Section of Mississippi River closed
NEW ORLEANS - The U.S. Coast Guard has stopped 59 ships from traversing a closed stretch of the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico due to an oil spill.
Hundreds of workers are tackling the difficult task of cleaning up about 1.5 million litres of heavy oil that spilled when a barge and tanker collided.
The coast guard says besides those stopped along the major waterway, 33 more vessels are hung up in canals that enter the river at New Orleans.
Petty Officer Jaclyn Young said a sheen of oil has coated the water from New Orleans almost to the Gulf, about 160 kilometres away.
Workers are using containment barriers and vacuum skimmers to clean up the oil.
Young said it could take days to open the river and weeks to clean the spill.
Meanwhile, authorities are investigating why the tugboat towing the barge in Wednesday morning's crash did not have a properly licensed pilot, the coast guard said.
The person operating the boat had an apprentice mate's licence, but no one on the vessel was properly documented to guide it, said Lt.-Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau from the coast guard in New Orleans.
The barge held more than 1.6 million litres of heavy fuel oil in three tanks. Divers were examining the wreckage to see how much more oil was in the tanks.
About 26,000 litres had been removed, said Paul Book, a vice-president with American Commercial Lines Inc., of Jeffersonville, Ind., which owns the barge. About 350 people were working on the cleanup, using 45 boats, he said.
"This is a very large, very fast-moving river. It makes the job very difficult to contain that oil," said Charlie Henry, a scientific co-ordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Legal blame for the accident will be set after an investigation by the coast guard and the National Transportation Safety Board, said Capt. Lincoln Stroh, the coast guard captain for the Port of New Orleans.
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