Firespill (9 page)

Cronkite again. “Our reporter in Juneau, Alaska, tells us that if the northerly winds increase—as the forecast for the area promises—then the firespill could threaten the entire Pacific coastline. While the slick would normally be swept northwards by the Alaskan Current, these winds could push much of it southwards, since wind rather than currents is the prime mover of spills. The possible extent of the fire can be approximated by comparing it with a recent spill of only ten thousand gallons in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This covered an area one hundred miles in diameter in only twenty-four hours—a rate of spread of almost three feet per second. The Alaska spill is sixty thousand times as big—and burning. The flames, experts explain, will reduce both the viscosity of the oil and the surface tension of the sea. This makes it much easier for the oil to spread even faster. In addition, the firespill will soon join up with and so ignite a particularly heavily polluted area off Sitka. The sea here is filled with oil, natural seepage from the sea bottom as well as oil from ships which have used the area as a dumping ground for bilge waste, contrary to international law. If the firespill is not stopped, in seven days it could cover an area equal to that of Florida. Over 55, 000 square miles.”

The President got up from his chair. “Christ—” he began, then turned to Jean Roche. “That’s enough.”

She turned the set off. The President took a fresh cup of coffee from an aide and asked no one in particular, “Are they right about that destroyer—did it start the fire?”

Henricks already had the report in his hand. “Don’t know, Mr. President. It seems the only logical answer, although someone at EPA says that it could just as easily have been a lightning strike. As Cronkite said, the weather is about to change. A ship out there is like a tree in a desert. If lightning hits the ship itself, no great problem, but the destroyer could have attracted lightning around her. Maybe that’s what set it off.”

The President sighed and looked down at his coffee cup. “How many men?”

Henricks glanced at the file again. “On the destroyer? Two hundred and fifty, sir. It was on CBS after the main report—a news flash.”

The President looked up at Jean, then at Henricks. “Sweet Jesus. What about our tanker?”

An aide whispered to Henricks and handed him a telex message. Henricks looked grave. “Last report the navy had from the Russians says that they only picked up one survivor.”

The President stirred his coffee and asked quietly, “And the Russians?”

“Last we heard they radioed the Coast Guard that they were listing badly but still afloat. Trouble is, we haven’t been able to contact them for several hours. We’re still trying. They’re probably sending whatever messages they can direct to the Soviet Union—in code, knowing the Ruskies. The navy suggests we contact Moscow if we want to know any more.”

“All right. Have someone call Premier Krestinsky.”

“Hot line?” asked Henricks.

“No, no. Don’t want to scare anyone. Priority will do. I just want to convey our official condolences—and maybe there’s just a chance that a few more of our boys have been picked up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within five minutes the Kremlin was on the line.

“Mr. Premier.”

“Mr. President.”

The Russian Premier’s deep, gravelly voice was followed by that of his interpreter.

“Mr. President, I am very grieved to hear of the loss of so many Americans aboard the tanker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Premier. I would like to express my regrets also at the danger your people are in and—”

Krestinsky’s voice came on the line. The Russian interpreter spoke. “Excuse us for a moment please, Mr. President.”

Sutherland switched over to a direct, noninterference line to his standby interpreter. “What’s the trouble?”

“Apparently there’s some confusion over who you meant by their ‘people, ’ Mr. President.”

Sutherland looked puzzled. “I mean their sailors.”

The green light showed that the Russian interpreter was back on the line. “Mr. President, Premier Krestinsky thanks you very much for your concern but wonders if you have been fully apprised of the situation?”

Sutherland looked around questioningly at his aides. “I don’t understand.”

The Russian was talking more slowly now. “Mr. President, some hours ago the
Sakhalin
sent a final message. A fire wave was advancing upon her.” The Premier paused. “We presume she is gone.”

There was a silence on the line. Then Sutherland spoke. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Last report we had—well, we didn’t know. We would have sent in aircraft —helicopters—but as you probably know, the fog made that impossible.”

“Of course. The Premier wishes to thank you nevertheless.” There was a slight pause before the interpreter added quickly, “The Premier also suggests that at some later date we might investigate what has gone amiss. He is sure that we would all be interested in improving safety measures to prevent additional environmental accidents.”

