Tragedy written in oil
The Northern California coast around San Francisco Bay is
looking a little smudged this week. A freighter, under the command
of a bay pilot with 25 years’ experience shepherding ships to and
from the bay, struck the Bay Bridge in the fog and opened a gash in
itself, spilling a few thousand gallons of the heavy oil that fuels
its enormous engines.
Tragedy written in oil
The Northern California coast around San Francisco Bay is looking a little smudged this week. A freighter, under the command of a bay pilot with 25 years’ experience shepherding ships to and from the bay, struck the Bay Bridge in the fog and opened a gash in itself, spilling a few thousand gallons of the heavy oil that fuels its enormous engines.
Authorities report the bridge was undamaged, and the motorists transiting it felt nothing as a 67,000 ton ship tore itself open on a bridge footing.
Bay pilots are an elite bunch. They work regular shifts through the year. Their calendars know no holidays. They are well paid – comfortably into six figures – and given generous amounts of time off. The pilots are based on a modest ship anchored at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Boats entering the harbor are compelled to pause long enough to board a pilot, and those leaving must do the same. While on watch, pilots live on the boat, waiting to board the ships they will guide through any weather.
More than danger, the job brings with it great responsibility. Ships have grown as global commerce has grown. A single cargo is certainly worth millions.
The largest ships take several miles to slow to a stop.
Any kid who’s ever grabbed a tiller learns a few things about driving a boat quickly. First, without making way, the rudder is useless. A boat has to move through the water faster than the direction the water is moving for the helm to answer. Second, boats behave unpredictably, whim to the conditions around them.
How does one hit a bridge in the fog? For anyone who has ever piloted a dinghy, the question is certainly, why does it not happen more often.
San Francisco Bay is one of the most beautiful and one of the most challenging ports in which to operate a vessel. The races that track the bay routinely cross the path of its bridges. And just as routinely, private boat operators manage to hit those bridges.
The responsibility a pilot wears to work is enormous.
The headline in the San Francisco Chronicle that capped the account of the brush with a bridge was concise: “Heartbreaking” it read. It appeared beneath a photo that spanned the page, one of a scoter – a sea duck that populates our shores each winter – covered in heavy, black goo.
Even though last week’s spill was small – 58,000 gallons – it closed beaches north into Marin County and left the bay along the San Francisco waterfront and Angel Island awash in muck.
Authorities were calling for volunteers to help mend the damage that afflicted hundreds of thousands of birds and other wildlife.
The certainty is that it will happen again. Technology has improved navigation and ships are more seaworthy than ever. The standard for tankers today is a double-walled hull, a ship within a ship. But on a visit to Portland last summer, we passed an enormous tanker sailing under a foreign flag. It is a sister ship to the Exxon Valdez, which notoriously dumped its contents in Alaska under the command of a drunken captain.
It is a single-walled ship, and its sister ship continues to ply the seas filled with millions of gallons of oil, vulnerable to a miscalculation or inattention.
We have an unquenchable thirst for petroleum, and the best way we have to move it around is in ships that dot our coasts. Spills are a certainty.
Even a modest spill like last week’s results in untold cost in a place as rich in wildlife as our coasts.
Is there a solution? Perhaps, but is the cost too great? The answer today is almost certainly, yes. Messes like this are a consequence of the way we have come to live. Some day we can hope for change.
Petroleum fuels our economy, our demands for cheap energy and global politics.
There’s got to be a better way.
