Ships fail test for spill alerts

A large number of cargo ships visiting California ports may be unable to perform an important task after an oil spill: phoning critical agencies and emergency teams within 30 minutes.

In public records obtained by The Bee, 21 of 164 ships subjected to spot state inspection in a three-year period could not place four notification phone calls, as required by state law. Often the ship's crew failed to locate the phone numbers or didn't understand the task.

Critics said the failure rate highlights the need for more rigorous inspections. And by testing just 164 ships over a three-year period, state inspectors only scratched the surface of an estimated 7,400 ships worldwide required to follow California law, according to industry watchdog groups.

The deficiency was illustrated Nov. 7, when the Cosco Busan container ship rammed the Bay Bridge, spilling 53,000 gallons of fuel oil into San Francisco Bay. The ship's crew failed to make the vital phone calls in time, among the reasons the spill grew so large.

State law requires all ships entering California waters to make four calls within 30 minutes of a spill: to the state Office of Emergency Services, the ship's owner or representative, its spill-cleanup contractor, and a national spill reporting agency.

The calls are vital because it's up to independent cleanup contractors to respond to spills. State officials have no significant cleanup ability of their own. If contractors aren't notified promptly, environmental damage might snowball.

Records held by the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response show that 16 out of 65 ships tested in 2005 were unable to make those calls in time. In 2006, three out of 17 failed, while last year two out of 82 failed.

"This is about making a phone call. Nobody should be failing that basic test," said Linda Sheehan, executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance and member of a technical committee that advises the state on spill response. "This really calls into question whether or not they can respond in a timely manner to the spill itself."

There are no fines for failing this test, and state officials said they were unaware of the failure rate. But Ted Mar, chief of the marine safety branch at the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, said the drop in failures since 2005 suggests the inspection program is working.

"We've had a goal of increasing our unannounced drills by 5 percent annually," said Mar. "If we've had less failures in 2007, that's a goal that we've met."

Critics said, however, that the inspection program has been inadequate. The number of ships tested each year is erratic, and the drop in failures may not represent improvement because different ships are inspected each year, not the same group.

"There shouldn't have been this kind of significant failure rate," said Ted Lempert, a former Palo Alto assemblyman who co-wrote the state law that established the four-call rule. "Clearly this kind of evidence is showing that the implementation of this law was highly deficient."

In both 2005 and 2006, California experienced about 7,300 hazardous material spills, according to state records. About half in each year were petroleum spills, and most were small. Figures for 2007 were not available.

The Bee first sought records on the Cosco Busan and its cleanup contractors immediately after the spill. But the Office of Spill Prevention and Response refused, saying the records were part of an "ongoing investigation."

The records were made available after the newspaper filed a Public Records Act request. The Bee requested five years of records, but only three years of results were provided.

Crews are required to keep the key phone numbers posted on the ship's bridge. But the records show that some crews couldn't locate the phone numbers within 30 minutes. In some cases, inspectors gave the crew a passing grade even though they took more than 30 minutes.

Officials said inspectors sometimes give passing marks if a crew comes close to the 30-minute mark, because real-life spill conditions are chaotic.

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• Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.