Major Tanker Oil Spill Threatens O.C. Coast

An estimated 250,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the ocean on Wednesday night after an oil tanker punctured its own hull, apparently with its anchor, while attempting to moor about two miles off Huntington Beach.

The spill, termed the largest off the Southern California coast since the devastating 1969 Santa Barbara disaster, prompted a massive cleanup effort by crews racing rising tides and high surf to contain the slick and protect miles of beaches.

By 10 p.m., the slick was 1.5 miles long and 400 yards wide but had not yet washed ashore. But some oil from the 800-foot-long American Trader was expected to hit county beaches overnight and officials were prepared to close Newport Beach and Huntington Beach harbors.

The tanker, operated by British Petroleum, had come to California from Valdez, Alaska. It left its Long Beach anchorage about 1 p.m. and headed to Huntington Beach, where it was to moor offshore and unload its cargo of crude overnight through underwater pipelines to the mainland.

Sanford Schmidt, president of New York-based American Trading Transportation Co. in New York, which owns the tanker, said it appears that the vessel “struck her anchor sitting on the bottom.”

“There is not all that much water out there,” he said, adding that a swell apparently lifted the tanker up as it attempted to moor and when it came down, “it hit the anchor” and punctured the hull.

“By any measure, it is a large spill,” said Coast Guard Lt. Vincent Campos.

Edd Fong, a spokesman for the State Lands Commission, which monitors oil exploration in coastal waters, called Wednesday’s spill one of the largest off the coast of California since the Santa Barbara spill in 1969. That spill involved 3.2 million gallons of crude oil.

Reaction to the incident was swift and prompted criticism of drilling for oil and transporting it in coastal waters. State Controller Gray Davis, chairman of the State Lands Commission, flew to the scene Wednesday night while Huntington Beach officials declared a city emergency.

“This kind of craziness has to stop,” said Bob Hattoy, Southern California regional director of the Sierra Club. “We’ve seen these accidents from Alaska to Delaware . . . and now here. It just proves that oil and coastal waters don’t mix.”

Booms were put in place Wednesday night to seal off environmentally sensitive areas along the Orange County coast, including the Bolsa Chica wetlands north of Huntington Beach, the Santa Ana River mouth and Newport Harbor.

Coast Guard Capt. James C. Card predicted that the oil would begin washing ashore after midnight, but he could not say where. From a cleanup standpoint, Card said it would be better if the oil did wash ashore rather than stay in the ocean, where calm coastal waters would make it difficult to disperse.

Initial containment efforts were centered on the bow of the tanker where the hull was leaking. About 1,200 feet of boom material--an orange-colored, thick vinyl sheet about two feet high with weights attached to the bottom--was placed around the bow.

The Huntington Beach City Council held an emergency meeting at 9:15 p.m. to declare a state of emergency in the city. A declaration was sent to Gov. George Deukmejian, saying that local resources were insufficient to cope with the situation.

In a press conference late Wednesday night, the Coast Guard’s Card said a “full investigation” into the incident has been launched. Card would not speculate on what caused the spill, but said it was “possible the anchor punched a hole in the hull.”

“It hit something underwater, whether a pipeline or the anchor,” he said. “There is no shoal down there or anything else. It hit something that is not natural or on the charts.”

Card said the spilled oil came from the tanker’s No. 1 starboard cargo tank, which contained 6,000 barrels. The tanker’s owner said the oil was bound for Golden West Refinery in Santa Fe Springs.

Card said that divers found a hole about three feet in diameter in the bottom of the ship. The tanker’s captain and crew were ordered to remain on board the vessel for questioning. In addition, those piloting the tanker at the time of the accident will be tested for drugs and alcohol under a new federal requirement that went into effect in December. The measure stems from the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the U.S. tanker that dumped more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound a year ago in one of worst ecological disasters ever.

Present at the Huntington Beach meeting were Mayor Thomas J. Mays and council members Grace Winchell, Peter M. Green and Jim Silva.

“We have confidence that the situation is under control,” Green said. “It seems there is little likelihood that the oil will get into the coastal wetlands, but if it does, it will be devastating to thousands of birds.”

Environmentalists began preparing for wildlife damage immediately. Vic Leipzig, executive director of Los Amigos de Bolsa Chica, set up facilities at Lake Street and Pacific Coast Highway to clean birds.

The county mobilized its Emergency Operations Center in the basement of the county finance building in Santa Ana.

Coast Guard officials received the first report of the spill from the U.S.-registered American Trader about 4:30 p.m. As darkness fell, emergency teams descended on the scene, but moderate swells made initial efforts to surround the slick with booms difficult, officials said.

A Coast Guard strike team, an oil-industry cleanup contractor and a federal pollution-response team responded to the damaged tanker southwest of Beach Boulevard off Huntington State Beach. Local and county Fire Department and lifeguard crews also immediately began monitoring a six-mile stretch of shoreline from Newport Beach to Seal Beach for oil damage.

