Endru Atros

Cruise Through Life Endru Atros

1978 - New Year's Eve, between Rozewie and Karwia, the waves of the Baltic Sea push ashore the Dutch ship "Anna Broere" carrying tons of chemicals that are deadly toxic to all living things. The ship runs aground near Karwia. The only information about the threat that existed at that time was the signs placed on wooden pegs, hastily stuck into the ground in the coastal forest next to the beach. They designated the so-called "Danger zone". The authorities of the Polish People's Republic did only that to inform the local society about the imminent danger. Ten years later the tragic fate of the chemical tanker "Anna Broere" became reality, as she didn't escape her destiny this time.

On May 27, 1988, while sailing from Rotterdam to England, the chemical tanker collided with the Swedish ship "Atlantic Compass". As a result of the collision, "Anna Broere" sank 60 nautical miles from Ijmuiden (the Netherlands), 547 tons of acrylonitrile and 520 tons of alkylarylsulfonate fell to the bottom with it. Within a few hours in the middle of the night, the Dutch authorities parked buses and evacuated more than 15,000 people from the threatened area. Immediately, a closed safety zone of twenty kilometers for the population and three hundred meters high for air transport was created, despite the fact that the distance from the site of the sinking of "Anna Broere" to the mainland was almost 110 km. These are the true stories from the time of author's work at sea.