Nassco Shows Damaged Part of Valdez Hull

Wayne Butterfield, a National Steel & Shipbuilding employee who helped build the Exxon Valdez during the mid-1980s, summed up the feeling when he first saw the hull of the ill-fated tanker.

“It makes you feel strange,” said Butterfield, who is acting as ship’s manager for repair work that will begin next week in a Nassco graving dock on San Diego Bay.

On Saturday, the company gave the public its first glimpse at the severely damaged tanker when it opened the dock to news media.

The Valdez’s left side was largely undamaged in March when the tanker ran aground on a submerged reef in Alaska, causing the nation’s worst oil spill.

Eerie Scene

But the right side of the tanker, which sits on concrete and wooden blocks, presents an eerie spectacle.

When the tanker ran aground, whole sheets of three-quarter-inch steel that form the Exxon Valdez’s hull were twisted and bent--or completely torn away. Other metal sheets were cut off by divers earlier this summer as the ship waited to enter the repair yard.

Many of the steel “stiffeners” that formed the ill-fated tanker’s skeleton are missing or crumpled beyond recognition.

Two huge boulders--one the size of a Volkswagen Bug--that were scooped from the ocean’s bottom and carried from Alaska to San Diego remain wedged in the hull. A nearby sign alerts visitors to “rocks and falling debris.”

Ballast tanks and oil tanks, all of which have been emptied and cleaned, are visible where the hull has been peeled away. The hull has been marked up by a National Transportation Safety Board crew that is surveying the ship as part of the federal government’s investigation.

The most damage occurred toward the middle of the right side, where there is a gaping hole about 300 feet by 80 feet. An observer standing below the ship can easily see the massive oil tanks--as well as the deck that towers nearly 100 feet above.

‘A Humbling Experience’

“We build ships, we don’t sail them,” Nassco President Richard Vortmann said Saturday. “But it’s a humbling experience to see what Mother Nature can do to three-quarter-inch steel. The damage is extensive.”

Vortmann knows of no other tanker to have been repaired after absorbing so much damage.

Vortmann compared the repair job to a “child playing with blocks . . . you have to remove the damaged blocks before you replace them with new blocks.”

Crews will first cut away the bulbous bow section, which, although undamaged, must be removed so crews can get at the 12 compartments that were damaged. Once all the damaged sections have been removed, Nassco will rebuild the ship to its original specifications.

The $25-million repair job is expected to take about nine months. It’s expensive, but the cost of repairing the ship falls far below the $130 million to $150 million it would cost to build a new one, Vortmann said.