More Workers Join to Fight Encroaching Oil : Cleanup: Strong winds are expected to drive most of the crude ashore today. Communities south of Newport Beach are carefully watching a southbound slick.

Hundreds of new cleanup workers swarmed across Orange County beaches on Tuesday, doubling the number of people desperately trying to swab up layers of fresh oil from a tanker accident that has blackened miles of shoreline. Officials said they expect strong winds to drive most of the remaining oil ashore today.

A 30-foot-wide swath of gooey sludge stretched uninterrupted for four miles north of the Huntington Beach Municipal Pier as rising tides and moderate swells deposited the crude from the tanker American Trader on some of California’s best-known surfing and sunbathing spots.

Late Tuesday, the Coast Guard identified two distinct slicks, the one washing ashore at Huntington Beach and a second bearing down on Newport Harbor, putting communities to the south of Newport Beach on higher alert.

For the first time, splotches of oil spotted stretches of beach along the Balboa Peninsula and tar balls were reportedly washing up at Corona del Mar, the farthest south that the slick has been sighted.

Seal Beach, as well as Long Beach in Los Angeles County, were no longer threatened by the slick.

Scores of birds washed up with the black tide. By day’s end, 111 dead birds had been found on the beach since the Feb. 7 spill and another 306 were oil-soaked but alive.

Cleanup of the oil spill, the worst off Southern California in two decades, is costing roughly $750,000 a day, and the tally already has reached $4 million to $5 million, according to James H. Ross, president and chief executive of BP America Inc.

The cleanup efforts were brought to a temporary halt Tuesday night by high surf and strong winds. At 10:30 p.m. the Coast Guard approved a request from the cleanup crews to suspend what had been a round-the-clock operation because strong winds kicked up sand and eight-foot waves. “It’s just too dangerous out there,” said Petty Officer Carolyn Feldman. “The water is reaching up to where the bags of debris have been collected.”

In Long Beach, crew members of the 811-foot American Trader recounted events surrounding the incident after the vessel berthed and began discharging its remaining 19 million gallons of oil. The crew had been sequestered on the U.S.-registered tanker offshore for six days while officials tried to find out how one of the ship’s 12-ton anchors punctured the hull, triggering the spill.

“We did everything right--the same way we always do,” said 19-year-old Eric Bush of Seattle, one of three crew members who were dropping the ship’s two anchors when the accident occurred.

Bush recalled that, while letting down the ship’s starboard anchor, he felt “two sharp jolts” a few minutes apart. He thought the ship might have struck an undersea mud bank--until he looked over the side and saw the thick, black oil spewing from the ship’s side.

“The water was just boiling with crude,” Bush, a deckhand, told reporters.

Three officers, including the tanker’s skipper, Robert La Ware, who was in charge as the ship attempted to moor offshore, have been cleared of alcohol or drug use at the time of the incident.

As a precaution, Coast Guard officials temporarily banned all large tankers from using the Golden West mooring, where the American Trader dumped its crude last week. Only smaller vessels with less than a 20-foot draft or tank barges will be allowed to moor there and unload oil shipments for mainland refineries, Coast Guard Capt. James C. Card said.

Investigators also ordered owners of the mooring, located about two miles southwest of Huntington Beach, to conduct an underwater survey of the area to check for any obstructions or problems on the sea floor.

“We want to close down the area--like the police securing a crime scene--until studies and recommendations are completed,” Lt. (j.g.) Robert Peng said.

In Los Angeles federal court, former U.S. Rep. Chet Holifield, now a Newport Beach resident and a Democratic member of the House for 32 years before retiring in 1974, filed one of the first lawsuits in connection with the spill. The class-action suit seeks compensation for damage and economic losses caused by the spill and the alleged failure to properly clean up the oil. Among the defendants are the ship’s owner, American Trading Transportation Co. and the company that chartered the ship, British Petroleum.

Holifield, who represented the Montebello area in Los Angeles County, declined to comment on his role in the suit, other than to say he agreed to be the lead plaintiff as a “public service.” The 86-year-old Holifield, the dean of the California congressional delegation in the 1960s and early 1970s, lives on Balboa Island. The federal building in Laguna Niguel known as the Ziggurat is officially named the Chet Holifield Building.

Meanwhile, the growing presence of oil on the beach continued to lure both the curious and the angry.

By dusk, reinforcements had pushed the number of paid cleanup workers to more than 1,100, but for many, the monotony of sopping up the oil by hand had taken a toll.

