Mar 28, 2008

Cosco Busan probe shifts

Coast Guard: At least 4 other ships waited out heavy fog

By ERICA WERNER / Associated Press

The Cosco Busan was the only big ship to get under way the morning it sideswiped the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, as at least four other large vessels waited out the heavy fog, the Coast Guard said Thursday.

The decision of the Cosco Busan's crew and pilot to get moving despite the weather is a focus of the Coast Guard's investigation into the Nov. 7 collision that spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into the Bay's fragile ecosystem.

With visibility less than a quarter-mile, pilots and crew on the other four ships "deemed it prudent not to get under way until visibility improved," Rear Adm. Craig Bone, the Coast Guard commander for California, told reporters Thursday in a preliminary assessment of the accident.

"These human decisions are critical elements to causal factors of this casualty," Bone said.

Bone also said the Coast Guard has instituted a policy in the Port of San Francisco prohibiting ships larger than 1,600 gross tons from traveling in nine areas of the Bay when port visibility is less than a half-mile. The Cosco Busan was more than 65,000 gross tons.

The ongoing Coast Guard investigation is one of several. Bone disclosed some information learned and preliminary steps being taken, but declined to reveal other details or assign blame for the decision to start the ship that morning. He said such a decision could be made by a ship's pilot along with its master and sometimes also the shipping company.

The Cosco Busan's pilot, Capt. John Cota, has been charged with criminal negligence and breaking environmental laws, and pleaded not guilty earlier this month. He's the only person charged so far in the incident. In citing human error, Bone noted that Cota wasn't the only one aboard the ship that morning.

Bone said that in addition to the new restrictions on travel in poor weather, the Coast Guard will be encouraging pilots, whose job is to guide ships in local ports, to carry their own laptops with navigational charts. Navigational devices can vary from ship to ship, and Cota has said the radar on the Cosco Busan was unreliable, and there was confusion about symbols on at least one of the navigational charts, his attorney Jeff Bornstein said Thursday. Cota didn't have a laptop with him.

The Coast Guard also played, for the first time, audio of the communications between Cota and the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Service in the moments before and after the crash. Written transcripts of the communications already had been made public.

On the audio, the traffic service can be heard questioning the cargo ship's heading as it appears off-course for the opening in the Bay Bridge called the Delta-Echo span. Cota tries to correct course but it's too late.

"Traffic, we just touched the Delta span," he can be heard to say after the vessel hits the bridge. Cota quickly followed up that understated comment with a phone call to the Coast Guard where he reported that the ship had hit the bridge and knocked off a portion of its fendering system, Bone said.

Bone also said investigators are "particularly alert to the speed this vessel proceeded on" which officials have said was possibly too fast. The ship was going 11 knots before slowing as it approached the bridge.

The Coast Guard displayed weather video from the time of the accident showing fog so heavy almost nothing was visible.

A report from the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department is due out next month and the National Transportation Safety Board is also holding a hearing next month. A Justice Department investigation is ongoing, along with congressional probes.