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Oil Spill Prompts City To Declare Emergency

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday November 16, 2007

The only sound along the deserted shoreline at the Berk-eley Marina Wednesday was the clattering of pebbles inside Carole Rathfon’s double-layered plastic bag. 

Rathfon, like hundreds of trained volunteers from all across the East Bay, had been out since 10 a.m. cleaning the oil that had tarnished the bay and its wildlife after the Cosco Busan crashed into a Bay Bridge tower and spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel last week. 

Some state and city officials compared the lack of emergency response to the Katrina disaster. Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz said Berkeley had been one of the first cities to respond to the spills. 

“The Coast Guard was saying not to let anyone that didn’t have HazMat training go out, and that they would be sending their own staff,” Kamlarz said Thursday. “But we didn’t wait for them. We had our own trained folks and we sent them out Friday. I am really proud of the way the city reached out and coordinated with the Oiled Wildlife Care Network and carried out clean-up efforts.” 

Capt. William Uberti, the Coast Guard disaster commander responsible for the spill’s initial response, was replaced by Capt. Paul Gugg Thursday after the agency admitted that it had mishandled drug tests of the ship’s crew. 

Although Kamlarz declared a seven-day local emergency on Thursday, he lifted the city’s six-day ban on boat traffic at the Marina, but warned that the situation could change at any minute.  

Boat owners have been prohibited from washing their boats in the bay. 

Kamlarz also banned off-leash dogs in the Marina, Aquatic Park and all waterfront and shoreline areas of the city except Cesar Chavez Park. 

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, chair of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources, the principal committee of jurisdiction for issues related to the state’s response to oil spills, expressed concern about the significant delays and lack of communication between responsible agencies and local governments at an emergency oversight hearing in Emeryville Thursday. 

“This oil spill is a wake-up call for the Bay Area,” she said. “For a spill of relatively small size it has quickly spread out of control, impacting not only the waters and wildlife of the bay, but also the Pacific Ocean and our coastal beaches. It is imperative that the committee hold this hearing to evaluate how we can strengthen the state’s role in ensuring that this never happens again, and, if it does, we are more effective in our response.” 

William Rogers, the Berkeley’s Parks Recreation and Waterfront interim director, said the Coast Guard, the Department of Fish and Game and the EPA had declared the beach in front of Shorebird Park one of the worst impacted areas. 

“Hopefully, another team will be down soon to make a full assessment and send cleanup crews,” he said. 

Trained staff from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network have set up a trailer near the harbormaster’s office where hundreds of oiled birds are being brought every day to be transported to the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center in Cordelia. 

City employees and volunteers dropped by at the trailer by the hour to report sightings of sick or dead birds Wednesday. 

“Who do I report an oily but chirpy bird at the F dock, slip 12 to?” asked a marina dockhand excitedly. 

“It’s getting to a point that the birds are eating and digesting the oil and not surviving,” said Kent Carpenter from the city’s parks and recreation department. “We are focusing on partially oiled birds for survival right now ... It’s tough because they keep fleeing to the small islands when people try to catch them. Sometimes sea lions get the oil in their mucous membrane, but they tend to survive.” 

Many volunteers were disappointed at being turned away while others expressed anger at the Coast Guard’s slow response. 

“While we wait for the government to get their act together, there will just be that many more things getting fouled,” said Steve Rathfon, Carole’s husband. 

“The progress in getting these bureaucratic agencies moving along continues to be slow, as people keep pointing fingers at each other. The Coast Guard says ‘we responded quickly’ but it seems to me that things could have been done faster. How could they have missed the amount of fuel getting into the water?” 

The U.S. Coast Guard incorrectly estimated the spill at 140 gallons at the time of the accident and did not inform Bay Area authorities about the correct figure until later in the day. 

As the elderly couple from Oakland painstakingly picked up one soiled pebble at a time in the afternoon sun, an oily sheen was visible along the shoreline. 

“Bunker oil is the worst of it all,” Carole Rathfon said, pointing to the tar-like substance sticking to the rocks on the shore. “During the HAZMAT training we were told that there’s all kind of carcinogens in it ... It’s basically sludge. If they had put booms around the spills earlier then it wouldn’t have spread to the shores.” 

Rogers said the city was deploying its volunteers to clean up beaches all over the Bay Area.  

“They are going as far north as Pt. Richmond and as far south as Radio Beach,” he said. “I think the thing that’s wonderful is that the volunteers were mobilized immediately.” 

Down at the Nature Center—transformed into a triage station—a flurry of activities kept volunteers busy. 

Berkeley resident Lydia Greenspan, 80, was registering volunteers while Suzanne Conrad from Albany stacked burlap bags, towels, brown paper bags and pink flags to identify oiled birds. 

“I love the bay and the birds in it,” Lydia said from her wheelchair. “And I had to get down here to help.” 

Denise Brown, the city’s volunteer coordinator, said that “runners”—drivers to carry the birds from the marina trailer to the Cordelia bird rescue center—were in demand. 

“The city will be doing another training for cleaning beaches at the West Berkeley Senior Center at 8 a.m. Saturday,” she said. “We need unflavored electrolyte powder, fluid or drinks, pillowcases, bottled water, towels, flashlights with AA batteries, masking tape, felt-tip markers and heating pads to keep birds warm and dry before they are transported ... Any little thing would help.” 

 

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee. 

Dressed in HazMat gear, Oakland resident Carole Rathfon picks up soiled pebbles from the Berkeley Marina shoreline Wednesday with her husband Steve.