Cosco Busan, a Greek-owned container ship chartered by Hanjin Shipping, collided with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge spilling 58,000 gallons of fuel oil into the San Francisco Bay. The ship was on its way to Busan.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency and recovery teams are trying to clean up the spill. However, the prognosis doesn’t look good. There’s also criticism regarding the USCG’s response to the spill.
All in all, the following quote from Gov. Schwarzenegger pretty much sums it up:
“How does a ship, with that much space available, how does a ship hit the bridge?”
So far, no official word from Hanjin Shipping regarding the oil spill. Although it may be a good idea for Hanjin to respond quickly to this incident considering that the name of the company is emblazoned in big white letters on the side of the ship in question.
31 Comments
“How does a ship, with that much space available, how does a ship hit the bridge?”
Take One Korean Captain, add one or more bottles of soju, stir w/ a little bonjak music, et voila
I hope mins gets around to clarifying who the Captain is (hint: he’s not Korean). This bit of information seems especially pertinent here.
I hope the environment recovers as soon as possible.
Except that, according to the linked news report, the captain of the vessel at the time of the incident wasn’t Korean. Per the article, ‘[t]he pilot, Capt. John Cota, was one of the most experienced of the seamen who guide massive ships through the bay’s treacherous waters’.
Throughout the world, locally-operating pilots are used to navigate ships both in and out of ports and dangerous waterways, precisiely to avoid these types of incidents. It’s the pilot, and not the ship’s captain, who’ll be on the hook for this.
http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....home-local
I guess Sperwer wrote a little too hastily… and revealed his ugly, presumptuous side.
Anyway, guy’s name is John Cota, age 59, American, and an experience sailor with 99.95% success ratio.
“Meanwhile, the investigation into the cause of the accident continued as details emerged about the harbor captain who was piloting the vessel.”
Harbor captain? does that mean he was the pilot or the captain of the ship?
“Although it may be a good idea for Hanjin to respond quickly to this incident considering that the name of the company is emblazoned in big white letters on the side of the ship in question.”
Wanna bet most people think Hanjin is a Japanese company, just like Samsung?
I was going to say this too — the task of getting the ship into the harbor belongs to the pilot, a locally-based professional who builds intimate knowledge of local conditions.
One report states that the crash was likely due to a communication error between Cota and the ship’s crew:
http://ap.google.com/article/A.....AD8SR5HL80
Although the ship is painted in Hanjin colors, it’s Greek owned (something I stated in the opening sentence) which obviously means that the Captain is not Korean. So, honestly, I didn’t expect the nationality of the Captain to become an issue here.
HT to abcdefg for clarifying the nationality of the ship’s crew.
Yeah, that ignorant blurt out by Spewer. Not cool.
“So, honestly, I didn’t expect the nationality of the Captain to become an issue here.”
It does, to Korean men bashers. They salivate when they think some Korean screwed up.
I’m just glad Spewer didn’t mention slaves and prostitutes in the process, to be honest.
This is a sad situation. Hope it gets cleaned up with the least possible damage to the environment.
Horrible news for the ecosystem around the bay area, but this may be a good news politically for the Governator (and I use that word without sarcasm or negative tone… frankly I don’t really remember how to spell his last name :-P) — if he handles this correctly, it would be the second disaster he has handled efficiently in less than a month.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard in the area may face some trouble for their apparently slow response time.
As for Mr. Cota, I think they’re just writing it off as human error - does that mean there’s no liability for him?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21722855/
‘Take One Korean Captain, add one or more bottles of soju, stir w/ a little bonjak music, et voila.’ spewee
well, spew, guess you got shut up, did’nt you now? don’t you get tired of always being wrong?
‘So, honestly, I didn’t expect the nationality of the Captain to become an issue here.’ mins
BS! that’s why you brought it up.
Here seems to be a language barrier.
Captain John Cota is a captain of what? Captain of the ship (선장, 船長)?
But, gbnhj and brendon say about pilot (도선사, (導船士), a really highly paid jobber. I think they may be right.
The name of the ship is Cosco Busan — Oh, Busan — but the nationality of the ship is Greek. Do you figure it out? So, I guess it’s the vessel of flag of convenience. (I may guess wrongfully.) Reasons are many for this kind of flag of convenience. Anyway, Hanjin shipping company leased the ship and maybe its crew from a Greek company.
And there are an international treaty on the compensation for oil pollution damage and some funds for it, the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds.
I don’t get it. It’s Greek owned, but Cosco is a Chinese company. Maybe it was an old ship.
If Korea-based company A owns a ship B, ths ship’s nationality is Korea. But, A wants the ship’ nationatilty to be another country C for some reasons. Then, A makes a (paper) company D in C, and D owns B. B hoists C’ flag. So, A owns D and D owns B.
A is a shipping company, but cargo flow would not be even. A needs not to own all the vessels needed at the time of high-demand season. So, A makes ship charter contract or ship lease contract to another shipping company or ship lease company.
Korea-based company A and China-based company E make a joint company F in Greece. F owns a ship G. Then, A & B owns F, and Greek company F owns G.
Rough explanation. 헥.헥.
I wonder from which the word Busan is derived.
Correction:
Then, A & E owns F, and Greek company F owns G.
Aout ship pilot:
http://tinyurl.com/ytghpy
Quick bit of info: pilots are licensed captains, and control of vessels is relinquished to them temporarily by ship’s captains, in order for them to perform the task of navigating vessels through dangerous or highly trafficked areas.
Also, it is not at all unusual for vessels to be flagged under a different nation from the one in which the owners are incorporated. Likewise, ships may be crewed by merchantmen of many different nationalities - many Philipinos work in this industry. And both of these occur due to the owner’s need to reduce costs.
