CG report: Responders ill-prepared for spill

CG report: Responders ill-prepared for spill
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jan 30, 2008 6:16:54 EST

The Coast Guardsmen who responded to the San Francisco Bay oil spill in November weren’t qualified to assess how much oil leaked from the freighter Cosco Busan after it hit the Bay Bridge, according to the Coast Guard’s first report into its response to the incident. What’s more, the ship’s crew vastly underestimated how much had been lost, and on top of it all, the English-speaking responders could barely communicate with the Chinese-speaking crew — they had to communicate using gestures and drawings.

That initial confusion, combined with delays in arranging boats to transport a California environmental expert to and from the Cosco Busan, was what caused the nine-hour delay in understanding that more than 50,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil had spilled into the bay, not the “0.4 metric tons” initially reported by the Cosco Busan’s chief engineer.

Unveiled Monday at the Coast Guard’s San Francisco Bay headquarters, the Incident Specific Preparedness Review report found that, once they began cleaning up the spill, local responders performed well. But the initial mix-up in assessing the quantity of oil on the water meant that tides had more time to broaden the oil slick.

A responder from the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response arrived at the regional command center at 9:45 a.m. Nov. 7 — an hour before the first Coast Guard team boarded the Cosco Busan — but he couldn’t get a boat out to the freighter until 12:05 p.m., according to the report. On arrival, he corrected the Coast Guardsmen’s earlier reports that only about 140 gallons had spilled, estimating instead that more than 58,000 gallons had leaked into the bay.

But while he finished his work at 2:30 p.m., the California spill official couldn’t get a boat back to the command center until 3, and then didn’t make his report to the unified command until 4. The news media weren’t notified until 9 that night.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/coastguard_spill_report_080129w/