It is July 2008, and a controversial local landmark is being removed.
It has been here for nearly a decade, and it strangely is the grim reminder of an environmental
disaster.
Officials, locals and the wider public have argued whether it should stay or go, but the
decision and money has been committed and the multimillion dollar project has started.
The landmark in question is not a statue or piece of artwork but instead the wrecked remains
of a transport ship.
The removal of the wreckage represents a legal argument that was used to make the ships owners
responsible for its running aground.
Today we are looking at the Oregon New carissa disaster of 1999.
A Little background for a big ship.
Our story starts at the end of the 1980s some 19 years before the wreckage removal, with
the laying down of a new dry goods transport ship.
The ship was built by Imabari Shipbuilding Co. in Japan using an all-steel construction
beginning on the 30th august 1989.
She was named the new Carrissa and was 195 meters (640 ft) long and 32 meters (105 ft)
wide, with a draft of 10.8 meters (35.4 ft) when fully loaded.
The vessel had a complement of 26 sailors who were in charge of ships gwt of 36571 pushed
along by an 8,200 bhp (6,100 kW) direct-drive diesel engine.
The ownership structure of the new carissa like many naval operations is rather complex.
She is registered to Panama but her owners, much like her builders, are very much Japanese.
She is under the operation of and owned by operator and managed, Taiheiyo Kaiun Co. Ltd.
and TMM Co. Ltd.
Respectively.
Although the ownership is via a Panamanian based subsidiary green lane shipping.
This registration is a flag of convenience allowing the owners to hire sailors under
the working rules and conditions of the ships registration country.
But to add another level of complexity the ships home port was in the Philippines, and
her crew consisted of a Philippine captain and other personel:
I told you it’s a confusing web, or maybe it’s just me!
The new carissa would be pressed into service carrying wood chips used in the manufacture
of paper between Japan and the us.
Part of this would require entering US waters and a law brought in in 1990 meant that any
operator must be held financially responsible for any environmental impact in the case of
an accident.
Like with any potentially financially damaging risk operators insure against this and the
new carissa was no different.
Approximately US$23 million of environmental liability insurance was provided by Shipowners
Insurance and Guaranty Company Ltd.
(SIGCo) of Hamilton, Bermuda.
Lead up to disaster “A Fatal mistake”
It’s the beginning of February 1999 and the new carissa is doing what she does best
heading towards the USA to collect wood chips.
She is running with an empty hold, and is bound for the port of coos bay Oregon.
She had around 400,000 gallons of diesel and lube oil aboard.
All aboard the ship are Philippine nationals, on the 3rd of February and not far from their
destination a local pilot is assigned to guide the vessel into port.
As the evening drew an ocean storm, with winds that reached 39 knots and seas up to 26 feet,
was hitting Central Oregon.
The pilot, due to the weather conditions was unable to reach the vessel, informed the captain
that he would not be able to assist until the morning and as such entry to the port
should not be attempted.
Heeding the pilots warnings the captain ordered a turn away from the bay, to open the empty
holds and drop anchor.
By now the new carrissa was around 1.5-1.7 nm from the bay.
Only 1 anchor was dropped but little did the crew realise but the chain was too short for
the 20-25 knots winds.
The evening gave way to the early hours of the morning of the 4th and the storm continued
to rage.
Slowly the ship began to drag her chain, poor watch keeping of the crew meant that the movement
went undetected for quite some time.
She was dragged closer to the shore, eventually the movement was noticed and the crew set
to raise anchor to try and maneuver away from running aground.
In the heavy storm and strong winds nothing could stop the carissa from moving closer
and closer to the Oregon shore.
Around 3 miles north of coos bay the new carissa ran aground, on a sand bank.
The collision was reported to officials at 0900, and immediately a recovery operation
was set into motion.
The new carissa represented an environmental issue with the hundred of gallons of fuel
aboard.
The immediate recovery attempts tried to make use of the new carissa's own power but the
stricken vessel couldn’t free itself.
A Unified Command, consisting of representatives from the Coast Guard, the State of Oregon,
and other rescue party operations, were set up as soon as officials were first notified.
Three objectives were set for the Unified command, to save personnel, save the ship
and to prevent spillage.
The poor weather affected any immediate rescue, when the only tug boat available in coos bay
couldn’t be used due to safety concerns.
As long as the ship was still intact refloating was the preferred option.
The high winds prevented the crew from being rescued immediately, but eventually coast
guard helicopters were able to evacuate the sailors aboard and replace them with salvage
specialists.
During this time a survey of the ship was undertaken by air, and so far it looked like
it could be refloated, but there was a problem.
No suitable ship was in the area powerful enough to drag the new carissa off the sand
bank.
The nearest suitable vessel was based in Astoria Oregon, roughly 170 miles away from coos bay.
She was called the salvage chief but she had not sailed for a year and required provisions,
fuel and a suitable crew.
The turn around time to ready the chief was going to be 18 hours, a long time to wait
especially in addition to the 24 hours journey time she would take.
All during this the new carissa sat precariously putting more strain on her hull.
The salvage chief would not arrive at coos bay until the 8th of February 4 days after
the new carissa ran aground.
The waves and high winds continued to batter the stricken vessel pushing her further along
the beach.
Although rescue had arrived the additional 600ft the new carissa had been pushed shoreward
put her out of the salvage chiefs reach.
Not long after tar balls started to appear on the beach, hinting that the carissa was
leaking oil, meaning she had developed a crack somewhere on her hull.
