(CNN) - dozens more workers Monday joined the effort to clean up a spill of oil spilled hundreds of barrels of crude oil in the Yellowstone River in Montana over the weekend, ExxonMobil said.
ExxonMobil said between (32 to 42 000 gallons) of 750 to 1,000 barrels of oil escaped late Friday when a pipeline broke under the River near Billings. Some of the oil has washed ashore or trained tailing "Milky Brown" in the vortices, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike said Linder River.
High water and a fast current helped to break up the spill, said local officials.
But clean-up effort has been hampered by flooding that made more difficult to detect and clean up the oil, said Linder and Duane Winslow, County emergency services Director. The Yellowstone was running above flood on the weekend scene, radical brush and logs dans River and had a 5 - to 7 - mph current Sunday.
"It is too dangerous to do anything on the River, to extinguish any boats or anything, said Winslow." So people will work from the shores rather that out in the middle of the River. »
About 80 people are expected Monday to join the 120 working to contain the oil spill, ExxonMobil said in a statement released late Sunday on its Web site. Clean-up crews use absorbent to absorb oil boom to isolate oil which brought together adjacent to the river and vacuum trucks and tankers to pick up and dispose of the oil, he said.
The spill was discovered late Friday night near Laurel, West of Billings and approximately 100 miles from Yellowstone National Park. The pipeline feeds an ExxonMobil Billings refinery, and the company said it had cut the line a few minutes.
"We will remain with the clean-up until it is complete, and we sincerely apologize to the people of Montana for any inconvenience that the incident is the creation," Gary Pruessing, President of ExxonMobil's pipeline subsidiary, said in a release issued Sunday.
There is no case of wildlife in danger by the spill, Tim Thennis, who heads the response for the Agency's emergency disaster in Montana, said Sunday.
Worker rescue with the International Bird Rescue also had to join the efforts of cleaning Monday, said ExxonMobil.
Montana Audubon Conservation Education and Yellowstone Valley Audubon Center have offered to provide facilities and wildlife recovery services, he said.
The spill has forced the evacuation more of 200 nearby residents after it was discovered Friday night, but they were allowed to return Saturday morning. Laurel Lloyd Webber farmer said the spill left a smell "quite heavy" oil suspended over the area Friday night as he and his wife left their home.
"We went to the Perkins Billings drinking coffee for two or three hours, then returned," said Webber, who lives on a kilometre from the River.
ExxonMobil said that received more than 70 calls to its line of Community claims. ExxonMobil does not say if these calls were of the individual claims or that the claims were made.
The Yellowstone is one of the tributaries of the Missouri River, where it joins the neighbour of North Dakota. Thennis said State agencies, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and ExxonMobil are working together to clean up the spill. CNN Matt Smith, Joe Sutton and Chelsea j. Carter contributed to this report.
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