Warnings Unheeded : Disaster at Valdez: Promises Unkept

The view out the windows was forever, but helmsman Robert Kagan was steering blind. His job was to watch the instruments, not the scenery, and steer the course ordered by the officer on duty.

That’s the way it works on supertankers like the Exxon Valdez. The helmsman’s post, bathed in the low red glow of electronic control panels, is in the middle of the bridge deck, where the captain or one of three licensed mates determines every navigational move.

Kagan’s first orders were routine--normal rudder changes to steer around some stray icebergs. But 20 minutes later the orders came in a flurry. Urgent.

“Right rudder 10. Rudder 15! Rudder 20!” he heard. The 987-foot Exxon Valdez, laden with 52 million gallons of crude oil, was turning in Prince William Sound. At 12 knots, it would take about half a mile for the rudder change to alter the ship’s course substantially.

“Hard right rudder!” The command was too late.

A tooth-rattling vibration shook the ship. Then, as Kagan would tell investigators, there came a “very bumpy ride”--over submerged rocks off Busby Island, investigators figure. It was the sound of rending steel. It would be repeated several minutes later when the huge vessel plowed into Bligh Reef and began dumping 10 million gallons of oil.

The noise echoed across the dark sea. It echoed like the knell of disaster. There were other echoes--of voices from the past. They were the voices of warning:

--What if, asked environmentalists in the mid-1970s, a tanker got involved in an accident in Prince William Sound?

Oil companies replied that the chances of an incident in the sound or at the terminal of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline in Valdez were “one in a million.”

--Nonetheless, the environmentalists asked, shouldn’t these ships have double bottoms?

Yes, Interior Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton told Congress in 1972. “Newly constructed American flag vessels carrying oil from Port Valdez to U.S. ports,” Morton pledged, “will be required to have segregated ballast systems, incorporating a double bottom.”

But the U.S. Coast Guard, while agreeing to segregated ballast, declined to require the double bottoms. It took its cue from the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization, an international group that sets shipping standards and is heavily influenced by the industry.

--If there were an oil spill, worried the fishermen of Valdez, could it be controlled?

It could be controlled with booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, industry officials told a University of Alaska conference in August, 1977. Besides, said Clayton D. McAuliffe, a researcher with Chevron Oil Field Research Co., “we can’t spill enough oil in Prince William Sound to have an adverse effect on the fish.”

A response plan, developed for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the industry consortium that operates the Valdez oil terminal, called for storing skimmers and oil-containment booms at Valdez and responding to an accident with a 36-member crew. In no more than five hours a response team could be on the scene, they assured.

--Thirty-six men won’t be enough, said an Anchorage-based cleanup firm in 1977. “You are dealing with a large, potentially adverse marine environment with a potentially small labor force,” said Al Allan of Crowley Environmental Services Corp. The Coast Guard agreed. Under the best of conditions, it would take at least eight hours for an Alyeska team to reach any spill at the far end of the sound.

In what would become a prophetic statement, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said in 1977: “In most cases, equipment coming from Port Valdez will arrive too late to contain a spill in Prince William Sound before it reaches shore.”

But all of this was beyond Robert Kagan. His job in the post-midnight darkness of Good Friday was to turn the rudder on the Exxon Valdez. He did, but his orders came too late to prevent the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

It entered the Port of Valdez in darkness on March 22, riding high, its massive cargo chambers empty, a $125-million nautical beauty. A team of tugs nudged it into the illumination of Berth 5 at the Alyeska terminal.

The Exxon Valdez, barely two years out of the San Diego shipyard, was one of the newest and best-equipped vessels in the Alaska pipeline trade. It had almost everything: collision-avoidance radar, satellite navigational aids, depth finders. “I doubt there’s a finer ship in the trade,” said a rival oil company official.

Like most, but not all, ships serving Valdez, however, it didn’t have a double hull. That would have added at least 10% to the construction costs at a time when Exxon and other oil giants already were feeling pinched by depressed oil prices worldwide. Furthermore, single-hulled ships have greater capacity for oil.

