Oil Beginning To Wash Ashore On Mainland

NEAH BAY, Clallam County - A 50-mile-long patchy oil slick was poised just off some of Washington's most rugged, scenic and popular coast late yesterday.

Although the main body of thick oil remained offshore, the Coast Guard said oil was beginning to reach Washington's coast at Point of Arches and Cape Alava yesterday. Oil reached Tatoosh Island, northwest of Cape Flattery shortly before 8 p.m. Friday.

Volunteers have already rescued more than 170 oiled seabirds, mostly common mures, washing ashore between Cape Flattery and Cape Alava, 13 miles south. About a dozen birds have been found dead so far.

Except for authorized volunteers, the Park Service has closed the beach between the two capes.

"The potential is real catastrophic if the oil hits the Olympic beaches south of Cape Alava as well, but if it stops here (at Cape Alava) it will be less," said Doug Zimmer, a spokesman for the state Department of Wildlife.

Various government agencies yesterday continued to set up portable command posts around Coast Guard headquarters at Neah Bay as scores of government officials tried to lay plans to cope with the emergency caused by Monday's sinking of a fish processor, about 22 miles northwest of Cape Flattery.

The potential for catastrophe was demonstrated during the crystalline weather yesterday on a beautiful beach at Makah Bay as two blackened oily murres struggled in the surf.

Flapping their wings vainly to rid themselves of sticky oil, the birds flopped half blindly for the respite of the beach.

They were harbingers of a spreading oil spill poised one to three miles offshore.

The spill is still fed by the sunken wreck of the Japanese fish factory ship, Tenyo Maru.

The ship's hull, ruptured and resting more than 500 feet below the surface of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, continued yesterday to belch oil in bubbles that made rainbow rings and reeked of diesel.

At the wreck site, blossoms of oil belched to the surface at the rate of two to three a minute.

At Makah Bay, the end of a trail of oil and ship wreckage - ranging from drums to baled nets - two volunteers from nearby Forks, Clallam County, Ron Barnes and Kim Figlan, plunged waist-deep into the cold surf to rescue the two oiled murres.

"This one is so oiled, it may not make it," Figlan said of one of the shuddering birds, its eyes coated with oil.

The two took the birds to a rescue center near the bay, where other volunteers gave them a preliminary cleaning before transporting them to the Progressive Animal Welfare Society shelter in Lynnwood.

Supervising the work was Bobby Rose, a former Makah animal-control officer who has established her own bird sanctuary and organized her first bird rescue less than three years before, when the oil barge Nestucca ruptured and oiled the Pacific coast of Washington.

Rose figured her group saved perhaps 500 birds then, but said she is bitter at being faced with the same task again so soon.

"The Makah people do their eating on the beach," she said. "This is screwing up the food chain. Now we hear stories of many thousands of birds expected to wash ashore."

Rose said she was short on equipment and was running low of Pedialite, a high-nutrient liquid she feeds to the traumatized birds.

"If there's one thing that we need to get across," said Ned Currence, a Makah employee who was helping clean the Murres, "it's the need for an alternate energy source."

"The batting record of tankers coming into the Strait is good," said John Ides, a Makah commercial fisherman. "But this is a sign of what's going to happen again some day.

"The foreign crews don't understand English and don't understand what is going on."

The Tenyo Maru was not a tanker. But the Japanese ship was carrying an estimated 360,000 gallons of diesel and fuel oil when it was hit by a Chinese freighter in fog Monday, after the Chinese freighter failed to respond to radio messages from the Canadian coast guard.

Only one of the more than 80 people aboard the Tenyo Maru perished. Others were rescued by the freighter and fishing boats.

While volunteers hurriedly put together a makeshift bird rescue center in an old Neah Bay firehouse, state officials said the refusal of the Japanese to promise more than their legal liability of $2.5 million was slowing decision making on a more permanent bird-rescue center in Tacoma, Port Angeles or some other city.

Island Oil Spill Association, a bird rescue operation of Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, has been retained by owners of the sunken Japanese ship and was en route to Neah Bay to set up a center either there or elsewhere, said Zimmer of the state Wildlife Department. The group was established after the Nestucca spill in 1989.

Although it was contacted Monday, the group had not decided by yesterday afternoon where the permanent bird facilities would be.

"The funding issue is part of it," said Zimmer. He said more than $600,000 is available from a penalty paid by the Nestucca.

By Friday night, the Coast Guard had spent $114,000 to deal with the spill, according to Lt. Byron Black, assistant environmental marine chief. The Coast Guard had $500,000 immediately allocated from a fund set up as part of the national Oil Pollution Act of 1990. More money would be available as needed, Black said.

