It was early morning March 24, 1989, an oil tanker the Exxon Valdez was en route from the Valdez oil terminal through Prince William Sound. The captain, Joseph Hazelwood radioed in to say he was changing course. He did this in order to avoid small icebergs. He received permission to move to the northbound lane.
Now the Captain had been prior known to have had a drinking problem. He told his third mate Gregory Cousins, to begin steering, while he retired to his cabin. Mr. Cousins was not qualified to steer the ship in those Alaskan waters, and when he hit the Bligh reef; it was because the ship did not turn sharply enough. The reason that it did not turn sharply enough is not exactly known. There are suggestions that Cousins gave the order to late, or it could be because the Alyeska Corporation decided to keep their costs down by not upgrading the radar system on the ship.
U.S. Navy Mechanized Landing Craft (LCMs) are anch...
In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, heavy s...
Workers using high-pressure, hot-water washing to ...At any rate the hull of the ship cracked and within a two-day period, approximately eleven million gallons of crude oil were spilled into the Alaskan waters. Much of this oil eventually accumulated on the shoreline, and killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of birds as well as salmon and herring, and sea mammals one of which being the sea otters, which were almost wiped out by this.
Unfortunatly the response to this was hesitant, as the Alyeska Corporation was not prepared for such a disaster. However they did get many people out attempting to clean up they used booms. They took amount of the oil in fire resistant booms and lit it up, once they were far enough away to not ignite the whole thing they did not get to do this very many times due to adverse...