Oil Spill off Puerto Rico Blackens Beach, Perils Tourism
About 750,000 gallons of heating oil spilled into the sea after a barge ran into a reef just offshore here Friday, blackening about a mile of this city’s golden beaches and threatening to disrupt the island’s tourist 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 onto 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 spilled 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.
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