Oil Spill Fouls Shores in San Francisco Area
 

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 ? A South Korean container ship hit one of the stanchions of the Bay Bridge in a dense fog on Wednesday, spilling 58,000 gallons of bunker oil.

Strong tides have since swept the slick through the mouth of San Francisco Bay, fouling beaches up to 20 miles north of the city and girdling Alcatraz Island with a belt of goo.

While every change of tide sent the oil to a different shore, the largest concentrations were ?one-and-a-half to two miles offshore, west of the Golden Gate bridge,? said Lt. Rob Roberts of the California Department of Fish and Game. Several beaches were closed by the spill.

Lieutenant Roberts said that of the 26 oil-covered shorebirds that had been found, six were dead.

The spill, though just one two-hundredth the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into Prince William Sound in Alaska, still hit a nerve in a region whose self-image and international reputation is closely tied to its bridges, cold blue waters, beaches and rocky bluffs ? many of them now touched by the oil.

The Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Game extended yellow booms to keep the bunker fuel, one of the crudest and least-distilled petroleum products, from various shorelines, including the entrances to wildlife-rich estuaries north of San Francisco.

Wil Bruhns, a division chief with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said that the outward bound ebb tide carried the slick ?up the coast, where we?re getting reports of oil sheens and bad smell and oiled birds.?

The ship, the Cosco Busan, owned by the Hanjin Shipping company of South Korea, struck a pier on the bridge?s western side. The glancing blow sheared off most of the protective fender of woodlike plastic, which was nearly 3 feet thick and 10 feet wide, said Bart Ney, a spokesman for the state transportation department.

Jessica Castelli, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit environmental group Save the Bay, said worried residents had flooded her group with offers to clean injured birds and oiled beaches.

Mr. Bruhns said that while he could not prejudge the investigation being conducted by the Coast Guard, earlier accidents had led to prosecutions.

?Lots of ships go around the bay,? he said, ?and it?s really rare the bridges get hit, even in fog. There is radar.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09spill.html

Since we are paying so much for gas now and the oil companies are making so much money, they wont need any help like Exxon did with the cleanup, right?

That bunker c is nasty shit..very thick and stubborn as hell to get rid of

I wonder if the guy running the ship was drunk like the Exxon one...

It's standard practice to require vessels of a certain size to take on a local harbor pilot that is familiar with that particular harbor. Doesn't sound like that happened ?????

I hope those mother fuckers get fined into oblivion.

now thats a shame.. hopefully it does not spread down the coast.

We are leaving for San Francisco in 2 days :-(

Good news then. You can, Fill 'er up, while down by the bay.

:winkwink::winkwink:

I heard about this that must suck for people that live near by

ohh that sucks for sure