Russian Man Drifts for a Week in the Sea on a Diesel Barrel Attempting to Save Fuel

A 36-year-old man from the Khabarovsk region of Russia has been drifting for a week in the Sea of Okhotsk after being swept away on a diesel barrel while trying to save fuel.

Three men attempted to cross the Tyl River in the Khabarovsk region with a KamAZ truck when rising tides began to carry away a barrel of fuel. In a desperate attempt to retrieve it, Valery Safronov jumped into the water but was swept away by the current into the Sea of Okhotsk. His companions stayed on the roof of the truck and waited for the tide to recede instead of diving in after him.

Safronov, a resident of the village of Torom, worked for a local utility company. He is the father of two young sons, aged six and eight. The search operation for him has been suspended due to worsening weather conditions in the region.

Reports about the man drifting in the Sea of Okhotsk for a week on a barrel surfaced on August 27. His current whereabouts remain unknown; no confirmed sightings have been reported. EMERCOM services continue the search operation.

In a recent case in Krasnoyarsk region, a fisherman spent several days drifting on a broken motorboat along the Chulym River with his deceased brother. The cause of death remains under investigation by police.

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The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the northwestern Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a stretch of eastern Siberian coast along the west and north. Its northeast corner is the Shelikhov Gulf. The sea is named for the port of Okhotsk, itself named for the Okhota River. The Sea of Okhotsk covers an area of 1,583,000 square kilometres (611,000 sq mi), with a mean depth of 859 metres (2,818 ft) and a maximum depth of 3,372 metres (11,063 ft). It is connected to the Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin: on the west through the Sakhalin Gulf and the Gulf of Tartary; on the south through the La Pérouse Strait.