Associated Press
1111dv_sf_bay_folo The entire crew of the cargo ship that sideswiped a bridge, causing San Francisco Bay's worst oil spill in nearly two decades, were being held for questioning as part of a criminal investigation, a Coast Guard official said Sunday.
The Cosco Busan, which leaked 58,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil into the bay on Wednesday, fouling miles of coastline and killing dozens of birds, was being detained at the Port of Oakland by the Coast Guard. Crew members will be free to go once federal investigators have questioned them, said Capt. William Uberti, the Coast Guard commander for the bay region.
Darrell Wilson, a representative for Regal Stone Ltd., the Hong Kong-based company that owns the Cosco Busan, declined to comment Sunday on the investigation.
Uberti said he notified the U.S. attorney's office on Saturday about problems involving management and communication among members of the crew on the ship's bridge. This includes the helmsman, watch officer, and ship's master _ part of the Cosco Busan's Asia-based crew _ as well as the pilot, Capt. John Cota, among the most experienced of the seamen who guide ships through the bay's treacherous waters.
Uberti declined to specify what problems he reported to federal prosecutors. "It was just the way that everybody interacted" on the bridge, he said.
A call to the U.S. attorney's office for Northern California was not returned Sunday.
A preliminary Coast Guard investigation found that human error, not mechanical failure, caused the ship to crash into a support on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
The wreck left a gash nearly 100 feet long on the side of the 926-foot vessel and ruptured two of the vessel's fuel tanks, causing heavy bunker fuel to leak into the bay. The spill has killed dozens of sea birds and spurred the closure of nearly two dozen beaches and piers.
Investigators were focusing on possible communication problems between the ship's crew, the pilot guiding the vessel and the Vessel Traffic Service, the Coast Guard station that monitors the bay's shipping traffic.
A language barrier between the vessel's pilot, Capt. John Cota, and the ship's all-Chinese crew was not likely a factor in the crash, since the ship's captain and officers are required to speak English, officials said.
The National Transportation Safety Board arrived Sunday to launch its own investigation. The agency will look at everything from how fatigued the ship's crew and captain were to any mechanical or weather issues that may have been involved in the accident, said Debbie Hersman, an NTSB spokeswoman.
The NTSB's investigation, expected to take up to a year, also will examine the initial response by the Coast Guard and the company who owns the vessel, she said.
