XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Dunno if this was posted here or not, the crash happened yesterday morning.
This really really sucks...fuel oil breaks down slowly, is hard to clean up and could affect marine life for years. Looks like there's oil all over the Bay.
Ship crashes into Bay Bridge tower, spills fuel oil
Carl Nolte, Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, November 8, 2007
An 810-foot-long container ship crashed into the base of a tower of the Bay Bridge's western span in heavy fog Wednesday, spilling 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay.
It was the first time in memory that an oceangoing ship had run into the bridge. There was no apparent major damage to the span, but the hull of Hanjin Shipping's 65,131-ton Cosco Busan was ripped.
Within hours of the 8:30 a.m. crash, oil was showing up on the San Francisco waterfront and on Pacific Ocean beaches in Marin County. By nightfall, several beaches in San Francisco were closed to the public, and the state's Office of Emergency Services had instructed Bay Area counties to begin assessing potential dangers to the public from contamination.
The U.S. Coast Guard said 8,000 gallons of the fuel had been contained by the evening, and the state Department of Fish and Game's oil spill unit began taking steps to contain and clean up the rest of the spill.
Coast Guard investigators were looking into how the ship, under the control of one of the bay's most experienced pilots and equipped with radar, crashed.
The ship hit the base of the second tower west of Yerba Buena Island, scraping up against the wood, plastic and concrete fender that protects each tower from damage at water level. The fender system "performed the way it was designed," and the bridge remains sound, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said.
He said no one driving on the bridge would have felt a thing.
It's extremely rare for a ship to hit one of the eight spans that cross the bay - the last such incident was 10 years ago, when a vessel ran into the Benicia-Martinez bridge - and the Coast Guard said something must have gone badly awry in Wednesday's accident.
The agency would not speculate on whether either mechanical factors or human error was the most likely explanation.
"Obviously, it shouldn't have happened," said Coast Guard Capt. William Uberti, captain of the Port of San Francisco and the chief federal officer investigating the incident.
Hundreds of ships pass under the Bay Bridge every year, and all of them are equipped with radar and are under the control of a bar pilot, a mariner with long experience on San Francisco Bay and its approaches.
The Cosco Busan was carrying container cargo bound from Oakland to South Korea. It had just left the dock on the Oakland estuary west of Jack London Square and was proceeding to sea when the accident occurred.
The pilot on board was Capt. John Cota, who has worked on the bay for more than 25 years, said Patrick Moloney, executive director of the San Francisco Pilot Commission. Cota is one of the most experienced of the 60 captains who guide ships into the bay, Moloney said.
Efforts to reach Cota for comment were unsuccessful.
Although the ship's own captain has overall responsibility, the pilot controls the navigation of the vessel from the time it leaves the dock until the ship is clear of the approaches to the Golden Gate, about 12 miles at sea.
Typically, according to mariners, a pilot leaving Oakland will turn slightly left into a bar channel and then right as the ship approaches the Bay Bridge.
Most container ships outbound from Oakland will go between the two bridge towers nearest Yerba Buena Island. The channel between the two bridge towers is 2,212 feet wide, and usually an outbound ship steers directly in the middle of the channel.
The fog was unusually thick Wednesday morning as the Cosco Busan headed out, and the National Weather Service had issued a dense fog advisory.
In fog, the pilot uses radar to determine the ship's position. There is also a radar transponder in the center of the bridge between the towers.
For some unknown reason, the Cosco Busan drifted left as it approached the bridge. The tide had just turned, and the current was flooding slightly - that is, moving into the bay from the ocean, or moving in a southerly direction under the Bay Bridge. This, mariners say, can cause even a large ship to drift.
The Cosco Busan hit the tower fender on its port, or left, side - tearing a gash 160 feet long about 10 feet above the water line.
The Coast Guard's Uberti would not speculate on the cause of the accident. However, people familiar with ship operations said there could have been a number of explanations.
The ship might have lost power or steering and thus have been out of control, mariners said. The seaman steering the ship under the pilot's orders might have made a mistake. The pilot might have been forced to swerve to avoid a small vessel, or he might have made an error in the position of the ship.
Once the ship was brought under control, the crew transferred fuel from the leaking tanks into other fuel tanks. The ship then moved under its own power to Anchorage Nine, in the middle of the bay near Candlestick Point. It trailed a sheen of oil as it went.
The Coast Guard is testing Cosco Busan's navigating officers and crew and the pilot for drugs or alcohol. The ship will remain at anchor indefinitely and will not be allowed to go to sea until the Coast Guard and other authorities determine what repairs need to be made.
In the meantime, the accident and oil spill are being investigated by no fewer than 13 organizations, from the Coast Guard and the state Department of Fish and Game to the San Francisco police and fire departments.
This really really sucks...fuel oil breaks down slowly, is hard to clean up and could affect marine life for years. Looks like there's oil all over the Bay.
Authorities shut down Baker Beach, China Beach, Crissy Field and Fort Point in San Francisco after oil washed up on them Wednesday night. Alcatraz Island and Kirby Cove on the Marin Headlands coast have also been closed because of the oil.
A Golden Gate National Recreation Area ranger, stationed at a roadblock near the Point Bonita lighthouse on the Marin Headlands, said, "This area is all full of oil. You can smell it. This whole area is closed."
Chris Godley, emergency services manager for Marin County, said slicks had appeared in the water near the North Bay shoreline.
One slick, 50 yards long and 20 yards wide, was seen off Paradise Drive in Tiburon. Another was seen in Richardson Bay near Bayfront Park in Mill Valley, Godley said.
Representative from 13 agencies met this morning at Fort Mason to discuss the next steps.
Until 9 p.m. Wednesday, the Coast Guard said only 140 gallons had spilled from the vessel. That estimate came from the ship's owners, Uberti said, and the Coast Guard realized later after checking the bay that the magnitude was far greater.
Although the agency did not announce that news until well after sundown, Uberti said the initial cleanup response was appropriate.
The ship's owners called in a private cleanup company, O'Brien's Group of Southern California, immediately after the accident, Uberti said.
Barry McFarland, incident commander with the company, said that in addition to the fouled beaches, cleanup crews are concentrating on three main sheens of oil in the bay - one west of Treasure Island, a second north of the Bay Bridge and a third south of Angel Island.
Five vessels are in the bay and three are outside the Golden Gate looking for additional oil patches, he said. The company has laid down about 18,000 feet of containment boom, and about 115 people are at work in the field scooping up the oil.
I hope they manage to save lots of animals -I'd be first in line to help clean up the otters...... ;_;
