayas river.
The Galapagos Archipelago takes its name from the giant turtles that live in the Ecuadorian Pacific and are part of the biosphere reserve that was used by the English naturalist Charles Darwin to develop the theory of the evolution of species.