Fearing such a calamity, a coalition of county environmentalists, city officials and residents have long opposed proposals to allow oil and gas exploration off the Orange County coast. Even a majority of the county’s Republican congressional delegation broke ranks in the 1980s with then-President Ronald Reagan over the issue, warning that a major spill posed a threat to coastal tourism, one of the region’s major industries.

In Washington on Wednesday night, the entire California congressional delegation was dining at the National Press Club when informed of the spill. Rep. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), whose district includes several miles of coast, promised that “all existing resources” would be employed for the cleanup. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita) said the accident was further evidence that “tankers are a very risky way of transporting” oil. Rohrbacher’s district stretches from Huntington Beach to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

To contain the slick, Skip Onstead, manager of Clean Seas--the oil-spill cooperative that handles such disasters between Santa Barbara and Point Dume--dispatched a 130-foot oil-spill recovery vessel to the scene. Onstead told The Times that the accident is classified as a “major spill.” The cleanup vessel, Mr. Clean II, carries a six-man crew and can hold 1,500 barrels of recovered oil. “They’ve asked for our help and we’re sending one of our vessels. It will be there (this) morning,” he said.

Two booms were placed around the ship and the slick, but some of the oil escaped containment.

Schmidt, whose company owns six ships including the American Trader, said the tanker and its captain, Robert Laware, have good safety records, and the firm has never been involved in a spill as large as Wednesday’s.

“We have certainly never been involved in a spill like this,” Schmidt said. “We have had some minor problems, but nothing like this. Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about this right now, but it is happenstance, not anything negligent.”

According to American Trading, the company is sending an oil-spill team to Huntington Beach to help in cleanup operations and damage assessments. Schmidt said the company would be responsible for paying for the cost of the cleanup and any property damage.

At Huntington State Beach, lifeguard dispatcher Renee Field said that lifeguards and emergency personnel were bracing for the worst as a six-knot wind pushed the slick toward shore.

“We know it’s probably going to hit our beach,” she said. “It’s a 99% chance, come morning, we will close the beach. But there’s nothing we can do.”

At nearby Bolsa Chica State Beach, lifeguard Greg Scott said officials there were taking a “wait-and-see attitude” before launching any preventive projects.

“We can’t see it at this point; we can’t react until we have more information,” he said.

The tanker had been scheduled to return this morning to the Atlantic Richfield Terminal at Berth 77 in Long Beach. The ship arrived in Long Beach on Jan. 29 from the port of Valdez, carrying more than 560,000 barrels of oil.

Contributing to the stories on the oil spill off Huntington Beach were Times staff writers Eric Bailey, Jim Carlton, Steven R. Churm, Shelby Grad, Jerry Hicks, Lanie Jones, Patrick Lee, Eric Lichtblau, Davan Maharaj, Maria Newman, Rose Ellen O’Connor, Dana Parsons, Bob Schwartz, Larry B. Stammer, Dan Weikel, Chris Woodyard and Nancy Wride.

PREVIOUS MAJOR SPILLS

Previous big oil spills in California and U.S. coastal waters:

March, 1989--In the largest oil spill in U.S. history, 10.92 million gallons poured into Prince William Sound in Alaska when the Exxon Valdez hit a reef.

April, 1988--About 365,000 gallons of oil spilled from a storage tank in Martinez and flowed into San Francisco Bay and the environmentally sensitive Suisun Marsh.

November, 1985--An exploratory well blew out off Texas, spilling 6.3 million gallons.

July, 1984--2.8 million gallons of oil spilled after a ship ran aground in Louisiana.

October, 1984--2 million gallons spilled off San Francisco when a ship caught fire after an explosion.

November, 1979--More than 10 million gallons of oil burned or spilled when two ships collided off Texas.

January, 1969--More than 3 million gallons of oil spilled into the Santa Barbara Channel, covering 800 square miles of water and 100 miles of beaches with tar and killing thousands of shore birds.

Source: Golob’s Oil Pollution Bulletin and Times staff.

Tanker Spill 1. Trip originated in Valdez, Alaska, with load of crude oil for Port of Long Beach’s oil-storage barges. 2. Arrived Jan. 29. In next few days, made stops in Long Beach harbor to unload oil. Took on a new, 23-million-gallon load of oil from the Keystone, a supertanker moored off Long Beach. With the fresh load, left 1 p.m. Wednesday, headed for Golden West Offshore Moorings to offload 12.5 million gallons to be piped to a Santa Fe Springs refinery. 3. About 4:30 p.m., ship’s own anchor apparently tore gash in hull, puncturing No. 1 and 2 cargo holds on starboard side, spilling 297,100 gallons. Ship had been scheduled to return today to the Arco terminal in Long Beach. AMERICAN TRADER

American registered oil tanker

Leased by British Petroleum Co. from American Trading Transportation Co. of New York

Length: 800 feet (almost the length of three football fields)

Width: 125 feet

Capacity: 23 million gallons