At 12 26 a m Hazelwood radioed the Coast Guard to say the Exxon Valdez was aground He added And ah evidently we’re leaking some oil and we’re gonna be here for awhile 4 Hazelwood tried to rock the ship off the reef though that had its own dangers A computer report showed that the ship could sink without the rocks holding it up Hazelwood finally gave up trying to free the ship as more oil poured out of its holds Through holes in its smashed steel hull the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled millions of gallons of oil into Prince William Sound News of the crash and oil spill spread to all the organizations responsible for preventing such a spill and cleaning one up if one did occur Along with the Coast Guard other U S officials soon knew about the situation at Bligh Reef So did environmental agencies in Alaska and officials at the pipeline company and at Exxon’s headquarters in Houston Texas
The spilled oil damaged more than 1,000 miles 1,600 km of shoreline Around 3 a m two Coast Guard officers and Dan Lawn of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation DEC headed out to Bligh Reef Even before reaching the ship Lawn could smell the strong foul odor of the oil Nearing the Exxon Valdez Lawn saw oil bubbling on the water’s surface Like Ott and other Alaskans who lived in and near Valdez he had feared that a major oil spill would one day threaten the environment around Prince William Sound Now it seemed to have happened But he didn’t know what Exxon officials in Houston did Thanks to computer reports sent directly from the ship the company realized it was facing the worst oil spill in U S history While Lawn didn’t know the full extent of the spill he knew that Alyeska was slow to respond Under contingency plans on file with the Alaska DEC the company was supposed to send equipment to contain a spill within five hours of an accident As that deadline approached no cleanup ships were in sight Acting quickly was especially important in this case Alyeska needed to get the remaining oil off the ship a process called lightering With some of the oil already gone the ship was unevenly balanced on the reef The Coast Guard
feared that the Exxon Valdez could break apart releasing more oil into the water ANOTHER GOOD FRIDAY DISASTER Some longtime residents of Valdez woke up on March 24 1989 and thought back to another tragedy that took place on a Good Friday Twenty-five years earlier Good Friday had fallen on March 27 Around 5 30 p m that day in 1964 an earthquake centered about 50 miles 80 km west of Valdez shook the region On the Richter scale which was used to measure the strength of earthquakes the quake registered 9 2 the second most powerful ever recorded anywhere in the world In some places buildings shook for more than four minutes The effects of the quake were felt across the United States where it stirred up water in lakes and rivers in almost every state The earthquake and a tsunami that it caused killed 129 people In Valdez the quake destroyed the town’s harbor and downtown area The town was rebuilt on more solid ground In some places along Prince William Sound the land rose 38 feet 11 5 m while in other places it sank 8 feet 2 5 m In some places where the land went up the water became too shallow for boats which meant fishers could no longer work in those waters A tsunami destroyed Valdez’s waterfront and a fire swept through the city in March 1964 At the Alyeska terminal in Valdez workers struggled to get the necessary
equipment out to the spill site A barge kept there for cleaning up spills was damaged and out of the water Snow covered some of the equipment and workers had to search for it And only one worker at the terminal that night could drive a forklift slowing the process of moving equipment onto boats Lawn called the terminal twice to find out when the equipment was coming They told me they were coming that they had all the stuff coming and they’d be right out there 5 he said later And we waited and we waited and we waited and we waited The first ship to reach the Exxon Valdez carrying lightering equipment arrived just after noon on March 24 The containment equipment began arriving several hours later By then the residents of Valdez and surrounding towns knew that something terrible had happened at Bligh Reef Some of them first heard about the spill from friends and relatives on the East Coast of the United States where New York-based news stations were reporting about the spill Alaska Governor Steve Cowper learned about the spill at 7 30 a m and quickly left his home in Fairbanks to go to Valdez Flying over the spill he thought Boy this is the worst mess I’ve ever seen 6
