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The spill - neighborhood journalism

Neither alive nor dead.There are no fish.What is in the sea is a line with remains of oil that comes from the dock and passes exactly through the tip of the dock, which is the tip where fishermen lead all their lives by taking painting and sawdusts.You don't look good where the line ends.This afternoon, although no one told them, these 15 or 20 men are throwing ropes to the right side of the dock, because at the tip, where the sea opens, and to the left, where the PC - 3 dock of theSuperanqueros base, fishing is for pleasure.

What is seen from the dock from the dock is a bottling of too complex structures that leave the earth or the sea.The oil line is a long rainbow that floats, it is a greasy trail like those made by cars in the puddles.Humberto and Puig, for example, are sitting here from 12 and are more than 7 and have not taken a fish.By pure logic, like everyone.Humberto, 30 years old, tattoos, pants trimmed to the thighs, says that the day after the spill was good, a lot of fishing, a lot of money, happiness, the next day little, nothing yesterday.

This place is called the mur. They say it was a beach. Now it is the piece of sea that borders the PC - 3 and, therefore, with the rest of the base and, therefore, with the rest of the company's marketer company of Matanzas (ECCM). It is not fishing zone. For license fishermen the fishing zone begins about 200 meters. Those who come to the dock do so for Hobby, for killing time, and also to get money. And food. The dock is reached by a road that is behind a wall on the edge of the access road to the industrial zone. Beyond the twenty houses that make up the La Mur neighborhood. The last houses limit with the street that leads to PC - 3. What the neighbors know of the spill is what television has said and that have seen these days an agitated movement of large cars and trails (pailas) that, they suppose, have to do with that. Those who went on Tuesday to the dock know that there was a great dark spot in the sea and that there was a movement of boats and machines trying to stop oil. That day did not throw ropes. The curious stared.

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At 3:10 a.m. On Tuesday, October 2, a damage in the mechanical arm that connected the PT - 1 dock (the unique in the country where ships of up to 150,000 tons docked) with the Ocean Elegance ship, which operated with the company since September 27 and now downloaded crude oil, caused the spill. The disconnection lasted about 10 minutes. There was a spot on the ship of the ship of more or less 50 centimeters. About 4:30 they began cleaning on the deck and the company's specialists went out to the sea with a tugboat to locate the area where the fuel had been concentrated. They concluded that it was between the PT - 1 and the coast, that is, it extended by the PC - 2, PC - 3 springs, touched the tip of the dock and continued. At 8 a.m., the tugboats deployed 800 meters of rigid barrier from the immediate vicinity of the PC - 3 to the ship's propela. These are superficial barriers, with skirts that sink between 20 centimeters and one meter, to contain floating oil. But there was bad weather and the swell made oil jump. They put a second barrier to catch him and closed against the coast.

It is the first time that fuel spilled in matanzas during operations at the docks.Sometimes spots have been found, but they fumigate them quickly.The case that everyone recalls, in 1998, when more than 500 tons of oil varadero turned, it was caused by the collision of the Bravo and Sharadar ships.So so far the company's experience on these issues was based on drills.

El derrame - Periodismo de Barrio

There is a specialized team that executes industrial cleaning works.There are nine men.They belong to the Union of Military Industries Astillero Cienfuegos Center and work together with Reco, a multinational that provides them with equipment and chemicals.They arrived at Matanzas on Tuesday afternoon, helped put the barriers and brought a skimmer, a floating pump that sucks the fuel already contained in the sea surface and pumps it towards pailas on land by hoses.That procedure is called overflowing.On Tuesday, with that skimmer and with that of the company, they extracted two pailas of 30,000 liters each of water with fuel.Meanwhile, Puig supposes, the fish stacked in the clean puddle between the earth and the oil, to the right of the dock.

To fumigate the - according to Lidia Rodríguez, director of the ECCM– approximately 4,000 liters that were out of the barrier, as it is almost impossible to trajine with tugs in the low waters, help was requested from fishermen with vessels.On Wednesday the Skimmers of Reuco and the ECCM took four pailas from the area between barriers and nine others on Thursday.They were added skimmers of companies associated with CUPET and human forces.On Thursday night October 4, in less than a minute, Rafael Serrano informs Cuba of the efficiency with which they worked in the Bay of Matanzas to mitigate damage caused by the spill.Until that time, officially, the country did not know about the incident.Serrano speaks of 100 cubic meters (100,000 liters) spills.Lidia Rodríguez says that shortly after they calculated between 50 and 70 cubic meters.

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To fumigate the approximately 4,000 liters that were left out of the barrier, help was requested from fishermen with vessels (Photo: Marcos Paz)

The line is walking by balance by a lane or jumping from one stone to another because the water stagnates between the rails and makes guajacones and herbs and insects grow. There are no trains out there. On one side there are the walls and rear of the houses; On the other, closed metal bars and doors. Among the bars, which give to be cuddled land on the shores of the Yumurí river, they look boats floating, wrapped boats, fishing instruments. 10 a.m. It's bad time to find fishermen. Those who left at dawn have not returned or are sleeping. Those who leave the day have come out. There are no people in the three or four booths of the Reinor García fishing base, except barefoot children along the line, old smoking away. The line is the place where some perpendicular, narrow streets die, where almost all the houses are one of those that call two -plating. On the other side of the line, on the street without asphalt, there are a few houses almost falling, zinc and boards. The line leads to a park with the Versailles bridge.

