A**hole ship's captain hits the Bay Bridge
hogginthefogg
6,098 Posts
...and spills 58,000 gallons of oil.
As if the Bay weren't nasty enough.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/08/BAD8T8PLU.DTLCas, did you deal with any of the aftermath?
As if the Bay weren't nasty enough.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/08/BAD8T8PLU.DTLCas, did you deal with any of the aftermath?
Comments
That doesn't sound so bad. Did they revise it upward now?
I welcome everybody to come to Vermont where this sort of stuff does not happen.
Why couldn't it have been something like what happened in the Netherlands this week instead???
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hVp2ngSGSX-0ytY_-hSHKiPLtftAD8SP55980
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
http://kpix.cbslocal.com/services/popoff...videoPlayStatus
You can talk big when you don't have any coastline!!
Not true. 6th biggest lake son!
Where do you work?
Does a landlocked body of water count as "coast"?
Like, to fill the demand from hippies, ships filled with patchouli come down from canada?
It takes 15 minutes to change the direction 3 feet to the right/left.
Haha yeah I feel you on that man. One day I will move back there. It does get a tad cold sometimes though
This is really awful. Hopefully little of it spreads towards the bird sanctuaries near the Dumbarton.
NOME, AK???A Castrol supertanker ran aground Monday near Nome, AK, spilling more than 50 million gallons of high-grade Castrol motor oil into the Bering Strait and greatly improving the viscosity of local marine wildlife.
[img]
These seals are just some of the ocean wildlife that will no longer knock or suffer from thermal breakdown as a result of Castrol's 50 million gallon oil spill in the Bering Strait.
The spill, the world's largest since the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, coated over 500,000 birds, fish and seals in quality, medium-weight lubricant that will provide them with valuable protection and keep important animal parts running smooth.
full story at: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29882
in the grand scheme of things the spill in the bay is small change compared to shit in the past. don't get me wrong. i hate to see oil spilled anywhere, but gavin newsom needs to cool the fuck out. i checked sfgate earlier and the mayor is blasting the coast guard on their preliminary estimates.
figuring out the amount of oil spilled in the water is one of the hardest Frickin' things to do (EVAR!). no excuses. but initially i'm sure the focus was on the integrity of the bridge and vessel/safety of people onboard the container ship/the investigation/etc.. the fact of the matter is that there were numerous clean up companies that were en route to clean shit up so it doesn't matter WHAT the inital estimate was. shit was about to get dealt with. the big question is WHY this shit happened. super political shit. the pilot/the captain of the vessel/the shipping company? this will all come out over time. it just bugs me that the mayor is more or less pointing at the Coast Guard and their initial estimate of the oil spill and implying that the CG was trying to cover up things from the citizens of SF.
strut holmeses. please feel me. the CG exists to set shit straight and will never mislead the public it serves.
peace party people.
I'm pretty sure The Bay Bridge is visible from at least 17 minutes away.
And Cas, I feel you on what you're saying. It wasn't the Cos' Gooard who hit the support beam. And SF Gate is now reporting that the same pilot ran a vessel aground just last year.
Not taking any sides here, but when your inital estimate was 150 gallons and then it was realized that it was actually 58,000 gallons?
That tends to sound like someone was trying to play sneaky damage control and keep the alarms from going off.
Reguardless, one gallon is one too many.
i understand the concern, but since when has the CG ever tried to mislead the public? they don't roll that way. surely you can understand the chaos associated with the initial response.
i definitely agree. any amount of oil hitting the water is bad news. i did pollution investigation/response for a while in philly and it was a taxing job.
And...
as silly as it sounds, why hasn't anyone taken Kramer's (Seinfeld) idea of a rubber bladder for oil ships so that in the case of a wreck the oil can be contained. Oil tankers could be lined with a rubber bladder that encases the room the drums are stored in. Maybe it would cost a lot, but it would seriously cost less than the clean up.
I'm assuming that oil is not actually being shipped here,
but rather the fuel oil was the fuel for the ship itself.
No barrels.
and tankers don't ship oil in barrels, of course, but in tanks.
secondary containment for oil tankers will not happen unless mandated by law-
voluntary secondary containment for tankers
would be a great way to immediately make yourself uncompetitve.
while this is an unfortunate spill,
1400 barrels of fuel oil should actually
be quite manageable to cleanup.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/09/BADRT9K8D.DTL
As oil contaminated more beaches and birds throughout the Bay Area, Coast Guard officials admitted today that they had taken too long to notify the public about the skyrocketing size of the ship-fuel spill but defended their response to the mess.
The admission was driven home by an examination of the federal agency's log of events Wednesday when the container ship Cosco Busan struck the base of a Bay Bridge tower.
That log, which the Chronicle obtained today, showed that Coast Guard investigators realized at 4:49 p.m. Wednesday that 58,000 gallons of heavy-duty bunker fuel oil had spilled into the bay - not 140 gallons as they had reported all day. But the agency did not say anything publicly until 9 p.m.
"That is unacceptable," Coast Guard Adm. Craig Bone replied when asked about the length of time it took for his agency to announce the magnitude of the spill.
Cosco Busan Capt. John Cota, in a statement issued this afternoon through his attorney, said he notified the Coast Guard "immediately" after his ship rammed the tower at 8:30 a.m.
"Then, shortly after, Capt. Cota observed a sheen in the water and immediately reported to VTS (Costa Guard Vessel Traffic Service) that there was an oil spill," the statement said. "His successor pilot reported to other federal and state agencies who monitor spills."
