Tanker’s Fire Burns Out Off Spain : Spill: Government blames harbor pilot and captain. Environmentalists brace for the worst.

The fire went out aboard the hulk of a Greek oil tanker at the northern port of La Coruna on Friday. But in the acrid aftermath two key questions nagged an angry, alarmed Spain: Why did the tanker Aegean Sea run aground? How badly is its spilled cargo fouling the sea in an area of rich marine and wildlife?

The government blamed the tanker captain and the harbor pilot for the accident, while environmentalists braced for the worst.

A large oil slick was floating in rough waters offshore under heavy rain and capricious winds Friday night, although officials said they could not be sure how much of the tanker’s 80,000 tons of petroleum had spilled. Some of it burned, some was still aboard the hulk, and the rest was in the water.

Government officials saw the accident’s impact as the proverbial glass half full; for environmentalists, the glass was half empty.

“It is not as bad as we feared at first,” said Manuel Fraga, president of the regional government in Galicia, where La Coruna is located. But said Ezeqiel Navio, spokesman for ADENA, the Spanish affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund, “We have only initial estimates, nothing concrete, but this may prove the biggest disaster ever to hit the Spanish coastline.”

Volunteers walking stained beaches reported finding dead fish and oil-soaked birds Friday, Navio said.

The irregularly shaped oil slick covered an estimated 12 square miles of sea Friday night, and maritime officials said floating barriers were in place across harbor and inlet mouths to contain it. Spanish authorities, who estimated Thursday that about one-third of the Aegean Sea’s cargo--perhaps 25,000 tons--had spilled, said Friday that they believed the slick would remain concentrated offshore between La Coruna and the nearby town of Ares.

But Navio said there were reports of oil slopping past barriers in coastal areas where there are shellfish nurseries. The government banned fishing in the area nearest the accident for two weeks, and one official warned the cleanup would be slow--”stone by stone.”

An investigating magistrate questioned arrested tanker captain Constantine Stavrides on Friday, and police kept him and two other members of the tanker’s crew under detention. The magistrate also interviewed other members of the tanker’s 29-member crew, as well as a Spanish harbor pilot who was helping guide the Aegean Sea to port but was not aboard the tanker when it went aground.

No charges were filed Friday, but Merchant Marine Director Rafael Lobeto told reporters that both the captain and the pilot ignored port rules requiring the pilot to be aboard a ship entering harbor. “The ultimate responsibility is the captain’s, but we cannot discount the possibility of negligence on the part of the pilot,” Lobeto told Spanish reporters in La Coruna Friday night.

The Aegean Sea had been anchored off the coast, awaiting its turn to unload at the La Coruna refinery for days, said one crewman quoted by Spanish newspapers. Port authorities called the vessel in during pre-dawn blackness Thursday, despite what the Greek captain described in testimony to the Spanish judge Friday as “hellish” weather conditions.

Seeking to berth with a cargo of British light crude, the Aegean Sea ran aground before dawn Thursday morning near the Tower of Hercules, an unused lighthouse that is Europe’s oldest. The 15 Greek and 14 Filipino crew members were rescued in a feat of derring-do by Spanish helicopter pilots; the tanker split and caught fire. The tanker’s bow, which carried most of the cargo, sank Friday morning, drowning flames that had burned for 24 hours.

Asked by reporters in La Coruna if Stavrides acted irresponsibly by entering the harbor in dangerous weather, prosecutor Fernando Garcia Agudin, who was present at the interrogation, replied, “I think so.” Stavrides testified that storm winds and high seas pushed him off course and that the 53,964-ton tanker veered out of control and onto the rocks when he tried to head back to open sea.

The Aegean Sea apparently was preparing to pick up the pilot when it ran aground, investigators in La Coruna told Spanish reporters. Port rules say he should already have been aboard when the ship was that close to the coast, investigators said.

Greek consular officials at La Coruna said the captain had followed radioed instructions of the harbor pilot, who, they said, went aboard immediately after the grounding. The pilot has not yet been named.

About 300 nearby residents were evacuated Thursday as noxious towers of black smoke blanketed the city of 250,000. But they returned Friday.

Galicia’s rugged coast is now thrice cursed by oil. In 1976, the Spanish tanker Urquiola ran aground and exploded, spilling 100,000 tons of oil. Two years later, a Greek tanker exploded off the coast, killing 34 crew members and spilling 40,000 tons of crude.