Major pollution incidents usually result in legislative and/or regulatory actions to help prevent or minimize the chance of similar events occurring in the future.
For the towing sector, one of the lasting effects of the 1996 grounding of the tank barge North Cape and tug Scandia in southern Rhode Island and resulting major oil spill in Block Island Sound was the requirement for formal voyage planning.
Effective voyage planning, whether formal, informal or mandated, should include many variable factors that are carefully considered by vessel crews well before the first lines are taken in. At the top of the list should be weather. In the North Cape spill, weather was a major factor. The North Cape and Scandia left the dock even though an accurately forecasted powerful winter storm kept the rest of the region’s tug and barge fleet safely in port. Staying in port was a rare event, since back in the bad old days of the 1990s, and despite 1989’s Exxon Valdez spill, the conditions had to be pretty horrendous for dispatchers to ease off pressuring captains to sail.
Not surprisingly, the North Cape investigation determined that the voyage simply should never have taken place, given the weather forecast. But the tug captain and the owners of the tug Scandia, Eklof Marine, ignored the expected harsh weather conditions. When the tug caught fire off Point Judith, R.I., in the face of deteriorating weather, the safety shortcomings of the tug and barge were amplified and an avoidable incident became another needless black eye for the industry. Southern Rhode Island paid a very steep price for this unexplainably casual disregard. (The spill, 828,000 gals. of home heating oil, was the largest pollution incident in Rhode Island’s history, one that led to the closing of local fisheries.)
Change, no matter how sorely needed and beneficial, usually comes slowly. The need for proper voyage planning has existed since the invention of the dugout canoe and hasn’t lessened since.
Yet the lessons repeatedly taught by history still fail to sink in, as evidenced by the recent sad saga of the tug Charlene Hunt and its ill-fated tow of a scrapyard-bound cruise ship out of St. John’s, Newfoundland. The apparent disregard for the weather was cited in the incident report.
