The Morning After (California Dreaming...)

Yesterday I wrote about California -- what the governor there (famous actor whose name I can't spell at 5 a.m.) did to not quite enough strengthen reaction time laws to oil spills...

and so today I looked up oil spills -- which I haven't done for a while:


The Tribune (Canada)
DALHOUSIE - There's a big black streak down the side of the bright red ship that's tied up at the west wharf in Dalhousie. Although few details were available at press time, it is known that the MV King Darwin was carrying heavy oil from Venezuela for NB Power's thermal generating station in Dalhousie. The spill occurred Sunday evening, reportedly between 7:30 and 8 pm.

This from KFDM in Texas
September 30, 2008 - 6:13PM
Jessica Holloway

Residents in the Labelle area say a terrible odor prompted them to hire an environmental expert out of Houston to investigate whether a toxic chemical spill happened in their area during Hurricane Ike. The area is covered in a sludge neighbors in Labelle say smells like oil.

The Salem News
City on hook for oil spill at 70 Endicott St.
By Matthew K. Roy
Staff writer

PEABODY — The city is responsible for cleaning up an oil spill at 70 Endicott St., a former school administration building that has been vacant for more than two years.

The spill occurred sometime before Sept. 16, which is when the state Department of Environmental Protection was alerted of the problem, spokesman Joseph Ferson said.

The source of the spill was five 330-gallon oil tanks stored within the building. Someone broke in and removed copper lines attached to the tanks, and that contributed to the release of oil, Ferson said.

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Torrey Canyon Oil Spill Retold ; The Shocking Story of the First Major Oil Spill in the World Will Be Recounted at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth.

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 00:03 CDT

The shocking story of the first major oil spill in the world will be recounted at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth.

The oil tanker Torrey Canyon broke her back on a reef off the Isles of Scilly in March 1967, sparking an environmental catastrophe.

Sam Willis will tell the alarming tale of the disaster in a talk entitled Shipwrecks, the Torrey Canyon and History on Monday, October 6.

In a last-ditch attempt to send the supertanker to the bottom of the sea, the wreck was bombed and napalmed by the RAF and the Royal Navy.

With no infrastructure in place to deal with the catastrophe, detergent was heavily used to disperse the slick, with no understanding of the impact this would have on the wildlife.

Mr Willis said: "Throughout history, certain shipwrecks have changed the course of history or have changed the way that we understand our past, and now, with a major global political focus on the environment, the wreck of the Torrey Canyon has come to be one of the most important of them all.

"There is no better place to consider the significance of her wreck than Falmouth."