Oil Tanker Sinks Off France; Heavy Seas May Limit Damage

Rough waves and heavy winds Monday churned up a diesel oil slick from a tanker that split in two off northwestern France, reducing chances that the slick will remain intact and cause extensive environmental damage, officials said.

By dusk Monday, both halves of the 24-year-old Erika, registered in Malta, had slipped under water. The tanker, which broke up Sunday, carried nearly 8 million gallons of diesel oil.

The vessel was heading from Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Livorno, Italy. Its 26-member crew was evacuated safely by French and British rescue teams.

A slick half a mile long and 200 to 300 yards wide had spread across the surface of the Atlantic, said Yves Merle, a maritime official.

Experts said the risk to marine life would be limited if the sea remained turbulent, breaking up the oil before it hit the coast.

Officials planned to use a net to scoop up the oil, which hardens into a rubberlike substance, said Jean-Louis Velut of the maritime office’s action division. They put out a call to nations--including Norway, Britain and Germany--with the appropriate technical skills to drain the remaining oil from the vessel. Two naval search planes and a sonar-equipped mine-detecting submarine were searching for the ship.

Questions remained about why the Japanese-built tanker split about 60 miles south of Brest, a port in Brittany. It might simply have worn out, authorities said.

Brittany was the site of one of the worst oil disasters in history in 1978, when the Amoco Cadiz spilled an estimated 65 million gallons.