Slick Creeps North Toward Long Beach

Oily residue dotted a 14-mile stretch of Orange County shoreline Saturday as the slick from the tanker American Trader widened and crept north toward Long Beach, triggering a new push to bolster protective booms and dikes at harbor entrances and wildlife reserves.

Cleanup efforts intensified both on land and sea as the U.S. Coast Guard revised estimates of the amount of oil spilled upward to 394,000 gallons, a 25% increase that fueled the urgency to contain the wandering slick.

As the morning high tide receded, 10- to 15-foot swaths of black globs and film were left behind on stretches of sand from Newport Pier to Huntington Beach. Gawkers flocked to touch and stare at the crude washing up from the damaged tanker despite an order closing nine miles of beach.

Thinner brown fingers of oily film stained the coast as far north as Seal Beach. By late Saturday, the splintering slick was less than two miles from Long Beach Harbor. As a precaution, Los Alamitos Bay, an enclave of swank marinas and canals that straddles the Orange and Los Angeles county lines, was closed to boat traffic.

For the third straight night, the incoming tide deposited more tar-like ooze on Orange County beaches, with the heaviest concentrations along Bolsa Chica State Beach.

Meteorologists were nervously watching weather conditions, fearing that an increase in westerly winds--forecast through Monday--could drive more oil ashore from the 60-square-mile slick.

The oily tides that reached beaches early Saturday spared the Bolsa Chica wetlands and the Seal Beach wildlife refuge, where no damage was reported. Tainted seawater, however, breached booms at the Huntington Beach wetlands, coating mussels attached to rocks with a layer of goo but causing few other problems. Emergency crews responded by laying more vinyl booms and building a second earthen dike at the Santa Ana River mouth to keep more oil from reaching the 25-acre bird refuge.

“It has been blind, bloody luck that has saved us,” said John Grant, a state Department of Fish and Game biologist.

Volunteers at the International Bird Research Center in Huntington Beach reported 31 dead birds Saturday. State Fish and Game biologists said boaters were reporting more dead birds floating in the ocean, and they said the number of wildlife that will be killed by the slick will climb over the next few days.

“As the birds get cold . . . they’ll start coming ashore,” said Reed Smith, the state on-site coordinator for the Department of Fish and Game.

But, he added, “I think it’s a real small impact. With the surface area involved out there we could have gotten a lot more birds.”

At dusk, the body of an oil-coated sea lion was found near 17th Street in Huntington Beach. Cause of death was unknown.

On the first weekend day after the oil spill, Huntington Beach Pier was the scene of almost constant press gatherings, visits by politicians and protest.

About 150 people were there at 12:30 p.m., calling for stricter regulations to govern the oil industry. Members of the Green Party, Greenpeace, Oil Reform Alliance and other groups expressed anger and frustration with the oil industry.

Coast Guard officials revealed that an additional 100,000 gallons of Alaska crude oozed from a gash in the hull of the 800-foot tanker American Trader as it attempted to moor two miles southwest of Huntington Beach. One of the tanker’s 12-ton anchors apparently tore two holes on the vessel’s starboard side, one a five-foot opening.

After pumping out the ship’s damaged holds late Friday, the Coast Guard said nearly 400,000 gallons of oil fouled the waters, not 300,000 gallons as initially estimated.

With the ship stabilized and no further threat of spillage, Coast Guard Capt. James. C. Card said the tanker’s owners, American Trading Transportation Co., would begin to patch the punctured hull in hopes of returning the ship to Long Beach Harbor early next week. Patch plates of plywood, foam and steel sheeting were under construction and would be bolted over the holes by underwater divers. About 19 million gallons of crude is safe and will remain on board.

“Our ship is seaworthy and sound,” said Mike Murphy, vice president of American Trading Transportation Co., owners of the 21-year-old vessel.

Once in port, the tanker will be inspected by Coast Guard investigators who believe the anchor pierced the hull but have yet to assess blame in the accident, he said.

Drug test results are pending for the ship’s captain, Robert La Ware, the mooring master and two others. Similar tests found no evidence of alcohol.

Cleanup costs are expected to run into the millions, officials said, and it may take days, if not weeks for the floating oil to be recovered or dissipate. By Saturday afternoon about 10% of the oil had been recovered by a small flotilla of U.S. Navy and Coast Guard skimming vessels working round-the-clock to suck up the oil from the sea. The operation has been hampered by the spill’s transformation from a concentrated slick into a more distilled, light sheen.

About 30% of the slick had either sunk or evaporated, leaving about 60% on the ocean surface, officials said. An estimated 10% has been scooped up by skimming vessels.

The hulking tanker sat idly in relatively calm waters off Huntington Beach Saturday, clearly visible to hundreds of curious onlookers and cleanup workers.

People on foot and on bicycles--some sporting Walkmans, others carrying babies--squinted into the sun for a view of the tanker and distant skimming vessels and a glimpse of the ink-colored slick hovering about a mile offshore. Many were outraged, others curious. Some came to learn and teach their children an object lesson.

“I brought my children,” said Barbara Wilkens, a Huntington Beach resident and mother of three children. “This is where we come in the summer to play. Now the beach is closed, and it may be damaged. I’m upset and I wanted them to see why I’m disturbed. Let’s hope we all grow from this.”

The beach was closed to discourage the curious from the oil-soaked shoreline and to prevent them from coming into contact with potentially toxic residues.

One surfer who defied the ban was arrested and cited.

At the Santa Ana River mouth, a frustrated Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of famed French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, watched attempts to corral the oily froth and goo.

“It’s not a large oil spill, but it can do a lot of damage environmentally,” said Cousteau, filming a promotion for an upcoming TV special about the Alaskan oil spill. “The most pathetic thing is that we just don’t know what to do. We don’t have the technological know-how. It’s all just touch and go.”

By mid-afternoon, workers in yellow slickers, rubber boots and gloves were strung out along miles of beach in Newport and Huntington, hardest hit by the slick. Workers used square absorbent cloths and pompon-like streamers to soak up the residue.

Every few hundred yards, however, was a huge heap of plastic bags filled with oily brown towels and saturated sand. Forklifts ferried the bags of refuse to the highway.

British Petroleum, owners of the oil that spilled, said 485 workers had been hired for the cleanup. Another 100 laborers were to join the effort today.

Despite the cleanup, complaints mounted from local officials about the lack of manpower committed to the effort by British Petroleum.

“We need more bodies,” Huntington Beach Mayor Thomas J. Mays said.

Residents, eager to help, grew frustrated at being turned away by cleanup organizers and city officials. Company officials, fearing liability problems, warned that well-meaning volunteers ran the risk of skin rash and dizziness if they came in contact with the crude or breathed fumes from the residue.

“The public can be a hazard in this process,” said Huntington Beach Fire Chief Ray Picard. “We want them off the beach.”

A shortage of space forced biologists and wildlife rescuers to close a bird treatment center at Huntington Beach and move operations to Terminal Island. Injured and oiled birds can still be taken to a collection point at the state beach lifeguard headquarters at Magnolia Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway.

In advance of Sunday’s high tides, state officials reinforced protective booms at the entrances to Newport Harbor and Anaheim Bay. Both harbors remained closed. In Sacramento, Gov. George Deukmejian said during his weekly radio address Saturday that the Southern California oil spill doesn’t mean that future offshore oil development should be banned.

“This accident had nothing to do with oil development taking place off California,” he said. “It involved a tanker bringing needed Alaskan oil into our state. If we want to reduce oil tanker traffic into our state, we must increase--not decrease or ban--our efforts to produce more domestic energy, both on land and off our coast.”