“It’s hopeless, just hopeless,” said George Martinez, his yellow slicker buttoned tight against the chill sea breeze as he raked the sand near the Huntington Beach bluffs. “The stuff just keeps coming. You clean a patch and an hour later it’s back--thicker and smellier.”

Despite such frustration, officials said that 80% of the spill had either been recovered or had dissipated by late Tuesday.

But what was left of the nomadic slick that has teased cleanup officials since 394,000 gallons of Alaskan crude spewed from the gouged tanker off Huntington Beach shifted direction yet again Tuesday, sliding south just offshore. A major chunk of the slick moved from north of the Huntington Beach Pier south toward the Santa Ana River mouth at the Huntington-Newport Beach city line.

Officials as far south as Laguna Beach were closely monitoring the 16-mile-long slick, hoping that the oil would not reach the area’s numerous coves and tide pools where cleanup would be nearly impossible. Cleanup and spotting crews were dispatched to beaches as far south as El Moro Beach just north of Laguna.

To the relief of wildlife officials and volunteers, the spill continued to skirt three delicate wetlands.

After inspecting coastal estuaries, officials said that protective barriers were holding the oil at bay. “I suspect the wetlands may be less threatened” than they were Monday, said state Fish and Game Department Patrol Capt. Bill Powell.

Cleanup and oil-spotting efforts were strung out along 24 miles of coastline but remained concentrated in the Huntington Beach and Bolsa Chica areas, where oil damage was the worst.

Workers were deployed in multiple shifts as cleanup extended into the night in some places. Large spotlights illuminated sweeps of sand near Bolsa Chica State Beach, casting an eerie glow over the scene.

On the beach, cleanup crews began to show their fatigue. Some have been at work for five days.

“It’s labor, labor, labor,” said Mark Smith, a Compton resident hired to swab the sand with cloth squares. “I’ve never worked this hard. I’m just hoping it doesn’t kill me.”

Some workers stripped out of the oil-soaked heavy yellow suits altogether, working in jeans and T-shirts. Concerned that workers may be exposing themselves to hazards, federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials visited the shoreline, interviewing cleanup crews and reviewing their work.

“We’re finding that in a lot of the cases they’re not getting that much” training, said Tino R. Serrano, an assistant regional director for the U.S. Labor Department.

By Tuesday afternoon, Southwest VECO Inc., which had been hired to oversee cleanup efforts, stopped signing up new workers. More than 500 people applied during the day, some having lined up outside the company’s Long Beach offices Monday night. Many were drawn by the $10-an-hour pay.

“I need to pay my bills,” said Elizabeth Perez of Long Beach. “I brought my son, Steven, who’s only 16, out here. We’re ready to work all day and all night if we have to.”

For local residents, the continuing mess caused some depression and slowed business.

‘It’s awful,” said Robert August, who starred in the surfing movie “Endless Summer” and now owns a surf shop in Huntington Beach. “It’s pretty lousy for business. All that’s there now are reporters and politicians.”

Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez on Tuesday expressed concern over the effectiveness of the cleanup, saying, “It strikes me as rather odd that we’re spending millions of dollars to do the cleanup project” and that workers are using mainly towels and sheets.

Board Chairman Don R. Roth also criticized the mixed signals sent by cleanup organizers about the need for volunteers. “Are they wanted? Are they not wanted?” Roth asked.

Attention late Tuesday focused on the deteriorating weather. Wind conditions are expected to continue through Thursday, when forecasters predict gusts up to 40 m.p.h.

“It’s going to get progressively worse before it gets better,” said Rick Dittmann, a meteorologist from WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times. “It’s not going to help matters at all.”

Winds, which had been about 5 m.p.h. early Tuesday, increased to 15 m.p.h. by day’s end. Swells of up to five feet are also expected to hamper skimming efforts.

Preparing for the possibility that the oil will drift farther south, Laguna Beach officials have placed bundles of absorbent cloths and other materials at several key locations on the coast north of the town’s main beach to react quickly should the slick move toward shore.

“We are preparing as if it is coming ashore,” said Laguna Beach City Councilman Robert F. Gentry, a longtime foe of offshore oil drilling. “The best thing that could happen is it all wash up on those broad flat beaches north of us. The worst thing is for that oil to reach our rocky coves. If it does, we’ll never get it clean.”

Staff writers Shelby Grad, Ted Johnson, Danica Kirka, Rose Ellen O’Connor and Dan Weikel contributed to this story.