The second major oil spill in the past three years has once again hit the Yellow Sea:

n this photo released by Greenpeace, a firefighter submerged in thick oil during an attempt to fix an underwater pump is brought ashore by his colleagues in Dalian, China on Tuesday.

China’s largest reported oil spill emptied beaches along the Yellow Sea as its size doubled Wednesday, while cleanup efforts included straw mats and frazzled workers with little more than rubber gloves.

An official warned the spill posed a “severe threat” to sea life and water quality as China’s latest environmental crisis spread off the shores of Dalian, once named China’s most livable city.

One cleanup worker has drowned, his body coated in crude.

“I’ve been to a few bays today and discovered they were almost entirely covered with dark oil,” said Zhong Yu with environmental group Greenpeace China, who spent the day on a boat inspecting the spill.

“The oil is half-solid and half liquid and is as sticky as asphalt,” she told The Associated Press by telephone.

The oil had spread over 165 square miles (430 square kilometers) of water five days since a pipeline at the busy northeastern port exploded, hurting oil shipments from part of China’s strategic oil reserves to the rest of the country. Shipments remained reduced Wednesday.  [MSNBC]

You can read more at the link, but this oil spill is no where near as big as the BP spill but there are people claiming that the Chinese government isn’t disclosing how big the spill really is.  What I find most amazing is how firefighters were sent to swim into the oil to repair valves & pumps and were left near death and completely coated in oil like the person pictured above.

ROK Drop readers may remember that back in December 2007 the coastal city of Taean suffered the worst oil spill in Korean history and has yet to recover from the disaster.