President's Column
by Jim Clark
It's 9:20 a.m. on November 5, 1997, about four hours after 4570 gallons of #6 fuel oil spilled from the punctured fuel tank of a freighter at the Louisiana Pacific Dock.
I am on the northeast corner of the Samoa boat ramp parking lot, looking at the line of oil in the water at the shoreline undulating like some giant snake in the waves. It stretches west then north along the beach past the shallow cove and as far as I can see toward Fairhaven. It also continues to the south past the boat ramp.
At the top of the boat ramp there are about a dozen Coast Guard personnel in blue coveralls. They are waiting for orders. Behind them is a lowboy trailer with three large orange containers on it, presumably containing oil spill cleanup material. It is waiting to be deployed by the Coast Guard people who are waiting for orders. Meanwhile the oil continues to cover the shoreline, and what does not stick to the shore moves on to find something else to stick to. It is becoming more difficult to recover by the minute.
I was only there for 20 minutes. Although my emotions told me that the oil should be sucked up and absorbed immediately, my intellect told me that I am not an oil spill cleanup expert and that I should leave it to the experts standing by. Maybe those 20 minutes of non-action didn't make any difference; maybe it did. I don't know how long those people waited before taking actual cleanup action.
After major incidents involving multiple agencies, there is a post incident review among the participating agencies. The purpose of that review is to critique the actions taken in order to improve future responses. Although agency representatives are customarily frank about their errors, it is still an in-house exercise. An incident of the magnitude of the Humboldt Bay oil spill should require a detailed public report. We need to examine more than "incident response." We need to take a close look at oil spill response planning. Capable people waiting for orders to act, and oil booms that can't function properly in Humboldt Bay's tidal currents, are not acceptable.
Redwood Region Audubon Society
P.O. Box 1054, Eureka, CA 95502
Last updated December 1997