Fully loaded, the Exxon Valdez carries 61 million gallons of crude. With winter loading limits in effect until late April, however, the high-tech, French-made loading pumps at the Valdez terminal would put only 52 million gallons aboard.

Have a Few Beers

It would take 16 hours. Time enough for the crew to see Valdez. Have a few beers. Maybe mingle with the local bowling leagues as they catch the live music at the Pipeline Club. It was a last chance to drink anything stronger than the galley cook’s coffee. Because company policy prohibits drinking aboard ship, the crew faced at least five dry days back to Long Beach.

Valdez is a town that “loves the oil companies,” says a former state official who lived there. Oil means jobs, income, security. But it’s also a town that gets a little weary of drunk tanker sailors. It sees a lot of them.

Commanding the Exxon Valdez was Capt. Joseph Hazelwood of Huntington, N.Y., a 20-year veteran of Exxon Shipping Co. and master of the supertanker for 20 months. Although only 42, his beard gave him the look of an old sea salt. He had one other characteristic typical of many old salts: a drinking problem.

Sometime Thursday, while the oil loading process was under way, the captain and three crew members left the ship in one of the three taxis that ply the icy streets of Valdez. Some say he spent time at the Pipeline Club. One cab driver thinks it was Hazelwood that he picked up outside the Club Bar later that night, carrying three pizzas back to the ship. But it wasn’t clear where--or even whether--the captain had been drinking in Valdez.

Returning to the ship, Hazelwood and the crew members passed easily through Alyeska’s security gate. A sign reminds ship crews and terminal workers that alcohol, drugs and weapons are forbidden.

Meanwhile, Alyeska was holding its annual “Safety Dinner” in the Valdez Civic Center across town. There were a few door prizes. The guests played trivia games about Alyeska’s seven-point safety plan. And after the strawberry cheesecake, about 30 employees were honored for their safety records.

Terminal Supt. Chuck O’Donnell stayed at the banquet until 10:30 p.m., then rushed home to pack for a promised weekend snowmobiling trip to Summit Lake with his 15-year-old son. Good Friday was supposed to be a company holiday.

It wasn’t.

The Exxon Valdez emerged slowly from the tricky waters of Valdez Narrows, a geologic bottleneck that separates the sheltered port from notoriously stormy Prince William Sound and its exit to the Gulf of Alaska.

But on this Thursday night it was almost serene. No howling winds. No thundering waves. Only the deep rumble of a 31,000-horsepower engine and the soft hiss of seawater brushing past the steel hull. A pilot boat moved alongside, matching the speed of the tanker, waiting for port pilot Ed Murphy to descend the cliff-like side of the tanker and head home.

Up above, on the tanker bridge, Murphy noticed again what had caught his attention two hours earlier back at the dock: Capt. Hazelwood’s breath. It had the familiar stale smell of alcohol. But the pilot sensed no impairment of the captain’s judgment or faculties, and he turned back full command of the giant tanker to Hazelwood.

It was 10:58 p.m.

Almost immediately the Exxon Valdez increased speed to 12 knots. Riding low, its belly full of oil, it was the 8,549th tanker to transit the narrows safely since the Arco Juneau carried the first oil out in August, 1977.

But there was danger ahead. This is “calving season” at nearby Columbia Glacier, where a mountain of blue ice gives birth each spring to litters of small ice islands, some big enough to sink a ship. Blips on the bridge radar indicated icebergs in the traffic lanes. An officer radioed the Coast Guard for permission to go around, to steer a course down the empty oncoming traffic lane. Permission was granted.

It was a routine maneuver. Five hours earlier the Arco Juneau had done the same. In fact, its captain had ordered a course that went slightly beyond the traffic lane, taking a minor and uneventful shortcut near Bligh Reef. Neither ship asked permission to leave the traffic lane altogether.

At some point soon after the pilot left, Hazelwood went below to his private cabin. Left in charge of the bridge was Third Mate Gregory Cousins of Tampa, Fla. He lacked Coast Guard certification to pilot a tanker in Prince William Sound.

Traditionally, third mates stand the four-hour watch from 8 to 12 (both in the morning and at night), a time when the ship’s master is expected to be available to assist what is usually the most junior member of the officer corps. The chief mate and second mate rotate on the other shifts.

