Officials from Trinidad and Tobago declared a national emergency following a mysterious oil spill that forced thousands of volunteers to scramble to clean up the mess.
The two regions' prime ministers said that the large oil spill near the twin-island nation in the eastern Caribbean is causing crews to struggle to contain it. The spill has already spread to numerous beaches on Tobago's southwest coast.
Prime Minister Keith Rowley said on Sunday that the local government has not yet identified the owner of the vessel that overturned near Tobago last week, which resulted in the oil spill. It was also not immediately clear just how much oil spilled and how much remained in the largely submerged vessel. Furthermore, officials have not determined the reason the vessel overturned.
Divers have not yet been able to contain the oil spill and are still trying to determine how to remove the remaining oil. The chief secretary of Tobago's House of Assembly, Farley Augustine, toured the area with the prime minister, as per ABC News.
Tobago is a popular tourist destination and officials expressed concern about the impacts of the mysterious oil spill. There was no immediate comment from environmental watchdogs regarding the sudden incident.
Rowley said in a statement that it is still too early to know just how much the cleanup of the oil spill will cost. However, he added that "some not-so-insignificant costs are being incurred just to respond to this incident."
He also said that several unidentified countries have already offered to help with the cleanup of the oil spill and that discussions regarding those efforts are already ongoing. Rowley noted that cleaning and restoration can only seriously begin after they have brought the current situation under control.
The oil spill started on Feb. 7, and the country's Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) said on Saturday that roughly 15 kilometers of the coastline "is now blackened," according to CNN.
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Preventing Oil From Spreading
Photographs of the scene showed recovery workers wading through thick black sludge with huge areas of the beach seen covered in oil. The cleanup crews include several government agencies and at least 1,000 volunteers.
Authorities decided to install booms, which are floating barriers, to prevent the oil spill from spreading to other areas. Augustine noted that what has to happen now is that they have to find a way to extract every last drop of oil that was in the vessel, bearing in mind that they do not know the schematics of the vessel that overturned.
Residents in the local area of Lambeau reported a constant stench from the spill, which caused some people to be worried about their health. Augustine advised people who have respiratory illnesses to wear masks and "self-relocate or find ways to mitigate against that."
Environmental officials also warned that the mysterious oil spill has damaged a reef and Atlantic beaches, which bodes ill for the island's resorts and hotels. These are the lifeline of the local economy during Carnival season, said the South China Morning Post.
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