By Anne Witter2 November 2011 MV Rena remains intact despite water swelling in the Bay of Plenty where it is still wedged in on Astrolabe Reef as bad weather persisted in the area, bringing swells of up to 5m. Officials have feared that the recent bout of bad weather could finally break Rena in half, and […]
October 26 (Big Pond) – New Zealand salvage crews have passed the halfway mark in pumping oil from the stranded and broken ship Rena, but are warning they still face a Herculean task to get the rest out. There was around 1700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil on Rena when it grounded on the Astrolabe […]
By Bryan Walsh18 October 2011 Earlier this month, officials in the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had to confront a pretty dire problem: they were running out of water. Due to a severe and lasting drought, water reserves in this country of 11,000 people had dwindled to just a few days’ worth. Climate change […]
October 20 (NZN) – With a new booster pump in place, salvage experts will remain on board the stricken vessel Rena overnight to keep extracting oil from the ship. The operation hit a hiccup earlier on Thursday when the original booster pump’s circuits blew. Salvage unit manager Bruce Anderson says the setback didn’t stop the […]
By AMELIA HOLOWATY KRALES18 October 2011 Tuvalu, a tiny archipelago of nine South Pacific islands threatened by rising seas, is on the front lines of the planet’s climate change debate. Current projections indicate that it will become unlivable within 50 years, resulting in an exodus and the erasure of a rich 3,000-year-old culture. In global […]
October 19 (Sky News) – More oil has leaked from the stricken container ship the Rena after the boat was battered by poor weather off the New Zealand north coast. Maritime New Zealand says a small amount of oil was released from the bow of the vessel on Tuesday morning, and a light sheen of […]
October 05 (AFP) – A SECOND South Pacific community has called a state of emergency as water rationing continues in parts of the area. Tokelau, a New Zealand-administered territory of about 1400 people, has less than a week’s drinking water after a long drought blamed on a La Niña weather pattern, Foreign Minister Murray McCully […]
By Derek Cheng, James Ihaka, Jamie Morton, and Paul Harper 18 October 2011 Salvage workers are bracing for the death of the “creaking, groaning” MV Rena, now sitting precariously on Astrolabe Reef and expected to flood more oil into the sea. The same pancake-sized blobs of oil that have blotted the Western Bay of Plenty […]
An oil spill from a stranded cargo ship off New Zealand is the country’s worst environmental disaster in decades, the government says. Officials say 350 tonnes of oil may have leaked from the 775ft (236m) Rena, which ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off the port of Tauranga on Wednesday. Bad weather has halted work […]
SYDNEY, October 6 (The Economist) – ONE canary in the climate-change coalmine may have just quietly fallen from her perch. The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu has declared a state of emergency after a fresh water shortage forced it to shutter its schools and hospitals and begin water rationing across the country. Observers blame […]