The Camilo Cienfuegos base, along with blocks from the reim, has a custodian that lives in a quarter after the door and controls what enters and what comes out.He knows that Yosián was one of those who went to oil.He has the numbers of Yosián and around the world.He says that those puddles in half leg in the trillo that he leads to the slope of the river, where the boats keep, are because now the tide is.In the base there are two men taking a thread to a tube with a machine.Torque of stores.Another group of men talking.Little more.Yosián Rosales, 34 years old, 20 fishing, has a white boat, a motor beauty, little draft, called Nany.On Tuesday morning a chief of guardians arrived at the base and asked if he could ...

“What I did was transport a boy who fumigated outside the fence.A movie was seen in the water.We were and two more boats in that.More or less than one in the afternoon until it obscured. ”

Yosvany Hernández, 42, did the same on Wednesday in his boat, Ana, another wooden beauty that has been since 2002. Yosvany belongs to the reimingIn Camilo."They set me up," he says - two workers and we were looking for the spots, which were not many.They were scattered.Where there was, they fumigated.With backpacks.A transparent liquid.We start at the Superanquero and end up at Los Pinitos beach. ”

The liquid, according to Pedro Romero Suárez, head of the Cienfuegos team, is Crystal Simple Green, a biodegradable chemist that breaks the carbonated hydrocarbon chain, and evaporates it.Yosián and Yosvany were given pomos with Crystal to clean the dirt of the boats.They say that when they throw it, over time, oil moles are eaten.Ana muddled little.Nany, a lot.Yosián had to throw him diluent.

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Process Report.Friday 10/5/2018.

-The product is collected with four pailas.Eight are extracted.

-Concludes the cleaning of the ship's helmet.

-The manual collection of the coast product is performed, with cans.

-The Juvenile Labor Army works on cleaning the beaches The Jew and tennis.

-The Citma and the CUPET Environment Group travel all the beaches in order to evaluate affectations.

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The oil wake stood on the beach of Los Pinitos, now officially appointed as "the Jew" (Photo: Marcos Paz)

Los Pinitos Beach, officially called the Jew, is, because of its location, the place to which anything that drags the sea is traditionally going to stop, as a result of the east -west currents that are searched the bay. No one bathes in the pinitos. A lot of rock, little sand, coconuts. For the 325th anniversary of the city, which is October 12, around the beach they are building a wall of 950 meters long that plug the viaduct with the old boardwalk. The medium doing wall is stained. There are builders with their concreteers, their blades and their blocks. The man who is in charge of the project says that they began on September 19 and that they must deliver the same 12. He says that he and the 30 workers of his belong to a non -agricultural cooperative called La Concordia. As they are working in parallel to the spill cleaning team, I ask him if there has been any conflict and says that in the transfer of the machines. Actually, the affectation caused by the spill seems to have not been much. No one has done a lot of swing. The city keeps walking. The parks, the stops, some streets and some buildings are being rewarded by the anniversary. Even a rowing base on the edge of the viaduct continues. A few sailboats navigate near the spill area.

About 2 p.m.On Saturday there are blades, gloves and blackened tanks around the wall, with caps stopped in the cement.Coconuts in the middle of the recebo.Dead grass.Palos lying between the rocks that make natural barriers against solid tar - a mass -like mass that comes with the sea and that is what remains of the dump - and an artificial barrier (a white pipe that is blacked) in the sandGray.The water looks dark.There is wind and a little rain that goes and goes.In the distance, the towers and buildings of the ECCM.

This morning, when, according to Lidia Rodríguez, 95 % of the product concentrated in the sea has already been collected, and that product has been treated and recovered in plants of the company, the team of Cienfuegos and others sent by CUPET began the recovery of the recovery of thecoast.In tennis, near the steps, there was not much to do: collect the plastrones embedded in the sargassum.Reuco men wear blue uniforms, gloves and disposable rubber boots.They do not wear masks or strange things.No need.They go between the rocks fumigating them with Crystal Simple Green, which comes under pressure from those plastic backpacks that are wearing.Thick cleaning.The intermediate is done with achique pumps that throw water at the rocks on the rocks.And there is a third step, fine cleaning, which is done by hand, using spatulas.The rock returns to its normal color.If there are residues, an extreme fine cleaning is done with absorbent cloths, as a piece of furniture is cleaned.

The white pipe in the sand is an oleophilic barrier, which is not impregnated with water, but only of hydrocarbons, and thus the sea is not recontaminated with the churre that gives off the cleaning.These barriers then incinerate.They change.The collected tar is put in 1,000 -liter tanks and is taken in trucks to a biorremediation quarter, part of the company.Lidia says that they will then see what to do with that, that maybe serve to do the asphalt that is missing on the other side of the line, in front of the Camilo Cienfuegos base, to see if Yosián does not embark the tennis before going to fish.