Nov 11, 2007 7:34 pm US/Eastern
Criminal Probe Opened In Bay Oil Spill
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS) ―
The entire crew of the cargo ship that sideswiped a bridge, causing San Francisco Bay's worst oil spill in nearly two decades, has been detained as part of a criminal investigation, a Coast Guard official said Sunday.
Capt. William Uberti said he notified the U.S. attorney's office on Saturday about issues involving management and communication among members of the bridge crew: the helmsman, the watch officer, the ship's master and the pilot.
The entire crew of the Cosco Busan, which disgorged 58,000 gallons of oil into the Bay on Wednesday, is being detained on the ship for questioning, said Uberti, head of the Coast Guard for Northern California.
Uberti declined to specify what problems he reported. A call to that office was not returned Sunday.
Federal officials will take an aerial tour of the San Francisco Bay to assay environmental damage caused by the area's worst oil spill in nearly two decades.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen will be viewing the damage after a preliminary Coast Guard investigation found that "human error,'' not mechanical failure, caused the cargo ship Cosco Busan to sideswipe a support on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, leaving a gash nearly 100 feet long on the side of the 926-foot vessel.
"There were skilled enough individuals on board this ship. They didn't carry out their missions correctly,'' said Rear Adm. Craig Bone, the Coast Guard's top official in California.
The crash on Wednesday ruptured two of the vessel's fuel tanks, which leaked about 58,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel into the bay, killing sea birds and spurring the closure of nearly two dozen beaches and piers.
Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have both called for swift and thorough investigations of the spill and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency.
Meanwhile, efforts to clean up the mess have intensified. The Coast Guard increased the number of ships to 20 from 11 to work on skimming the oil from the bay, said Petty Ofc. Sherri Eng.
Nearly 20,000 gallons of oily liquid had been sucked up by Saturday morning, and about 770 workers have taken part in cleanup efforts on the water and along beaches to mop up the damage a job that is expected to last weeks or possibly months.
Rescue teams raced to save hundreds of seabirds tarred with black shipping fuel. At least 60 birds were found dead while 200 live birds were recovered and sent to a rehabilitation center in Solano County.
As cleanup continued, so did efforts to determine the oil spill's cause. While Coast Guard officials have not blamed a specific individual or detailed mistakes that were made, they have focused on possible communication problems.
Investigators were focusing on possible communication problems between the ship's crew, the pilot guiding the vessel and the Vessel Traffic Service, the Coast Guard station that monitors the bay's shipping traffic.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Andrew Wood said "The mere fact that they collided with a fixed object'' offered clear evidence that a communication problem had occurred.
But a language barrier between the vessel's pilot, Capt. John Cota, and the ship's all-Chinese crew was not likely a factor in the crash, since ship's captain and officers are required to speak English, officials said.
Bone acknowledged that there were communications between the ship and the Coast Guard's traffic facility before the collision. He said the communications involved the ship's course and speed but declined to comment further on the nature of the exchange.
Cota's lawyer, John Meadows, told The San Francisco Chronicle that the nearby Coast Guard facility radioed Cota and questioned his bearings. The pilot immediately responded by saying the ship's instruments showed he was on the correct heading, Meadows told the newspaper.
The spill has also forced about 65 Bay Area crab fisherman to vote to ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to officially close the commercial and sport crabbing seasons. The crabbers want Schwarzenegger to halt crab fishing on the California coast from Point Arena in the north to the Mexican border until the waters are deemed safe, said Larry Collins, vice president of the Crab Boat Owners Association.
"We want the season closed until the oil is out of the water and no one gets sick from eating crab that's been contaminated by the oil,'' Collins said.
Fish and Game officials said the fuel generally stays on the water's surface, and they had not seen any evidence that fish have been harmed though they are concerned that the spill could affect bay herring that spawn at this time of year.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
