Four dead, 49 missing as Russian oil rig sinks

Rescuers have saved 14 of the 67 people who were on board a floating oil rig which capsized in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East, according to latest reports. Four more have been found dead. 

The Kolskaya rig was being towed by an icebreaker and a tow boat to Sakhalin Island after finishing its drill mission when the disaster happened. A distress signal was sent from it on Sunday morning.

The Emergencies Ministry says 14 people have been saved and four found dead. Rescuers had problems with lifting the dead bodies from the water and had to leave them floating in the sea until the storm, which sank the rig, calmed down a little. It is feared that none of the missing people will be found alive now.

The rescue operation is continuing despite night having fallen. Another ship has reached the wreck site around midnight local time and joined the Magadan ice-breaker in conducting the operation through the night. Two more rescue ships are expected to get to the scene by the morning.

A transport plane from the Russian Pacific Fleet has interrupted its rescue mission and returned to base due to low visibility. No signs of the victims have been found so far, but its mission will continue on Monday morning. It was initially sent to the location with additional rafts, which could be dropped from the air to assist anyone they manage to find.

Two helicopters deployed at the scene have also interrupted operations until the morning.

Four of the people rescued were transported to land via helicopter for further treatment. All of them suffered exposure to cold, but have no other injuries, medics said.

All workers at the rig were equipped with warm, dry suits and life vests, rescuers say, and there is still hope more survivors will be found.

“All those rescued were wearing diving suits. Every single one of the rig's crew was wearing a diving suit. They should have kept them afloat in these icy waters,” said Emergencies Ministry specialist, Sergey Petrovsky. 

There were also four inflatable rafts on the facility. Rescuers found two of those, but discovered nobody on board. 

“It means that the crew was not able to get down in the lifeboats. The boats were washed away with the flow of the water,” said the rescue operation co-ordinator, Veniamin Ivanychev.

Initially the search was conducted by the two vessels which were towing the rig, and a helicopter. However the tow boat Neftegaz-55 started to leak near the engine room closer to the evening and had to withdraw from the location. The leak does not pose a danger to the ship, the Transport Ministry said. But Interfax cites sources in the water transport regulator as saying that the ship’s water pumps are failing to deal with the leak.

Another ship is expected to reach the wreck site in the night and two more are to be there by the morning. 

The rig itself has completely sunk. Authorities said it had little fuel left and those supplies were in sealed tanks, so the environmental damage to the region will be minimal, if any.

The incident happened 200 kilometers off Sakhalin Island. Conditions at sea have been very severe lately, with waves up to six meters high and winds of 70 kilometers per hour in the area. A storm caused the rig to tip over. It damaged two of its air tanks, which gave buoyancy to the platform. This tilted it and it capsized in a roughly 20 minutes.

This happened as helicopters were preparing to evacuate 53 crew members and 14 passengers from it, because staying aboard was deemed too risky in such conditions.

Investigators say the most likely cause of the disaster was violation of safety regulations for transportation of the rig in stormy weather. They are planning to interview the survivors as soon as possible to find out the details of the accident.

The Kolskaya rig was built in 1985. At 70 meters long and 80 wide, it was one of the largest oil rigs in Russia. It was due to set sail for drilling off the Vietnamese coast at the end of its current mission.

The rig incident is the second high-profile maritime disaster in Russia this year. In July, the pleasure boat Bulgaria sank during a cruise on the Volga River in a storm. Of the 201 people onboard, 122 died when the ship went down in a matter of minutes. Investigators blamed negligence and violation of safety rules for that incident.
Source: RT.com