Copenhagen - Clean-up crews fighting Denmark's biggest oil spill were doubled in strength on Sunday as heavy equipment was brought in to remove the thick, oily mass fouling the Baltic Sea coast.
More than 200 members of the professional coastal protection corps were called in to help scoop the 2 700 tons of heavy fuel oil that leaked from a tanker on Thursday and washed ashore on several Baltic Sea islands.
Several hundred volunteers, working with shovels and buckets, also joined the clean-up effort as the authorities acknowledged that the scale of the disaster was greater than first thought.
Naval operations command (SOK), which was in charge of the oil containment operations both at sea and on land from the start, had revised its first 1 900-ton estimate of the oil spill.
By nightfall on Saturday, the crews had recovered about 500 tons of oil, including 340 tons from a massive slick drifting in the Storstroemmen strait between the Falster and Zealand islands.
Another 150 tons of the sludge was collected from the total 14 kilometres of fouled shoreline, dotted with nature preserves and breeding grounds for migrating birds.
The number of oil-smeared, dead seabirds rose to 500 overnight, including the 200 that could not be saved in heavy oil slicks and had to be shot by local hunters.
All the oil was being put into containers for destruction at a chemical wastes plant.
The pollution of beaches on the islands of Denmark's Baltic Sea archipelago - Moen, Bogoe, Faroe, Falster and south Zealand - appeared to be worse than the authorities had expected, said a local member of the 50 000-strong national home guard.
So far the authorities have not asked the home guard, which said it was prepared to mobilise at least 100 men, for assistance.
The Danish maritime safety board, in a preliminary finding, said it was a "technical fault" that caused the Marshall Islands- registered tanker Baltic Carrier to suddenly veer into the path of the oncoming Cyprus-registered freighter Tern on Thursday night in the busy sea lane between Denmark and northern Germany.
The Baltic Carrier, with a cargo of 25 000 tons of heavy fuel oil, sustained a 20-metre-wide gash in its starboard side in the collision. - Sapa-DP