The International Maritime Organization saw the Cosco Busan oil spill coming: Last year, it banned new ships from being built with their fuel tanks along the hull beginning in 2010.
In effect, the U.N. agency determined that increasingly large, fast ships that carry as much fuel as a small oil tanker should not carry that fuel along the side of the vessel, directly behind a single-layer hull.
One University of California-Berkeley engineering professor compared the design to the Ford Pinto, the 1970s car that gained a reputation for gasoline tanks that could explode in rear-end accidents.
"I think the Pinto is the perfect example," said Bob Bea, who is also a former oil tanker captain. "We need to recall them and retrofit. Put them (fuel tanks) inside."
Built in 2001, the Cosco Busan is among the growing number of bigger, faster container ships that have "winged tanks" - fuel tanks arrayed along the sides of the ship.
The International Maritime Organization convention, adopted in March 2006, requires that by 2010 all new ships traveling internationally with an oil fuel capacity of 600 cubic meters or more must have their fuel tanks deeper inside the ship and behind two walls. That rule affects most large commercial ships, and would have affected the Cosco Busan.
Coast Guard officials responded late Friday to questions about a two-minute gap between the Vessel Traffic Service's last transmission to the ship and the pilot's radio message that the ship had touched the bridge.
Questions have been raised about whether the Coast Guard could have done more to prevent the collision.
A Coast Guard spokesman said the traffic service's radar systems could not have shown in close enough detail that the cargo ship was about to sideswipe a tower of the Bay Bridge. The pilot's attorney has said the ship's radar had become distorted and the pilot had resorted to electronic charts, which were confusing.
"He was left hanging in the fog," said John Meadows, the pilot's attorney. He disputed the Coast Guard's contention that traffic service's radar didn't have the level of detail to show the protective fender around the bridge's towers and possibly help prevent a collision.
The collision tore a gash in the hull, breaching a fuel tank, and in less than an hour spilled 58,000 gallons of tar-like bunker fuel into the bay.
It could have been far worse. The ship was carrying about 1 million gallons of fuel and has a fuel capacity of 1.8 million gallons, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
As of Friday afternoon, 1,400 workers continued to clean bay and coastal beaches. More than 1,000 dead birds have been found, though not all of those deaths may be spill-related, and 29 percent of the oil has been recovered, the Coast Guard reported.
After the 1989 oil spill from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, Congress required all oil tankers that sail in U.S. waters to have double hulls, so that if the outer hull is breached, the oil will still be contained in the ship. The law affected all new tankers and it required retrofits or phase-outs of all older tankers by 2015.
The International Maritime Organization convention applies only to new ships, or those that undergo major modifications. It does not phase out winged tanks, so it's likely winged-tank container ships will be around for decades.
"We have a fleet full of those damn things out there, and they are exposed and so are we," Bea said.
The Cosco Busan is capable of carrying 5,500 20-foot containers, about half the capacity of the world's largest container ships, which carry the equivalent of trains 70 miles long across oceans at 25 knots, or about 30 miles per hour.
That means the ships have to carry a phenomenal amount of bunker fuel, the low-quality residue of oil refining operations.
"They now pose essentially the same threat as oil tankers that we've just double-hulled," said U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez.
The tarry goo that spilled from the Cosco Busan's fuel tank last week is also coming under fire from regulators, lawmakers and environmentalists because of how badly it can foul a beach and the amount of soot and sulfur it puts into the air. Next year, the California Air Resources Board is expected to consider banning the use of bunker fuel completely within three miles of the coast.
Mishaps are rare, despite the more than 3,600 cargo ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers and other ships coming in and out of San Francisco Bay each year.
"The fact that it happens so rarely is a testament to the stringency of the regulations," said California Maritime Academy spokesman Doug Webster.
Still, the spill has prompted calls for a reassessment of oil spill prevention and response systems. Factors leading to the collision and the resulting response of the U.S. Coast Guard and the ship's private contractor hired to clean up the fuel will be examined as part of the first formal congressional hearing into the incident, scheduled for Monday in San Francisco.
"A plan was made more than a decade ago and resources were developed and deployed. That plan is called into question with this spill," Miller said.
Officials leading the cleanup of the oil spill said Friday that they have ended skimming operations and will now focus solely on beach and shoreline cleanup. Special plans are being made to clean up sensitive wetlands and the rocky shores of Alcatraz and Angel Island.
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