Brutal weather slows Alaska freighter search, spill cleanup

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: "When the freighter Kuroshima ran aground on Unalaska Island the day before Thanksgiving 1997, conditions were terrible for stopping an oil spill. Winds reached 90 mph, pushing oil over protective booms and into a freshwater lake. The short days of the Alaskan winter drastically limited the time crews could contain the 39,000 gallons of fuel that poured from the ship.

The effort to contain the damage, stem the leaking oil and find six missing crewmembers of the freighter Selendang Ayu inched forward yesterday in a near-constant struggle against the elements. The geography, weather and remoteness of the site in the Aleutian chain of islands has reduced the pace of the response to slow motion.

Bad weather halted an overflight yesterday to survey the damage and figure out whether the freighter, broken in two by the sea's heavy pounding, continued to leak some of its 480,000 gallons of heavy bunker oil used to fuel the ship. The ship also carries 21,000 gallon of diesel fuel.

A five-man boat owned by an Unalaska Island-based company was unable to place booms at the mouths of salmon-bearing freshwater streams feeding into Skan Bay, where the freighter lies broken in half. However, the crew was able to lay out booms in Cannery Bay, some distance from the spill.

The Malaysian-flagged Selendang Ayu was bound from Tacoma to China when it lost power Monday and began drifting until it eventually ran aground. It was following what is known as the Great Circle route, which shortens the distance between North America and Asia by first heading north through Alaska and then west. The 738-foot ship is owned by the Singapore-based IMC Group. "