Set on Collision Course

The Exxon Valdez was in trouble almost immediately. Inexplicably, it had set out on a course due south. Its heading of 180 degrees put it on a potential collision course with Busby Island, about five miles away.

Back at Potato Point, the Coast Guard radar tracking station scanned Prince William Sound. Apparently, no one noticed the supertanker plunging full speed away from the safety of the traffic lanes and into rock-infested waters outside Tatitlek Narrows. At the vessel traffic control station in Valdez, two Coast Guardsmen had radar-monitoring responsibility.

Later, the Coast Guard would say that the ship disappeared for a time from the radar screen. It is possible that the ship was so far off course that it may simply have become lost in the radar echo from Busby Island or other large rocks. But questions also have been raised over whether the system was being monitored, and why the tanker was allowed to proceed so far off course without a warning or at least an inquiry.

It seemed that for all the safe guards, all the controls, all the best intentions, the traffic control system wasn’t working that night. The Exxon Valdez changed course and sailed into maritime history--and nobody seemed to notice.

The Coast Guard station in Valdez got the call at 12:28 a.m. Friday: “Vessel hard aground.” Two minutes later the port was closed to all traffic.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Steve McCall, the captain of the port, was asleep at home when his phone rang just after 12:30 a.m with the same news.

“I hope you’re kidding,” McCall told the watch commander. He then called his executive officer and bolted for the Coast Guard station.

Alyeska terminal superintendent O’Donnell, up late packing, had just climbed into bed when the phone rang and ended his trip to Summit Lake early. It was 12:45 a.m.

First Reports of Spill

“The Exxon Valdez may have run aground at Bligh Reef and is possibly leaking cargo,” said the voice on the line. It was David Barnum, O’Donnell’s marine supervisor.

“What!” O’Donnell was incredulous. He hoped it was some kind of response drill, a surprise test, a “paper” disaster.

“It’s for real, Chuck,” Barnum said.

Under the contingency plan for a Prince William Sound accident, Alyeska promised it would respond to an oil spill within five hours. That was based on a scenario for an imaginary spill. But O’Donnell needed more information: Was the tanker actually aground? Was it leaking? How bad was it?

Already, the 9,000-horsepower tugboat Stalwart was en route. And at 1 a.m., a Coast Guard pilot boat headed for the accident site.

Initial reports of the accident were sparse. McCall’s first concern was for the safety of the 20-member Exxon Valdez crew. Would they have to abandon ship? He wasn’t sure the tug could find anyone in the dark, icy waters.

At Alyeska’s Emergency Response Center, calls were going out for boats, equipment and manpower. The list seemed endless. They would need containment booms, oil skimmers, chemical dispersants, spray planes, helicopters.

O’Donnell sent a landing craft from a logging camp out to Knoll’s Head to retrieve lightering hose from two tankers there. The other two ships berthed at the terminal volunteered theirs as well.

Things weren’t going smoothly for the beleaguered terminal superintendent. Many Alyeska employees couldn’t be reached, having left town for the long Easter weekend. Worse, Alyeska had only one barge--one of the most important pieces of equipment for the initial cleanup and salvage work. And it had a hole in it. A new barge was due in from Seattle on April 29.

The damaged barge would have to be pressed into service, but first it had to be reloaded. Unfortunately, the 70-ton crane needed for the barge was on a neighboring dock. All the maneuvering would cost time. Lots of time.

At 3 a.m., O’Donnell decided to put extra oil containment booms on the barge, more than called for by the contingency plan. He figured delay now was worth it since it would take longer for the barge to go out, unload and come back for a second trip. The barge wouldn’t leave until 10:40 a.m.

Out at Bligh Reef, fears focused on the stability of the disabled tanker. It had gone aground near high tide and as the water fell, instability became an increasing problem. There was concern the entire cargo could be spilled into the sound.

At 3:23 a.m., the Coast Guard arrived on the accident scene. Already a passing boat had reported encountering an oil slick about half a mile south of Bligh Reef. Results of an initial inspection were alarming. The ship was hemorrhaging oil at a rate of more than 1.5 million gallons per hour.