The President readily agreed, arid there the conversation ended—clearly badly. Sutherland had detected a hint of accusation in the Russians’ closing suggestion, as if somehow the Americans were being held accountable for the collision. Both leaders knew worldwide repercussions would come out of this. But the President decided that this was not the time to make these Soviet innuendos an issue. After all, the disaster had struck both sides. Blame would have to wait. Besides, he thought, he was probably overreacting to the Russians because the spill had started in North American waters, and more particularly because the U.S. destroyer might very well have set fire to the whole mess. In any event, he didn’t expect the Russians to help with either fighting the fire or trying to clean up. Right now, that was strictly a North American problem—the U.S.’s job, with what little help the Canadians could offer. If they offered.

One thing was certain: no country in the world, including the U.S., was even halfway prepared for what had to be faced now. The only really world-shattering problems that had struck him as remotely possible during his term of office were related almost exclusively to threats to world peace. God, the possibility of something like this hadn’t even entered his mind. He walked over to the map and stood dwarfed by the Pacific Ocean. He looked closely at the Alexander Archipelago, which stretched down beside the Alaskan Panhandle. “Well, Jean, what do the Joint Chiefs say we can do about this fuck up?”

Jean gathered a sheaf of notes by her briefcase. “Not very much, Mr. President. It seems that any kind of extinguishing operation is out of the question. We could send fireboats, but even if they could go close enough, there’s not much they could do. The trouble is that there’s a lot of high octane, aircraft fuel, naphtha—all kinds of volatile stuff in among the oil. At one time tankers carried only one type of oil on each run; now they carry different types in different tanks. That’s the problem. Normally the crude would be hard to set alight—it would just sludge around—but most refined oils vaporize quickly, and once they’re on fire they evaporate any inhibiting water content in the crude. There’s so much gasoline and high octane in this spill that after burning awhile it could raise the crude to its flash point and start it burning. If that happens, we’re in real trouble. It’s all but impossible to extinguish. We’d need a second flood.”

The President sipped his coffee and stared up at the map, recalling what Cronkite had said about the possibility of the whole length of the western seaboard being set ablaze. “This fire is just a primer, then?”

“Yes, sir. It could bum out in hours, but the crude could bum for days once it’s started—months at the tanker site. Besides, oil from the tankers is just part of it; there’s lots more floating around from other sources.” Jean flicked over a leaf of her memo pad. “The Canadians have offered their water bombers, but they aren’t any use in a fire this size. Anyway, the smoke has put large areas in a condition of near-zero visibility. The Coast Guard ships can’t do anything. At the very most they could only reach the perimeter—if the heat let them.”

“Won’t that weather dampen it? I mean, contain it somehow, at least for a while?”

“No, sir, not a fire this size—probably make things worse. Can’t see what we’re doing. It may clear later on, but it’s like soup out there right now.”

“Is there any other shipping in the area?”

A phone rang and Henricks picked it up. “Hello, Henricks here. Yes, Admiral…”

As he spoke, Jean answered the President. “We’re waiting on shipping reports now, Mr. President.”

“Jean, if by some miracle we do manage to control this fire, is there any possibility of a half-decent cleanup?”

“TOVALOP says no, Mr. President.”

“Tovalop—who’s he?”

“It’s the Tanker Owners’ Voluntary Agreement on Liability for Oil Pollution.”

The President grunted, “Sounds like a disease.” There were a few grim laughs. “What do they suggest—anything?”

Jean flipped over several of her Environmental Protection Agency charts hanging from a nearby stand. “First thing we have to do is to corral and contain the oil, possibly with booms. Then the oil has to be either vacuumed up or soaked up with straw.”

The President was incredulous. “You mean the EPA hasn’t advanced beyond
straw?”

Jean Roche felt duty-bound to protect her organization. “No, it’s still about the best the EPA knows of, or anybody else for that matter. We can spray on an absorbent, but the problem is, before you can use it you have to extinguish the fire completely; otherwise it can act as a wick in the crude and help it to bum.”

“How big a spill can we handle?”

“There’s a sweeping, skimming, and separating procedure which also stores the oil, called Vacusponge. It can vacuum a hundred and fifty acres every hour, but its operation is limited by eight-foot waves.”

“How long would Vac-whatever-it-is take to clear this spill?”

Jean Roche hesitated. “In a relatively calm sea, about a hundred years, Mr. President.”