But there was no response to the bar pilots' reports, according to Cota's statement, which "allowed the spill to spread." The Coast Guard log says the agency dispatched its vessels at 9:03 a.m.
Bone spoke with the reporters today at Fort Mason before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived to view the catastrophe. Officials from San Francisco to Congress have lambasted the Coast Guard for its response and promised legal action or public hearings on the matter.
"We needed to be better at communicating," Bone said.
But he said the response to the crisis was appropriate and that there was nothing more that should have been done to contain the bunker fuel once it began to pour from the Cosco Busan.
The Coast Guard's accounts of the incidents say the ship rammed a tower footing of the Bay Bridge about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and within an hour six emergency vessels from the Coast Guard and a private company contracted by the ship's owner had converged on the site.
By then, officials later said, all 58,000 gallons of heavy, gunky fuel had spewed through a gash in the ship's side and into the bay - although officials said at the time that only 140 gallons had spilled.
Emergency crews began laying out containment booms in the water, but Bone said the heavy fog at the time hampered their ability to see where the oil was spreading. The fog may have also contributed to the accident itself, officials said, as the ship was negotiating its way under the bridge, even though it uses sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment to guide its way.
The Coast Guard and Marine Spill Recovery Corp., the private company, also maintain they did not have the benefit of aerial flyovers to help them right away because of the fog - which dissipated by late morning. On Thursday, the Coast Guard sent up two helicopters to assess the damage.
Bone, whose agency is investigating the spill along with the state Department of Fish and Game said there will be a rigorous hunt for wrongdoing on the part of his agency or anyone else involved in the incident.
"Responsible parties will be held accountable," he said.
The governor weighed in on the crisis today, declaring a state of emergency for the area before he was driven to Crissy Field to view contamination from the spill.
"We want to clean this mess up as quickly as possible because there has been tremendous damage to the environment, tremendous damage to the wildlife and birds and so on," the governor said.
More than 200 emergency workers from federal, state, private and nonprofit agencies are cleaning up the spill, and 100 more are expected to pitch in today, Bone said.
San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty said federal and nonprofit cleanup crews will be working on the main areas that were contaminated. But on city beaches where the damage is slight, the city Department of Emergency Management will handle the job.
Crissy Field beach, which had been closed since Wednesday evening, reopened today. Beaches and other waterfront spots that remain closed in the city are Aquatic Park, the San Francisco Municipal Pier, Fort Point, Baker Beach, China Beach; in Marin County, Fort Baker, Mile Rock Beach, Kirby Cove, Rodeo Beach, Tennessee Valley and Muir Beach; and Angel Island.
The Berkeley Marina was also closed.
The Cosco Busan, which has been moored since Thursday near Candlestick Point, was given permission by the Coast Guard to dock at the Hanjin company port site in Oakland today.
On the bay, ocean and more than 18 beaches throughout the Bay Area from Hunters Point to Stinson Beach, rescue workers and volunteers have now collected 73 oil-soaked birds and taken them to recovery centers. At least 19 birds have been found dead. The total number of injured birds is expected to rise into the hundreds.
Globs of oil have been seen as far west as the Farallon Islands.
Bone said his agencies welcome volunteers, but cautioned that people should call a wildlife rescue agency instead of rushing out to the beach.
"The key here is, if you think you can handle birds or wildlife, you have to be properly trained or you can cause more harm," he said.
Oil wasn't readily visible along the Berkeley shoreline this morning, but two boats positioned a yellow boom in the water near Ashby Avenue at about noon today. Officials closed the city's marina in response to the spill.
At Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond, dog-walkers gaped at splotches of oil floating in the water or washed up on the rocks.
"Oil Spill-Area Closed-No Water Contact," read signs that the East Bay Regional Parks District the posted along the shore from Alameda to Richmond. Yellow booms were also placed along the lagoons of Point Isabel.
"There's too many people on the Earth," mused Chris York, 42, of Oakland, who was forced to tell his 5-year-old Picardy shepherd, Kyle, "No" to prevent the dog from frolicking in the water as it usually does.
"That's thick, nasty-looking stuff," said Claire Ortalda, 55, of Berkeley as she gawked at two oil-covered rocks that someone had placed on land. She poked at one of the rocks with a stick and ended up getting some of the gooey muck on her hand. "Imagine what that would do to a bird. Aw, that's a shame."
No dead birds were visible this morning in Berkeley or in Richmond. "There's a duck right there," Ortalda said, pointing. "I see that guy, he looks OK."
Throughout the day, the strong tides that race out of the Golden Gate brought another coating of oily sludge to Marin County beaches.
At Rodeo Beach, two-dozen hazardous materials workers in orange suits trudged around the sand shoveling gobs of black goo, mixed with beach sand, and putting it into plastic bags. A Caterpillar tractor toted away huge piles of the bags from the beach.
Meanwhile, other workers in white hazmat suits - biologists and officials from the Coast Guard and Fish and Game - walked the beaches monitoring the spill and determining what decontamination measures were needed.
Sean McLeod, a 41-year-old contractor from Larkspur, was helping out at the beach.
"This is my favorite beach," he said. "I come here four times a week. It just kills me to see it like this."
Normally, he said, the beach is "a peaceful place. What you do here is u nwind."
Now, all there is at the beach is trauma and work, he said. Lots of work.
Chronicle staff writers Henry K. Lee, Christopher Heredia, Peter Fimrite, Carl Nolte, Michael Taylor and Michael Cabanatuan contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at [email]kfagan@sfchronicle.com[/email], [email]zcoile@sfchronicle.com[/email] and [email]jcuriel@sfchronicle.com.[/email]