At 4:14 a.m., the nearby Exxon Baton Rouge was ordered to approach Bligh Reef to take on the stranded cargo. At 4:45 a.m., McCall told O’Donnell that lightering equipment should be the No. 1 priority.

Feared Loss of Vessel

“He sounded really concerned about losing the vessel,” O’Donnell recalled.

O’Donnell was at the terminal when the news came in at 5:40 a.m. that the Exxon Valdez had lost 210,000 barrels of oil, more than 8.8 million gallons. “Crude oil was just boiling out,” O’Donnell was told.

At first light, around 6:30 a.m., O’Donnell was in a helicopter to see for himself the horrible sight.

“I saw her there on the rocks and saw oil well past Bligh Island. I knew it was a disaster, seeing all that oil on the water,” O’Donnell said. He felt heartsick. Valdez had been his home for 12 years. Two of his kids were born here. He loved the beauty of Prince William Sound, too.

As bad as it was, O’Donnell knew it could be worse. There were still a million barrels of oil on board, more than 40 million gallons.

Government Forms

“God, I thought, how do we get the rest of the oil off this tanker? If this is what 210,000 barrels looks like, then, God, I don’t want to see what a million looks like.”

Hydrocarbon fumes drifted up from the water, filling the helicopter’s cockpit. O’Donnell’s pilot jerked back the stick and climbed steeply away from the volatile vapors.

Back in Valdez, O’Donnell filled out the government forms seeking permission to use chemical dispersants. He also wanted to know if the oil slick could be attacked with fire.

At 8 a.m., a state trooper from the Department of Fish and Game boarded the Exxon Valdez with the Coast Guard to take mandatory blood-alcohol samples from the tanker crew. The tests could not be conducted, however, until a qualified Coast Guard health worker could be tracked down and brought to Valdez.

It would be more than 10 hours after the accident before blood and urine samples could be taken--samples that would show Capt. Hazelwood had alcohol levels exceeding amounts allowable for the operation of a ship.

Divers were dispatched to inspect the hull. They found at least 11 holes in the ship’s single-skin bottom, some as large as 6-by-20 feet. Eight cargo holds, big enough to swallow 15-story buildings, were ruptured. It is unlikely that even a double hull would have remained intact.

Good Friday sunrise over Prince William Sound was more colorful than usual. It had an iridescent sheen.

Gov. Steve Cowper was in Fairbanks to visit a high school and to inform editors of the Daily News Miner that he would not seek a second term. When he heard about the spill he “commandeered a plane” for Valdez. By noon he was circling the grounded tanker in a small pontoon-equipped float plane.

Cowper, a one-time Virginia maritime attorney, didn’t like what he saw. “I was shocked.”

There was the stricken Exxon Valdez, bleeding a 32-square-mile pool of black Alaskan crude. It was an awful sight. But what sent the governor into a burst of profanity was the sight of the cleanup effort. It was, to his eyes, virtually invisible.

Orders Plane to Land

He counted two, maybe three, small boats laying booms. A pathetically inadequate defense against the advancing tide of oil. He ordered his pilot to land where he could board a Coast Guard launch to the tanker.

Wearing an orange arctic water survival suit, the governor clambered up the Jacob’s ladder to the deck, spewing expletives and demanding to know what was going on. It was only the beginning of criticism for the cleanup efforts.

A few booms were finally in place by Friday afternoon. More were ordered from around the world. Tiny Valdez airport, accustomed to a dozen landings and takeoffs a day, recorded 638 on Saturday and more than 2,000 over the next three days.

As the tanker continued to ooze oil, signs of an aggressive cleanup effort were hard to detect. Local fishermen watched with growing alarm and anger as the oil slick spread south toward fish hatcheries and spawning grounds. On Saturday, cleanup was limited to surface skimming, a laborious method that, in this case, was like trying to empty a reservoir with a teaspoon.

An Initial Success

On Sunday, an Exxon effort to fight oil with fire was a spectacular success. A test burn of 15,000 gallons, ignited with a napalm-like substance, destroyed 99% of the surface oil. Exxon Shipping Co. President Frank Iarossi was ecstatic. At a press conference he promised the first major assault on the oil slick would begin Monday.

