Challenged by strong winds and tides, cleanup crews struggled Friday to contain an oil spill spreading in the San Francisco Bay as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for the area. No stranger to natural disasters in California, the governor traveled to the Bay Area on Friday for a briefing on the status of the 58,000-gallon spill, which started early Wednesday after a 900-foot container ship rammed into a tower of the Bay Bridge. The ship was crippled, and oozed the oil that has closed 16 beaches and, at last count, killed more than two dozen water birds.

“There is tremendous damage on the wildlife and on the beaches,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said Friday, later adding, “If mistakes were made, then we will bring them out.” Fourteen local, state and federal agencies are now involved with the investigation, recovery and cleanup of the tanker’s payload, consisting of diesel fuel and dense oil used to power ships. But the cleanup effort has done little to blunt criticism aimed at those who first responded to the accident on Wednesday.

Initial reports of the accident suggested the oil spill dumped less than 200 gallons of fuel into the bay. City officials and the public did not learn from the Coast Guard about the true extent of the spill and its damage for roughly 12 hours. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and other state leaders have expressed concern about the time it took to deliver accurate information about the extent of the spill.

Several state and federal investigations are under way to determine how the ship, the Cosco Busan, hit the Bay Bridge, whether the response was adequate and whether charges should be filed. The bulk of the criticism has fallen on the Coast Guard, which is leading the cleanup along with the California Department of Fish and Game. The Coast Guard conceded Friday that “mistakes were made,” although agency officials said the errors were in communication, rather than disaster response.

“The response went well. We rolled immediately,” said Captain William Uberti of the Coast Guard. “That’s why we got 8,000 gallons collected in the first day.” Captain Uberti said the Coast Guard and other response agencies were focused on cleanup within an hour of the accident but had failed to provide city officials with updates, in part to ensure that the numbers about the extent
of the spill were accurate.

The O’Brien’s Group, the American emergency response management company overseeing the cleanup for Hanjin Shipping, the South Korean company operating the ship, said the commander of the vessel took quick action and followed federally approved disaster response protocols. The ship was under the temporary command of a San Francisco Bay pilot, Capt. John Cota, at the time of the accident.

More than 200 workers were trying to corral the spill or clean soiled birds on Friday. About 18,000 feet of collection booms have been floated around the bay to skim and soak up oil. Twenty teams of wildlife experts have been working to collect and clean oil-stained animals. Yvonne Addassi, wildlife branch director with the California Department of Fish and Game, said, “We’re probably going to see a lot more birds coming in over the next few days; hopefully they will be alive.”

(By Carolyn Marshall, New York Times, 09/11/2007)