I checked a real news source (one you have to pay thousands of dollars a year for) and here are the facts:
Ownership: Synergy Maritime (Greece)
Management: Synergy Maritime
Charterer: Hanjin Shipping
Flag: Hong Kong
Money Quote: Hanjin spokesperson Sonya Cho said: “We have chartered the vessel from Synergy Maritime of Greece, which also manages the ship. The incident happened while the pilot was on board guiding the ship out of that harbour. We are not responsible in any way for the accident.”
which of course brings us back full circle to mins’ original post.
Here in Northern California the story is a fairly big one (headline story on the front page of the Thursday 8 Nov (US time) San Francisco Chronicle, the major SF newspaper). “Sfgate.com” is their web site and has a lot of stories that are locally originated by their own reporting: type in “oil spill” in their search space.
I saw the name “Hanjin” on the side of the ship in the SF Chronicle front page color picture, thought it looked Korean but there was certainly no blame attached to Korea in any way in the story. In fact Korea was only mentioned at the end of the article on the inside portion of the story and it was clearly explained that Hanjin was merely the South Korean chartering company who owned the container cargo, not the ship.
Follow-up coverage on TV is focusing mainly on the oil blobs reaching the shore and the efforts of volunteers to assist in picking them up. No blame is being attached to Korea in any way.
@ pawikirogi
“‘So, honestly, I didn’t expect the nationality of the Captain to become an issue here.’ mins
BS! that’s why you brought it up.”
No, actually Sperwer brought it up, not mins0306. Then he was corrected in that the harbor captain was not a drunk Korean dancing to bbongjak (humor reflecting one’s nasty beliefs, or just expressing one’s nasty beliefs, Sperwer?), but an experienced American pilot/captain who have guided ships successfully for past 25 years.
It seems that miscommunication between whoever the spotter was and the harbor captain was the main cause of this accident. (But not because of language barrier since all the officers are required to speak English)
@ Paul H.
My geographically-ignorant Arizonan side that thinks that San Francisco is right next to Los Angeles got confused when you said Northern California ^^;;;
Do you live near the area? Maybe you can take pictures and Robert can let you post them here as a guest blogger?
Bum, if I remember my own geography correctly, California is the third biggest state in the union is terms of square miles. So “northern California” can be a very inexact term as it is used by most residents.
But it always includes the very far north of the state (close to Oregon). That’s where I am, approx 280 miles north of San Francisco (I think that’s what’s on the green interstate hiway distances sign just south of town, here in Eureka, Humboldt county).
So I can’t get you personal pictures, nor am I readily able to get you links to any on-line (old slow computer which won’t load them, plus I tend to be a slow poster anyway because I prefer to try and check my facts).
However, I can tell you that the local TV news story I saw the other night (maybe Friday night US time) had a cameraman and reporter strolling up and down a sandy beach. Didn’t catch which one, but it sure reminded me of “Ocean” Beach (a Calif state park?) which is “just around the southern corner” of the Golden Gate (immediately south of the “Cliff House” for anyone who knows their SF geography). My mother lived in an apartment near there for years so I’m familiar with the area.
On the place the cameraman panned in on for a close-up of the beach surface (like looking down at your feet and then out in front for a few yards), the oil was in individual clumps a few feet apart. Like indiv piles of dog poop; if it got some loose sand on it you’d hardly notice it until you were close.
58,000 gallons of spilled oil (the last estimate I saw, haven’t checked in about 24 hours or so to see if that’s been updated/changed) — while a lot — is very far from being the umpteen gazillion gallons (can’t remember the exact figure) of the Exxon Valdez spill. So if you’ve got images of totally blackened and coated Alaskan beaches/coastal rocks in mind — rest easy, that’s not the case here.
I haven’t checked the local news/TV stories yet today (Sunday US), but based on what I saw the other night on TV, I’m going to guess probably lots of civic-minded volunteers are out along the bay & also the ocean side of SF/Marin, picking up individual blobs of congealed tar and putting them in plastic small grocery bags for turn in at pickup points later.
The Coast Guard/EPA/various state/federal agencies are putting out the mandatory warnings about only trained volunteers handling hazardous substances, but I reckon that as long as you use latex gloves and don’t hold the stuff up to your nose for deep inhalation — and don’t take it home for the kids to play with — there’s no danger.
I’m not a youtube type of guy but I imagine there must be dozens of videos there by now that can prove (or disprove) if I’m right in my surmise about all this.
I agree it is certainly irresponsible to blame “Korea” for this spill, but I do note that on the Korean radio news reports I heard on the day of the spill, the reporters made note of the fact that the vessel had been chartered by Hanjin.
could it be totally debasing and out of question for Sperwer to apologize to Koreans across the globe for his automatic soju bong jak comment on how this was caused probably by a Korean?
Nobody mentions or hints a ban about that one.
Oh, I forgot, that’s the way it is here.
Keep up the good fight, brother.
You and comrade jk will prevail against “The Man” one bright day.
Oh, sweet Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-sus~~~~~~~~~~~~
@captbbq
How do you think the ship could have Hong Kong flag?
See this page of Synergy Maritime
http://www.synergyship.com/fleetlist.html
All flags are Panama. Panama is the most favored country as the nation of ships. Hong Kong is favored, too. Greece is not.
At first, I wondered why the ship is owned in Greece, for Greek company itself avoids the flag of Greece. Greece is the place of ship mending, if I remember correctly what I hear at my international trade class or maritime class. It may be common that a ship is owned in a country and managed in another country, but the real owner is in the 3rd country.
Articles I read wrote “Greece-owned…”, so I premised Cosco Busan is owned in Greece. IMO, it needs more companies including a nominal company in Hong Kong.