Response to fuel spill under Bay Bridge called 'unusually slow' (S.F. Chronicle)

Response to fuel spill under Bay Bridge called 'unusually slow'

Jonathan Curiel, Kevin Fagan, Peter Fimrite,Pat Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writers

Friday, November 9, 2007

(11-08) 22:14 PST San Francisco --

Emergency officials were pressured Thursday to explain why it took them hours to announce that 58,000 gallons of oil had leaked from a container ship that rammed the Bay Bridge on Wednesday - creating a slick that has contaminated beaches and injured hundreds of birds from Hunters Point to the Marin Headlands and out to the Farallon Islands....

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..."Why did it take them so long to respond?" complained Mike Herz, founder of the San Francisco Baykeeper organization and chairman of U.S. Friends of the Earth. "Every oil spill I've ever seen has screwups of one kind or another. "But it looks like they've been unusually slow in responding in this one."...

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...Oil began leaking into the water after the 65,131-ton, 810-foot-long ship crashed into the base of a tower of the Bay Bridge's western span in heavy fog at about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Within an hour, six emergency vessels from the Coast Guard and Marine Spill Response Corp. were on the scene, Uberti said. Yet up until 4 p.m., officials apparently believed only 140 gallons of oil had leaked into the water.

They then learned that the actual amount of the spill was a much more alarming 58,000 gallons, Uberti said. That news was not announced to the public and some local officials until 9 p.m.
"We were kind of busy. ... We were busy figuring this stuff out,":silly: Uberti said when asked about the delay....
(more at link) <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/09/MNVQT8TN3.DTL>