Notes about your surroundings.

Landfall--Few seemed to notice as the first small globules of oil hit the sands near Newport Pier on Thursday night, but by later in the evening, onlookers had clustered on the beach in small groups, staring glumly out at the waves. The strand was dark, lit only periodically by the glare of television lights.

Kristy Peters and Greg Reece had driven down from Lake Arrowhead to see the spill and to volunteer their help, but so far there was no organized cleanup. Curious, both had scooped up some of the oil-fouled sand with their hands and were now trying, rather unsuccessfully, to get it off. “It’s like the oil off the bottom of your car,” Reece observed.

Scott Anderson, an environmental engineer from Belmont Shores, had arrived at the beach at 6:30 p.m. with a bag of rags to clean up any oil-soaked birds that might come ashore. At first, he had watched as small balls of tar, pushed along by the surf, left thin lines of black along the beach. But a couple of hours later, the water had turned a foaming, uniform brown.

Nearby, contracted cleanup crews in blue jumpsuits had arrived to soak up the incoming muck with large absorbent pads.

“I want to be here because I want to see what’s done, and I want to see the effects myself,” Anderson said. “I wish I was an expert, but then I guess I’d be more depressed.”