Oil Spill on Puerto Rico Beach Imperils Tourist Industry : Environment: About 750,000 gallons spew out when a barge runs into a reef and tanks rupture. Containment equipment is en route to island.

About 750,000 gallons of heating oil spilled into the sea after a barge ran into a reef just offshore Friday, blackening about a mile of golden beaches and theatening to disrupt the island’s tourism industry.

“I just don’t believe it. I walked down here just ready to lay in the sun. This is terrible,” said Betty Sue Cooper of Dallas, looking woefully upon the Caribe Hilton beach, where the sand was coated with slimy black oil. The water glimmered black.

The Morris J. Burman barge, carrying more than 1.5 million gallons of oil, was being pulled past San Juan to Antigua by a tugboat before dawn Friday when a line snapped and the barge crashed into the reef. Some of its nine tanks ruptured, sending heavy black oil gushing into the sea.

Gov. Pedro Rossello called the spill “a catastrophe” and said he hopes a quick cleanup could soften the blow to the island’s tourism industry. The spill apparently did not affect Atlantic and Caribbean resorts outside San Juan.

At an evening news conference, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said that the barge had spillled about 750,000 gallons into the ocean.

Emergency workers laid floating barriers to limit the damage to a mile-long strip of the Atlantic coast, while helicopters roared overhead.

High waves pounded the barge, wedged in shallow water in a reef 300 yards offshore, raising fears it could break up. Oil spill specialists and heavy equipment were en route.

U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Robert Ross, coordinator for oil spill response in San Juan, said a barge with a pump was being brought in to remove the oil.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner and Coast Guard Commandant J. William Kime flew in to inspect the site.

“The barge is continuing to lose cargo into the water,” Ross said, adding that it was “entirely likely that more damage could occur to the barge.”

Although the sides and the main deck were intact, Ross said the damage to the bottom and the internal bulkheads was not known.

Hotels near palm-lined Escambron beach sent their visitors by bus to other resorts on the island for the day and shifted guests to higher floors to escape the nauseating fumes.

Cooper said she had just arrived Thursday night but said she might go to the Bahamas instead. Others decided to go elsewhere in Puerto Rico.

“How do you stay on the beach if you can’t go to the beach?” said Joel Klarreich of New York, who was ending a week’s vacation Friday with his wife.

“I’m glad we’re leaving,” Lynn Klarreich said.

Receding tides widened the ribbon of blackened sand, and some oil oozed into the Condado Lagoon, normally a haven for kayaks and sailboats.

Lt. Cmdr. Edwin Stanton, coordinator of port operations for San Juan’s marine safety office, said the fumes pervading the capital of this U.S. commonwealth presented a health hazard to people with lung problems.

The crippled vessel held less than one-sixth the amount that spilled in 1989 from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. There was no early estimate of the cost of cleanup efforts, and Ross refused to speculate on the cause of the spill.

“Fish, wildlife, marine life is going to be affected. They’re going to die,” said Jose Burgos, duty officer for Puerto Rico’s civil defense agency.

The barge was built in 1976, the Coast Guard said. Preusch said the cargo, No. 6 heavy oil, is commonly used for heating.