BREST, FRANCE, DECEMBER 13: Twenty-six Indian crew members of an oil tanker were airlifted to safety Sunday, after their ship broke up in heavy weather off the French coast. The Maltese-registered Erika was carrying 24,000 tonne of fuel oil, but experts were hopeful that environmental damage would be limited because rough seas should disperse the slick.The Erika floundered in storm-force winds which battered northern France Sunday, killing a fireman who fell from scaffolding, while a search operation off the northern French coast failed to find a missing windsurfer.Late Sunday, the stern end of the Erika, which was leaking oil, was being towed out to see by French tug boats in an attempt to limit the pollution threat. The French navy was keeping watch on the other section which was drifting. Between 2,000 and 8,000 tonne of fuel oil had leaked since the tanker broke up about 70 kilometers (38 nautical miles) South of the Brittany coast, officials said.The 50,000-tonne tanker, which was bound for Leghorn, Italy, from Dunkirk, broke up on Sunday morning. Two French navy and two British navy helicopters rescued the crew, working in winds of up to 100 kilometre-an-hour (60 mph) and very poor visibility, 70 kilometres (38 nautical miles) south of the Brittany coast.The rescuers winched the crew members out of two life-rafts, then flew them to safety, maritime officials said. Six of the crew were hospitalised, the Maltese Tevere Shipping company said Sunday evening. But experts at a centre for research into sea pollution said there was little risk the oil would contaminate the coast.Christophe Rousseau, deputy director of the CEDRE centre in Brest said it was hoped the stormy weather would break up any oil slick. "The sea is so rough, with waves of 10 metres (33 feet) - the height of a three-storey building - that the oil slick will be very quickly smashed down into thousands of little balls of tar," he said."Moreover, the dominant winds are not pushing the oil directly towards the coast," he added. Only a radical change in wind direction would pose any threat. A spokesman for the French transport ministry said high winds were keeping the slick, which measured about one kilometer (more than half a mile) long and 200 meters (650 feet) wide, off the coast for the time being. But he warned that the weather "could always change."On March 16, 1978, the supertanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off the Brittany coast, dumping 280,000 tonne of crude oil along the shore.
