Ship, Barge Collide Outside L.A. Harbor : Caustic Soda Spilled; No Threat Seen to Humans, Most Fish

An Israeli freighter and a 300-foot barge loaded with sodium hydroxide collided just outside the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor Sunday morning, spilling a large amount of the caustic chemical into the ocean.

The chemical is heavier than water and sank, probably killing some bottom-dwelling sea life--such as worms and crabs--but apparently posing no threat to human beings or most fish, according to estimates by the Coast Guard and a marine biologist.

Sodium hydroxide, also called caustic soda, burns skin and eyes on contact.

“There definitely will be some marine life damage, but we don’t know yet just how much,” said Petty Officer Pat Milton, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. She said that inspectors from the state Department of Fish and Game were on the scene but were not available for comment.

The barge, pushed by a tug and carrying about 272,000 gallons of the chemical, was completing a voyage from Pittsburg, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay area. It collided with the 600-foot freighter Zim-California two miles from the Angel’s Gate entrance to the harbor about 5:30 a.m., the Coast Guard reported.

The impact slashed open one or more of the barge’s 15 chemical storage tanks, said John Barksdale, Los Angeles operations manager for the Dow Chemical Co. The barge was operated by Sause Brothers Ocean Towing Co. of Coos Bay, Ore., under contract to Dow, Barksdale said.

The caustic soda foamed into the ocean from “a gash about 3 or 4 feet wide, part of it below the water line,” he said. The amount lost was not immediately determined, he said. But visible leaking continued throughout the day Sunday.

The barge, listing sharply, was towed to an anchorage about a mile outside the breakwater and boarded by a Coast Guard pollution response team, Milton said.

Barksdale said the barge crew was trying to pump the caustic soda from the damaged tanks on one side of the vessel into empty, undamaged tanks on the other side to both halt the leak and level the barge.

The leak was halted and the barge docked in Los Angeles Harbor early Sunday night.

Tom Lewis, a marine biologist at the Cabrillo Marine Museum in San Pedro and conservation chair of the American Cetacean Society, said the most serious damage by a caustic soda spill would be the immediate destruction of slow-moving or immobile bottom-dwelling creatures or scavengers.

“It’s probably going to have its biggest effect immediately but won’t get in the food chain,” Lewis said, because fish will probably avoid eating “anything that’s polluted.”

The chemical “is certainly pretty dangerous,” Barksdale said. “But it’s made from sea water to begin with, and it returns to being sea water after it’s sufficiently diluted.” The chemical, processed from sea salts, is used to manufacture soap and detergents. It is also used in industrial filtering and cleaning processes.

The chemical was expected to be too diluted by the currents to threaten bathers at the nearest beaches, Milton said.

The Coast Guard was investigating the cause of the collision.