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To: Elmo Gregory who wrote (56759)	12/12/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Elmo Gregory	Respond to of 95453

Sunday December 12 8:38 AM ET French Fight Pollution Threat From Tanker RENNES, France (Reuters) - French tugboats rushed into stormy seas Sunday to try to limit pollution after a fuel oil tanker broke in two off the western coast. British and French coastguards said helicopters plucked all 26 crew to safety after the Maltese-flagged Erika broke in two around 70 miles south of Brest, the main port in Brittany. ``There is reported pollution in the area,' a British coastguard spokesman said. ``There are no actual details of that at the moment.' French tugboats braved gales and waves of up to six meters (20 feet) in an attempt to reach the vessel, carrying between 20,000 and 30,000 tons of fuel oil, and haul the two sections of the 180-meter (590-foot) ship further out to sea. ``The most important thing now is to try to prevent pollution going toward the coast,' Paul Maguerez, one of the men mounting the French operation, told LCI television. Another coastguard official said there was a risk of oil reaching the coast in three or four days under current weather conditions, including the Gulf of Morbihan in southern Brittany where hundreds of tiny islets are a major tourist attraction. ``It has broken in two, so we're going to try to tug the two pieces which are still on the surface as far away as possible from the coast,' Captain Jean-Luc Thelaud of the Brest coastguard service added. ``Clearly there's a pollution danger, but as for the scale of the risk I don't know for now.' The captain had warned of problems Saturday and was planning to head for port. He raised the alert of the ship's break-up at 6 a.m. Sunday, French officials said. British coastguards provided two helicopters for the rescue, completed by 11 a.m. Some were winched to the helicopters from a life raft but most were plucked from the stern end of the ship. The British coastguard spokesman said there was no indication of what caused the break-up of the 19,666 gross ton ship en route from the French port of Dunkirk to Italy. Winds of more than 100 km (60 miles) per hour were reported off Brittany Sunday and stormy weather brought death and damage in other parts of the country. A fireman was killed in the western town of Nantes when he fell from scaffolding.