Like the axe-murderer in a Wes Craven film, the New Carissa just keeps coming back--it's the ship that refuses to sink. Most of the fault for that--and for the accident in the first place--lies not with the weather (as the local media would have you think). In fact, the blame belongs to a lot of different folks.

First, there's the ship's captain. When the New Carissa ran aground in a storm on Feb. 4th, it was anchored in a shallow part of Coos Bay which is off-limits to ships that don't have state-licensed pilots on board (as the New Carissa didn't). Instead of pulling the anchor and turning out to sea when the storm first hit, the ship remained anchored in an unsafe area, awaiting the arrival of a pilot to take it into port. Two hours after dropping anchor, it ran aground on the beach and began to leak some of its 400,000 gallons of fuel. Testifying at a Coast Guard hearing on Feb. 24th, crew member Conrado Carlos said that the crew was never alerted to any danger and no alarm was sounded. A Coos Bay bar pilot also testified that if the New Carissa's captain, Benjamin Morgado, had radioed in to ask for advice, they would have told him to head out to sea. When called to testify, Capt. Morgado pleaded the Fifth.

As well he might, since he probably was unfamiliar with both the area and Oregon state law. Even worse, he might also have been consulting a guidebook published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The book, entitled "The United States Coast Pilot" recommends that large ships anchor in the very area where the New Carissa went aground, calling it a "good holding ground." Coos Bay pilots, on the other hand, routinely warn ships away from the area, especially when bad weather conditions prevail. One veteran Coos Bay pilot said: "We usually have one or two ships every winter that have difficulties in the same spot ... and all had the potential of following the New Carissa scenario."

The ship's owners are also a target of the Coast Guard investigation. The New Carissa was operating under a Panamanian flag--a flag of convenience--and Panama is notorious for allowing inexperienced crews to operate sub-standard ships. The Coast Guard routinely boards ships registered under the flags of certain countries with lax standards (Panama, China, Liberia, Cyprus, Russia, and others) to inspect for safety violations. Last year inspectors detained 364 ships (including 8 in Oregon) for gross safety violations; they were all later declared unfit for the sea. Such violations included: leaking oil and sewage, having a poorly trained crew, crew and officers flunking basic fire drills, unlicensed or unqualified officers running the ship, lack of the required number of crew members and officers to man the ship, and horrible living conditions for the crew (including nonpayment of wages and food infested with cockroaches and other vermin). Many ships are cited for lesser safety violations and put on a program of inspections every six months--although many of those ships fall through the cracks. The New Carissa was cited for three safety violations during an inspection in Seattle seven months ago, and the ship was due for its next inspection right after docking in Coos Bay. The New Carissa is not a rarity: of 2,000 ships that entered Oregon ports last year, the Coast Guard boarded 450 of them to run safety inspections--roughly 23% of the total ship traffic.

The Columbia River Bar Pilots also get some of the blame. At least one pilot noticed that the New Carissa was anchored in a dangerous area, but no one radioed out to the ship to tell Margado to leave. Yet another pilot claims that the bar pilots should--but don't--keep a helicopter ready to take licensed pilots out to ships during storms, as many ports in Australia and Europe do. Of course, the expense would be passed on to docking ships, and West Coast ports are engaged in a fierce competition to keep docking fees low to attract more ship traffic.

Aside from all that, the whole month-long saga has been a comedy of errors. First the ship beached, then it leaked, then some wise guys got the idea to blow it up in hopes that its heavy fuel oil would burn off. Needless to say, only the lighter stuff floating at the top of the fuel tanks burned; the other half remained, and the whole ship split into two pieces, disgorging 70,000 gallons of oil into the water and onto the beach. Then they tried to pump the oil out, but since it's winter and it's cold, the oil had congealed into the consistency of play-dough. So, seeing that the season's worst storm was going to blow in, some idiots decided to tow the bow section of the ship out to sea directly into the approaching hurricane, hoping to sink the damn thing 200 miles off the coast. But the cable, "an extra-tough, 10-inch thick, 1,100 yard tow rope flown in from the Netherlands," snapped in the storm--probably from rubbing against twisted metal on the New Carissa's bulkhead. We'll never know why they didn't use a chain, instead.

Free of its fetters, the amputated Carissa lurched northward and washed up on the beach at Waldport, 80 miles north of Coos Bay. About an hour after its arrival, sticky balls of tar began to wash up on the beach. About 130,000 gallons of fuel remain in the ship's tanks, ready to spill into the fragile Alsea Bay estuary.

It could be days or weeks before the New Carissa, whose stern section still remains in Coos Bay, can be hauled back out to sea. In the meantime, it continues to spill oil, doing incalculable damage to the Oregon coastline. The costs of the salvage and cleanup effort so far are $10 million and climbing. The federal government and the Oregon state government are paying the bill (i.e., it's coming out of our pockets), and they hope to get reimbursed by the ship's owners or their insurance company later. The record on such reimbursements, however, is not good: the government usually collects only 60 cents of every dollar spent on oil spill cleanups. And if the government can't prove the ship's owners and crew were at fault, then it will remain a "mystery spill," and the taxpayers will foot the whole bill.

Maria Tomchick