The Coast Guard will attempt to recover whatever money is spent on the clean-up from whoever is held responsible for the spill, Black said. That could be either the owners of the Japanese vessel carrying the oil or the Chinese vessel that hit the Japanese freighter - or both.

Canadian officials presently are conducting an investigation into who was at fault for the collision.

Meanwhile, Zimmer and Makah tribal authorities asked volunteers to wait before rushing to Neah Bay because there were few amenities and little lodging for them and because the primary bird rescue center will be established elsewhere.

Zimmer said a toll-free number to handle volunteers should be operating in the next two days.

Strengthening winds yesterday afternoon were believed likely to push the oil onto the beaches of Makah Bay by late last night or early today. But in the meantime, relatively few of the thousands of birds offshore appear to have been caught in the oil.

Like Alaska's Prince William Sound that was stained by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Washington's coast at risk in this latest oiling is a place of spectacular scenery.

Birds yesterday crowded rock towers just off the shoreline. Beds of red kelp, some already clogged with drifting oil, surged in the waves that crashed against the sculpted cliffs of Cape Flattery.

Two bald eagles drifted along the shore. The nearest large body of oil remained about two miles off the beaches between Cape Flattery and Point of Arches as two 70-foot oil-skimming vessels worked to gather some of the spill.

By late yesterday, the skimmers had collected nearly 21,000 gallons of mixed oil and water.

At a briefing yesterday, Coast Guard Lt. Cdr. Jim Watson said about 100,000 sea birds, 250 sea otters, and sea lions and seals live in the coastline area of Olympic National Park.

A typical rescue was a single oiled murre found by charter boat captain John Gaskell of Neah Bay on a fishing expedition across the Strait. "He was the only one we saw," Gaskell said. "He came up to the boat and wanted in."

Survival rates of rescued birds have been poor, often below 30 percent because of the severe stress caused by the oil and the handling by humans.

From the air yesterday, the spill seemed sprawling as a helicopter looped over one of the brown and gray patches, perhaps a mile in length.

Deborah Simecek-Beatty, of the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sighed. "Here we go," the veteran of many oil spills said.

On one bundle of floating oily net miles from shore, a single oily bird flapped forlornly.

The skimmer Arctic Tern greedily followed a ribbon of brown oil, making at least a dent in the spill.

But the two skimmers, apparently the only ones available that are equipped to operate on the open ocean, were little match for the immensity of the slick.

There was some good news. The area nearest the oil is primarily either wave-pounded cliffs that tend to wash themselves or sand beaches that are easier to clean than rocky ones.

Some of the kelp beds were acting like natural oil booms.

"The kelp acts like a natural barrier," said John Wiechert, manager of the Clean Sound Cooperative which is in charge of cleaning up the spill.

And Washington's coast seemed to demonstrate quick recovery from the Nestucca spill.

"Within a year, even in the most hard-hit areas, it was difficult to see evidence of the oil spill, said Howard Yanish, the west district ranger of Olympic National Park.

But authorities said that if westerly winds pushed a lot of oil shoreward south past Cape Alava, it could produce a slaughter of birds and sea life.

-- Times staff reporter Nancy Montgomery and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

NO VOLUNTEERS

Authorities have asked volunteers to wait before rushing to the Neah Bay area to help with wildlife rescue and beach cleanup because there are few amenities and little lodging available. In addition, officials expect to establish the primary bird-rescue center somewhere other than Neah Bay.

STATE'S SPILLS

March 12, 1964: 1.25 million gallons of gas and diesel: Spill from grounded fuel barge near Moclips.

Jan. 6, 1991: 600,000 gallons of oil: Pipeline spill at the U.S. Oil and Refining Co. in Tacoma.

Dec. 21, 1985: 239,000 gallons of oil: Arco Anchorage tanker runs aground near Port Angeles.

Dec. 23, 1988: 231,000 gallons of oil: The barge Nestucca leaks after a collision with a tugboat.

March 19, 1984: 210,000 gallons of oil: Mobil tanker runs aground on the Columbia River.

April 26, 1971: 200,000 gallons of oil: Valve left open by loading barge at Texaco refinery in Anacortes.

Feb. 22, 1991: 200,000 gallons of oil: Pump breaks at a Texaco refinery near Anacortes.

Aug. 30, 1990: 176,000 gallons of oil: Storage tank spills at the Chevron Richmond Beach asphalt plant.

OIL SLICK

The Japanese fish factory ship, Tenyo Maru, sank here last Monday with an estimated 360,000 gallons of diesel and fuel oil on board. The ship is under 500 feet of water and continues to leak oil.

Some oil washed ashore on Cape Alava yesterday, and beaches have been closed to the public north from here to Neah Bay.

Oil washed ashore at Tatoosh Island Friday.