The President shook his head in exasperation. “Terrific. Well, can we use these chemical dispersant things?”

Jean consulted her notebook. “Not for a spill this big, sir. On the
Torrey Canyon
spill, which was nothing compared to this, they had to use seven hundred thousand gallons to disperse the oil enough for the bacteria to attack it and break it down. In any case,” she went on, “the best dispersal detergents are the most aromatic. But they’re also the most poisonous. If we used them, the toxicity would be awfully high.”

“How high?” asked the President.

“High enough to kill everything else in the sea. We don’t have exact figures, but we do know that ten parts of detergent per million for one hour is fatal for most plankton, which are the base of the food chain and oxygen production. If it got into the coastal inlets, it would wipe out local oceanic industries.”

The President turned and flipped over another diagram. “Not to mention the people.”

She blushed, chastened. “Of course, sir.”

The President was tired. Apart from having just played squash with General Oster, he had been up since 6:00 A.M. He looked at the bank of digital clocks. It was 6:30 P.M. in Washington, 3:30 P.M. in the spill area. A messenger arrived and handed Jean a package. She tore it open, clipped the film cassette it contained into the automatic projector, and pressed the “On” button. The room lights dimmed and the map disappeared into the high ceiling, to be replaced by the white beaded screen. The NASA satellite pictures showed the vastness of the spill, which could be seen spreading like a black amoeba over the turquoise blue sea. Then suddenly the sea was blotted out by towering columns of tar-black smoke, curling and writhing within themselves as they climbed in vengeful spirals to challenge the white cumulonimbus which lay at the higher levels.

As the satellite sped towards North America, passing above intermittent cloud cover over the Aleutians, the closeup lens zoomed in towards the red black heart of the firespill, which now looked dangerously close not only to the islands of the Alexander Archipelago but to the British Columbia-Alaska mainland which lay immediately behind them. From Juneau in the north to Stewart a hundred and fifty miles to the south, the whole Panhandle was threatened. Leaping in a kind of mad unison, miles of orange red flame could be seen licking hundreds of feet into the dense smoke, reminding the President of childhood horror tales in which primordial creatures bent on destruction would rise out of a volcanic sea to devour the earth.

The ocean was covered in parts with white-dotted areas, as if confetti had been carelessly strewn about by some giant hand—conglomerations of tens of thousands of seabirds caught by the fumes, unable to travel fast enough or long enough to escape the fire, which had quickly robbed them of oxygen.

The film ended and the map reappeared. When the lights reached full intensity, the President sat still for a few seconds, his hands clasped together, staring at the blank screen. Then he rose from his chair, and peered closely at a chart of the Vacusponge process, which showed a mass of vacuum hoses running out from a boat, like some mechanical octopus, cleaning up a small, textbook spill. Henricks had just finished talking to the admiral as Sutherland asked, “Does anyone have the slightest idea what a cleanup might cost the taxpayers of this country?”

“We’re looking at about three billion dollars, Mr. President,” volunteered Jean. “The oil companies have cooperatives for spill liabilities, but TOVALOP sets a limit around fifty million. No one dreamed of anything this big.”

The President nodded, exasperated. “That’s all we need in an election year,” he said. “Whatever happened to all those special double-bottomed and double-sided tankers EPA was talking about?”

“One of the tankers—the
Kodiak
—was a double-bottomed ULCC, sir, but hit with that force—well, it doesn’t count for much.”

“ULCC?”

“Ultra Large Crude Carrier, sir.”

“Just call them ships.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President rubbed his forehead slowly as he tried to visualize how many of the huge tanks like those at the New Jersey refineries it would take to hold six hundred million gallons. But at the moment all he could comprehend with any clarity was what he had just seen. And soon that monstrous two thousand square miles of blazing spill would spread, leaping from spill to spill in the already heavily polluted sea, and become ten—twenty—times as big—and more if it wasn’t stopped. But how could they stop it? No one had experienced a spill anything like this. Sutherland wished he’d vetoed the bill which had allowed crude storage facilities to be built on the coast. They should have just stuck to the overland pipeline through Canada from Kitimat to Edmonton and then down to the lower forty-eight, instead of allowing million-ton supratankers as well. And he should never have authorized U.S. tankers to save fuel by traveling close to the coast instead of following the outer route. He looked about at the assembled aides. “How in hell is this possible?”