San Francisco Bay Oil Spill continued to spread, coating some of most beautiful coastline.
An oil spill from a container ship in San Francisco Bay continued to spread today, coating some of the state’s most storied coastline and imperiling hundreds of shorebirds as concerns lingered about the U.S. Coast Guard response as well as the checkered history of the vessel’s pilot.
Coast Guard officials apologized during a morning press conference for delays in notifying Bay Area authorities about the full extent of the spill from the 810-foot Cosco Busan.
The ship leaked 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel, a thick and oily substance that is difficult to clean up, after it rammed the base of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in dense fog about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, November 7, 2007.
Coast Guard officers initially said 140 gallons of the viscous fuel had oozed out, and then failed to update local officials or the public for more than 12 hours as the extent of the disaster grew.
Rear Adm. Craig Bone, the Coast Guard’s top officer in California and other Western states, said the delay was “unacceptable” but defended the emergency response as an appropriately aggressive effort.
The initial cleanup crew — a quick-strike response team manning a skimmer boat that vacuums oil residue off the water — arrived at the spill site within 90 minutes of the accident, authorities said. By Thursday morning, when the fog had lifted so authorities could get a flight up to survey the extent of the slick, 11 skimmer boats had been dispatched by a private contractor hired for the cleanup.
“You always put out everything you can because you can always fall back,” Bone said.
Although the oil slick remains largely inside the bay, tidal action and winds have spread the spill outside the Golden Gate and up the Marin County coastline, as far as Muir Beach.
Wildlife authorities said the number of birds caught in the sticky spill continues to climb, with 73 taken in for treatment and 19 found dead. Those numbers, authorities say, are likely to grow into the hundreds over the coming days. Scores of wildlife experts and volunteers are combing the shorelines for oil-blackened birds.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the cause of the shipping accident continued as new details emerged about the veteran harbor captain who was piloting the vessel.
Capt. John Cota, 59, has been a master mariner for more than a quarter century. But since the early 1990s he has been investigated for four separate incidents, and last year was reprimanded for running a ship aground, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today.
Coast Guard investigators said Cota and the crew of the Cosco Busan were tested for alcohol after the accident, and the results were negative. Drug test results were not yet available.
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