Irate residents wondered why it was taking so long. The oil slick wasn’t waiting. It now covered more than 100 square miles. Iarossi was peppered with angry questions and accusations by local citizens and one man dressed in a white Easter bunny costume.

The anger in Valdez was a blow to Alyeska, known around City Hall as “Uncle Al” because the flow of money was almost as thick as the flow of crude. Now, that same oil threatened to be the source of financial ruin for thousands in the region who rely on the fishing industry. Exxon opened an office to field “legitimate claims.”

Sunday’s high hopes vanished in the wind. That night, gusts of up to 73 m.p.h. roared into Valdez, tearing parts of the roof from the terminal at Valdez airport. Out in the sound, winds of 45 m.p.h. muscled the broad beam of the Exxon Valdez. It twisted sickeningly on its uncertain perch, turning about 12 degrees before settling in what turned out to be a more stable position.

Slick Doubles in Size

Winds scattered the giant oil pool into black ribbons and streamers. The slick doubled in size and wallowed closer to the sparkling coves and pebbled beaches of islands abundant with wildlife: puffins and otters, sea lions and ducks.

Churned by tides, waves and winds, the oil was whipped into a petroleum mousse. Now, it wouldn’t burn.

Finger-pointing erupted. Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation sent an annoyed letter to the Coast Guard, complaining about inadequate response to the spill. Exxon would later complain the state was to blame for failing to immediately approve the use of chemical dispersants and burning.

Over and over, McCall, Iarossi and O’Donnell tried to explain that all the equipment in the world could not have contained such a spill. It was too much, too fast. “Ten million gallons escaped in five hours. There was no way possible to contain it,” insisted the Coast Guard’s McCall.

It is still too early to assess the extent of damage, long and short term. Clearly, there is enough oil on Prince William Sound to fuel years of claims and accusations.

‘Based on Promises’

“The entire North Slope development was based on promises that oil companies could do their thing safely,” said Mike Lewis, a Valdez member of Earth First!, an environmental group.

“Now the oil companies have been caught with their pants down, and the whole world is looking through the outhouse door.”

Back at Alyeska terminal, signs posted at the berths need to be updated. They say: “7,000 vessels safely loaded since 8/1/77. Help us keep a safe port.”

Also contributing to this story were Larry Pryor in Los Angeles, Michael Parrish in Valdez and Bob Drogin in New York.

KEY PROMISES To allay fears of environmentalists opposed to the Alaska pipeline, the federal government and the oil industry made several pledges in the mid 1970s designed to minimize the danger of a major oil spill in Alaskan waters:

PROMISES

1--The Interior Department said that only specially constructed tankers would ply the Alaskan waters. They would either have double hulls or double bottoms and would be highly maneuverable.

2--The U.S. government said a sophisticated Vessel Traffic System, complete with radio check-in points and surveillance at three radar stations, would help assure safe passage of tankers going to and from Valdez.

3--The consortium of oil companies that built the pipeline from the Alaskan North Slope promised to respond to oil spills in Prince William Sound within five hours and downplayed the chances of a major spill.

4--The oil companies, including Exxon, vowed that U.S. crews on their ships would be competent and that alcoholic beverages would be prohibited on board.

RESULTS

1--Faced with industry opposition, the requirements were never put into effect, and the concept of a dedicated fleet of ships for Valdez was dropped.

2--Only one radar station was built, at Potato Point. Ship captains are not always informed about the presence of approaching traffic. Some report that Coast Guard officials lack experience because they are rotated too frequently.

3--It took the oil consortium days to respond following the release of 10 million gallons of oil from the Exxon Valdez. A week later, cleanup efforts were still fragmented and limited.

4--The National Transportation Safety Board said the captain of the Exxon Valdez was legally drunk at the time his blood was tested 10 1/2 hours after the accident. The mate who piloted the tanker did not have certification to perform that duty in the sound.

The Exxon Valdez’s Spreading Spill Oil in various concentrations has spread over 850 square miles of Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Hundreds of birds and marine mammals have been killed, and fishermen contend that the slick is now endangering the small marine life essential to sustain the sound’s hug salmon industry.