Volunteers Flock to Bird Rescue Site : Wildlife: About 100 volunteers grabbed cardboard boxes, cloths and rags, got themselves to Huntington Beach and searched for oil-drenched avian victims.

Corinne Prado insisted that if she was going out to help savebirds from the Huntington Beach oil spill, her two children had to come along too, even if that meant they had to miss school Thursday morning.

“They can explain this to their classmates,” she said. “I love birds, and I try to save the wildlife. They can learn from this.”

So Prado, 36, along with her children--Kristine, 7, and Joshua, 10--drove from Los Angeles to the shore at the Huntington Beach Pier, where she joined about 100 volunteers who grabbed cardboard boxes, cloths and rags and searched for oil-drenched birds. The group included retirees, longtime residents, students, office workers, surfers and a salesman from Cal Worthington Ford.

By late afternoon, more than two dozen oil-soaked birds had been found, at least eight of them dead. City and state officials worked at a state lifeguard headquarters to save the birds by cleaning them with liquid soap.

Many more oil-soaked birds are expected to be found in the next few days, said Victor Leipzig, the executive director of the Bolsa Chica Conservancy and a biology professor at Cypress College, who was coordinating the rescue.

“The fact that the oil doesn’t come to shore doesn’t mean that we won’t have oil out there,” said Leipzig, who is also a Huntington Beach planning commissioner.

“There are big numbers (of birds) out there,” he said. “February is a bad time for an oil spill. This is one time they’re out there in much larger numbers.”

So far, the birds brought in have been gulls, cormorants, grebes and scoters, state officials said.

Volunteers who found injured birds wrapped them in cloth to keep their body temperatures from dropping, Leipzig said. The birds were then taken to a state lifeguard station at Magnolia Street and Pacific Coast Highway.

There, area biologists and Department of Fish and Game experts tried to clean them with warm water and liquid soap, which takes several hours, Leipzig said.

“They are saturated to a point where they lose body temperature,” he said.

In radio reports, Huntington Beach officials asked that volunteers bring boxes, soap, towels and rags. By early afternoon, a bird rescue station, set up at a city lifeguard post just south of the pier, was surrounded by about two dozen boxes of rags, old T-shirts and towels. One Amway salesman donated several bottles of soap, and one person brought doughnuts.

By noon, city officials had received almost 2,000 calls from people offering help in the next few days.

Patricia Mieras, 30, of Corona del Mar was among those who found an oil-soaked bird that showed signs of life. She had come to the beach after taking a day off from her job.

“I care about the environment, and I care about the birds,” said Mieras, a food broker. “This is more important than working, as far as I’m concerned. They can lose me for a day or so.”

Many volunteers said they came because they were upset that the spill was allowed to happen and because they felt the need to do something about it.

“You don’t think of it as happenning in your own back yard,” said Amy Roedl, 37, of Downey.

Roedl decided to come out, even if that meant bringing along her 13-month-old baby.

“I love birds, I really love birds,” she said.

Mary Jane Mayfield, 27, of Bellflower arrived at about 6 a.m. after a sleepless night, worried that something had to be done to save the birds and other wildlife.

Bob Tilley, 61, of Cypress, a salesman who arrived at about 6:30 a.m., was disturbed by the gawkers who had come to the beach to catch a glimpse of the tanker.

“Everyone here is supposed to be so interested in ecology,” he said, “and I’m watching people drop their damn plastic cups.”

Some longtime Huntington Beach residents said they considered it their civic duty to help in the cleanup.

“It’s our beach. We live here,” said Judy Bailey, 40, a 19-year resident.

David Thompson, 20, a student at Orange Coast College, pointed out that everyone depends on oil, so the blame of the spill must be shared.

“Everybody enjoys this beach,” Thompson said. “Everybody has got to be responsible. Everybody is to blame.”