Exxon Valdez Captain Says He’s Been Unfairly Blamed for Catastrophe

The captain of the Exxon supertanker that ran aground and spilled more than 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound says he has been treated like a “drunken bum,” blamed by the public and the media for the entire disaster.

Joseph Hazelwood, who went on trial today in Anchorage, Alaska, on criminal mischief charges for his role in the oil spill, told Life magazine in his first interview since the accident that “it gets kind of lonely” being the only person charged with a crime for the spill.

Reports initially said Hazelwood was drunk at the time of the accident last March 24, but those charges have never been proven. Exxon fired Hazelwood for violating company regulations prohibiting any drinking or even having alcohol aboard ship.

Hazelwood has a history of alcohol abuse and entered a rehabilitation center voluntarily in 1985 for 28 days.

In the interview in the February issue of Life, Hazelwood, who faces more than seven years in prison and $65,000 in fines if convicted, declined to discuss his legal troubles or the specifics of the accident.

But he said he feels the media have blamed him for the entire spill.

“I don’t appreciate the sub rosa message that containment and cleanup were my responsibility,” he said. “For three days, until Easter Sunday when the wind came up, that big puddle of oil didn’t impact the shore. I was shocked by the lack of response initially. Angry and amazed.”

Hazelwood, who has been working on a lobster boat in Huntington Bay, N.Y., since he was fired by Exxon, said the memory of the oil spill sometimes jolts him awake at night.

“I wish I could have a moment like Bill Hurt in ‘Body Heat,’ lying on a cot in his cell when the light bulb goes on,” he said. “Suddenly he figures it all out: Damn! But that’s not likely with this Byzantine situation I’m in.”

Hazelwood complained that he suddenly found himself pilloried as “a drunken bum with a parrot on my shoulder who drove his ship aground. Or turned it over to the cabin boy and said, ‘Whoopee, call me when you get somewhere.’ ”

He said he would like to captain a tanker again if the Coast Guard does not revoke his master’s license. But more than 150 lawsuits have been filed against Exxon by various groups since the spill, and Hazelwood is named in many of them.

“My legal situation is the star I steer by now,” he said.