Because of this the 3 main objectives for salvage were changed, to ensure the safety
of personnel and the local community; minimize damage to the environment; and finally salvage
the vessel.
The now leaking ship posed a serious risk to the local ecosystem which was close to
South Slough National Estuarine Reserve within Coos Bay.
Clean up activity preparation began almost as soon as the ship got beached, but the leaking
fuel had already covered wildlife and had leaked into the vulnerable local environment.
With another storm on the horizon and a high probability of salvage causing the ship to
break up, rescue workers were confronted with a horrible last resort decision whether to
burn the ship or not.
You see, setting alight to the vessel may sound like a bad idea but this could mean
the toxic fuel would not contaminate the environment directly.
Obviously there was still an environmental cost but by now it was a case of least worst
outcome.
Better to burn than leak out
This rock and hard place decision was made for the salvage team when it was decided that
the ship was a complete structural right off, and thus movement was out of the question,
an in situ burn it was to be.
The unified command attempted the first burn on the 10th of February using a combination
of napalm and incendiary devices, but to the disappointment to all involved only 1 of the
ships tanks set alight.
Time to bring out the big guns, a Navy Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit from Whidbey
Island, Washington was employed to have a second crack at burning the fuel.
The unit used 400 pounds of explosives to rupture the fuel tanks and to sustain the
burn, a locally brewed napalm mixture was employed.
The fire would last 33 hours and result in between 165,000 and 255,000 US gallons burnt.
However things would get worse for the vessel, all during the explosions and grounding, the
main structure was weakening, and its integrity couldn't last any longer.
At around midnight on 11 February the vessel broke into two sections, and the now separated
ship started to drive in different directions.
On 26 February the salvage teams managed to float the 440-foot bow section, and prepare
it for towing; by 1 March, the tugboat Sea Victory had successfully towed the bow from
the beach and out to sea, but a return of stormy weather resulted in the cable snapping.
The bow now loose free floated for fourteen hours until it ran aground near Waldport,
Oregon on 3 March, roughly 80 miles (129 km) to the north of the original grounding site.
It was refloated again on the 8th of march and towed out to 280 miles off the coast where
it was sunk, with explosives and cannon fire from two US Navy ships, the destroyer USS
David R. Ray and the submarine USS Bremerton.
Interestingly the cannons and explosives did not fully sink the bow, requiring an additional
torpedo, before it went to the sea bed.
The stern however would remain on the beach for nearly a decade, but we will come to that
in a bit.
/////////// The aftermath, an unsurprisingly result.
Like with most disasters the authorities set out to find the root cause of the disaster,
and like most disasters everyone blamed everyone else.
With the government blaming the crew, and the insurance company Britannia Steam Ship
Insurance Association blaming the less than useful coast guard charts and the pilot not
telling the ship to drop anchor where it did.
This resulted in 2 lawsuits one from the insurers claiming 96$ million and a counter from the
us government claiming $7million.
Both parties would reach a settlement of a net amount to the government for 6.5$ million
in 2004.
But this wasn’t the end of the legal proceedings, in an interesting tactic, Oregon state demanded
a 25$ million bond to cover the dismantling and cleanup costs, as well as charging the
ships owners a rent of $1500 per day for storage costs.
Needless to say the ships owners and insurers refuted these claims and the case went to
trial.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the case here, the state of Oregon was asserting that
the crashed ship was trespassing on state property.
Bold claim …. But it actually paid off when on 13 November 2002, a jury sided with the
states argument and the $25 million was put in an escrow account, as appeals and the Like
was hashed out.
The shipping company would get around 5$ million back after appeal in 2006.
Now before we come back to the implications of this legal case and the stern…. we have
to look at the criminal side of the investigation and what happened to the crew.
Captain Morgado and his Phillipino crew had some questions to answer after the grounding
and this required them to stay in the US for several weeks as the coast guard questioned
them.
The captain pled the 5th amendment for most of his questions which is smart, and after
their testimonies they were allowed to return home.
The investigation did find the captain and his first and third officers responsible for
the crash but not enough to prove criminal wrongdoing and they would not see any charges
brought against them.
Bearing in mind the stern was still beached representing a constant reminder of disaster
the result was pretty unpalatable.
Ok now we can get back to the land mark previously know as the stern of the new carissa.
The state of Oregon had kind of painted itself into a corner with its trespassing trial.
As their whole argument would be pretty much seen as a cash grab unless the stern was actually
removed.
And this leads us back to 2008 and the some what controversial dismantling and removal
of the last few remaining sections of the new carissa.
The removal of the stern proved to be more difficult than originally anticipated as years
of waves and storms had wedged the wreckage into the sand up to 20-30 feet in some places.
It was decided that the remains be dismantled by the use of jack up barges which allowed
crews to work on the ship cutting her up price by price.
By September 2008 most of the visual wreckage was removed leaving only a few small pieces,
by November the recovery crews and barges were gone, and thus the new carissa was no
more.
But although no humans were killed the death toll from the fuel that did manage to escape
Into the ecosystem was thought to be responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 shore and sea
birds .
Rather worryingly if it wasn’t for the burning of the ship this toll would have been significantly
higher.
I’m going to rate this disaster a 4 on my scale and a 5 on my legacy scale.
What do you think let me know in the comments.
This video is a Plainly Difficult production.
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https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/ResponseReports_99.pdf p111
https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=22954
By Erin from Oregon City, OR - Old Carissa, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5502863
https://photos.orr.noaa.gov/gallery_4/incidents-37.htm
By BLM Oregon & Washington - https://www.flickr.com/photos/50169152@N06/32042875847/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87178350