I was there, working for Alyeska pipeline at the marine terminal that day. Flew over the grounded tanker that morning. I can tell all kinds of stories about the event , and the months following during cleanup snd its affect on the communities and environment. The short of it , and not trying to make excuses cause there isn’t any, but Joe Hazelwood was drunk when he came back aboard Exxon Valdez . The pilot took the ship out beyond the narrows and then disembarked, shortly afterward Hazelwood turned the helm over to the third mate, a guy by the name of cousins with instructions to make course change at such a such time and bearing. Hazelwood had previously made a course correction from normal do to ice(calving from Columbia glacier) Cousins failed to make the course correction in time and only did so when a mate on the bow alerted him via radio they were getting dangerous close to Bligh reef, well it was too late and they ran aground Total human error, the night was beautiful , clear as a bell and no wind to speak off, prince Williams sound was smooth as glass, Alyeka’s oil spill response was slow due to a number of factors, some of which were bickering among agencies as to who was incident commander, shortage of oil recovery vessels on hand. Oil spill equipment buried under record snowfall, and shortage of personnel. For two days the sea was calm, there was some debate about lighting the oil on fire to burn it offf? and about the time they begin to get equipment on sight and the oil left on board of the Valdez lightered off to the the Exxon SanFransisco the wind came up and begin to spread oil through the entire sound, off shore from the communities of Valdez and Cordova.. Turning the catastrophe into a two year long cleanup. Which is a huge story in itself that I have not enough time to relate, let’s just say 4 billion dollars of Exxon’s money has not to this day completely mitigated the effects.
Interesting. We have been there numerous times since 95 and have not really seen anything left over. Fish are fine. Wildlife fine. Nature recovers. It has to. Its stronger than we think.
And.....only a one of three compartments were ruptured.
And.....only a one of three compartments were ruptured.
Not true 8 of 11 tanks were ruptured , total estimated loss was 10. 8 million gallons of a total cargo of 53.1 million gallons or 1.2 million barrels . The crews working on littering off that much oil , in those conditions, wearing full scba gear, in an atmosphere that one little spark would have sent up a huge fireball was heroic
You obviously have never ignited crude oil...
No kidding. Or even refined into diesel...
