Risk of the biggest environmental disaster in history

The accident occurred at about 1:10 a.m. Thursday local time (7:10 p.m. Wednesday in Poland), about 11 kilometers east of Lamao Point in the municipality of Limay, with no bad weather conditions observed at the time. “We are fighting against time and trying to do everything we can to stop the fuel leak,” Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Rear Admiral Armando Balilo told a briefing. He added that if the entire cargo from the MT Terra Nova tanker escapes into the sea, it would be the largest spill in Philippine history.

Sixteen of the tanker's 17 crew members have been rescued, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said, adding that the search for one missing sailor was ongoing.

The Coast Guard said in a report that the oil slick stretches 3.7 kilometers (2.3 miles) and is being carried by a “strong current” toward the east and northeast. “There is a great danger that Manila will be affected, even the coastline of Manila, if all the fuel leaks out because it is in Manila Bay,” Balilo said. “Right now we cannot operate at full scale due to the strong wind and high waves,” Philippine Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista said during a briefing on the impact of the southwest monsoon intensified by Typhoon Gaemi, known in the Philippines as Carina.

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Heavy rains accompanying Typhoon Gaemi, which passed near the archipelago earlier this week, have killed 20 people in the northern Philippines. The deaths in Manila and provinces surrounding the capital were the result of flooding, landslides, electrocutions and broken trees during heavy rains that on Wednesday inundated the island of Luzon, the most populated in the archipelago. As the AFP news agency recalls, one of the largest fuel spills in the Philippines occurred in February 2023, when a tanker carrying 800,000 liters of heating oil sank in waters off the central island of Mindoro.