Year After a Disaster: Just Dark Memories

Disasters are not fun to cover as news reporters. They also aren’t pleasant to remember.

Huntington Beach’s oil spill of Feb. 7, 1990, was a disaster. And now that its first-year anniversary is about to be marked, I don’t relish the inevitable litany of remembrances. Big news can be exhilarating, but for me the oil spill, even a year later, triggers more depression than anything else.

I am a 12-year resident of Huntington Beach, so when the tragedy hit, it had a personal impact. This was home--not Valdez, Alaska, scene of an even greater spill. There is something about Huntington Beach that gives it a nice, warm, hometown feeling. I love living there. But to love is to be vulnerable, and many of us who live in the city felt a personal vulnerability in the wake of the oil spill.

Times columnist Dana Parsons, who also lives in Huntington Beach, sent me a message on my computer shortly after the spill: “WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO OUR CITY?”

Dana’s question was asked by a great many of the 180,000 residents of Huntington Beach. They expressed anger and exasperation. Some found it hard to put into words exactly how they felt. At times, their faces surrendered their feelings.

I remember one man, about 30, who spent all day Feb. 8 on the beach with his 5-year-old son. The father held the son’s hand most of the day, and they simply walked the beach, up and down, saying little but looking very solemn. When I asked him why he was there, and why for such a long time, he said simply, “We live here, and this is our beach, and I thought it was important for me and my boy to show up.”

A day in mourning walking the beach, under a sullen winter sky, as a crippled tanker rolled on oil-slimed waves in the distance.

A burly steelworker I interviewed showed a poet’s feeling for the beach. “This place is important to us,” he said. “They’ve got to be more careful.”

The hundreds of people who came to do volunteer cleanup work impressed me. Some teen-agers I talked to had worked 24-hour shifts helping to locate oil-stricken birds. A wrenching part of the saga occurred when cleanup professionals and safety experts had to gently tell volunteers not to try to swab up the oil--that it was dangerous and that only the professionals should be doing it.

The message was true, but I saw hurt in the eyes of some volunteers as they were told to leave the beaches.

The circus side of the disaster is one of the worst memories. The news media, from around the world, homed in on Huntington Beach, and by Feb. 9 the scene at 1st Street and Pacific Coast Highway looked like Television City. Satellite dishes and truck-trailers full of television gear moved onto the beach, just behind Huntington Beach lifeguard headquarters. A parking lot nearby became a de facto outdoor theater, where scores of politicians gave gratuitous press conferences and pronouncements on the oil spill.

Helicopters landed and departed, almost hourly, as political and news media celebrities made grand entrances and exits. The posing and posturing hit truly comic proportions. One television newsman from New Mexico, apparently trying to impress other reporters, asked tough-guy questions at a routine press briefing by a low-level Coast Guardsman.

Some politicians hogged the spotlight, refusing to let people with real information talk to the huddled reporters. A notable exception was then-Mayor Tom Mays. Mays, who had been mayor only three months, was at the beach almost continually, but he shied away from the limelight. He acted calmly, resolutely and with great dignity during the entire ordeal.

But mainly the memories are ugly ones: frothy brown oil sloshing on the beaches, injured and dying birds in cardboard boxes and the news media acting self-important.

A year later, I find, with no surprise, that political and news media interest in the event was short-lived. The oil spill very rarely is mentioned at City Council meetings--not even perfunctory reference is made about the council’s once fervent zeal to rid the city of the offshore unloading site. In the news media, the logical follow is focused on Orange County, rather than in Washington and Sacramento, the only places where significant changes can be made.

Like the oil spill itself, I will be glad when the anniversary is over.