Chapter One THE BIG ONE COMES In the small town of Valdez Alaska a group of about 30 residents crowded around a speakerphone in a local government office It was Thursday evening March 23 1989 and the Easter weekend was about to begin On the other end of the line was Riki Ott an expert in marine science Like many of the people in Valdez and other small towns along Alaska’s Prince William Sound she also fished Salmon and herring filled the waters of the sound Fishing was an important part of the local economy the money fishers made selling their catch helped businesses stay open The sound was also home to bald eagles and other birds that caught the fish for food along with sea otters sea lions orcas and other mammals Many of these animals also relied on the fish to survive Another natural resource besides fish had become important to the local economy and to Alaska as a whole In June 1977 oil had begun flowing from Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay above the Arctic Circle through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System TAPS For 800 miles 1,287 kilometers the pipeline crosses some of the coldest and most isolated parts of the United States Finally the oil reaches the Valdez Marine Terminal There it is loaded on giant ships called tankers which take the oil to be turned into gasoline and other petroleum-based products
Oil storage tanks lined the shore of the harbor in Valdez Alaska when oil began flowing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1977 Many fishers on Prince William Sound along with some indigenous Alaska people had opposed the building of the pipeline and the terminal They feared an oil spill could ruin their way of life For the native Alaskans that included hunting sea mammals that lived in the sound as well as catching fish But with backing from the U S government several oil companies were able to drill for the oil buried beneath the frozen Arctic land and transport it to other states The fear of an oil spill and pollution from the Valdez Marine Terminal had not faded in the years after TAPS opened Ships leaving the terminal sometimes had accidents even though a major spill hadn’t occurred Riki Ott was one of the people worried about a spill She could not attend the meeting in Valdez on March 23 because bad weather had made it impossible to fly there from her home in the small fishing town of Cordova on Prince William Sound No roads linked the two communities so flying would have been the fastest way there
Instead Ott sat by herself in a room 70 miles 113 km away and spoke to the people at the meeting in Valdez by phone Ott talked about the increasing number of tankers sailing to and from the Valdez terminal through the sound Many of the ships she noted were getting too old to operate safely And she warned that if a spill happened in open waters it might not be contained and cleaned up quickly Ott said the big one 1 a massive oil spill in Prince William Sound was bound to happen It’s not if but when it occurs and we’re not going to be prepared as a community 2 As Ott spoke on the phone a ship loaded with oil was about to leave the Valdez Marine Terminal The Exxon Valdez was almost 1,000 feet 305 meters long and as its name suggested it was owned by Exxon one of seven companies that operated the pipeline and terminal The seven had formed the Alyeska Pipeline Services Company in 1970 Exxon was the largest of the companies involved and the largest U S oil company When it was delivered in 1986 the Exxon Valdez was the largest ship ever built on the U S West Coast That night at about 9 20 the Exxon Valdez slowly made its way out of the
port carrying 53 million gallons 200 million liters of fuel oil Commanding the ship was Captain Joseph Hazelwood At 42 he had worked for Exxon for 19 years and he had won safety awards from the company in 1987 and 1988 But as the Exxon Valdez ship headed into the sound Hazelwood was not on the bridge giving course and speed commands As was usually done a harbor pilot guided the tanker through a narrow waterway about 7 miles 11 km out of the port Hazelwood came to the bridge shortly after 11 p m before the pilot left the ship Hazelwood soon saw on radar that large chunks of ice had drifted into the path that he would normally take to reach the open sea The ice had broken off the nearby Columbia Glacier The captain contacted the U S Coast Guard’s Vessel Tracking Center in Valdez to explain the situation The center followed the movement of all ships coming into and leaving Valdez The center gave Hazelwood permission to use the sea-lane that ships normally used to enter the harbor After a while Hazelwood left the bridge leaving third mate Gregory Cousins in charge of putting the ship back on its usual course once it passed the ice But something went wrong as the huge ship cut through the waters of Prince William Sound Lookout Maureen Jones entered the bridge and told Cousins the ship was mistakenly on the wrong side of a buoy light Cousins ordered a shift in course to try to get on the right side of the buoy but the tanker could not respond quickly enough Just after midnight on March 24 Good Friday Cousins called down to Hazelwood’s cabin Sir the third mate said I think we have a serious navigational problem 3 Still on the phone Cousins felt a series of bumps as the steel hull of the ship smashed into the rocks of Bligh Reef The sailors quickly realized that their ship was aground They and Hazelwood also soon discovered that the collision had ripped holes in the ship’s hull Millions of gallons of Prudhoe Bay oil were now flooding into Prince William Sound
