Exxon Valdez disaster

In some ways it was the Torrey Canyon all over again. The captain had reportedly been drinking, leaving the ship to be piloted by an inexperienced and unqualified third mate. An outdated radar system failed to detect the reef in its path, and the tanker carrying some 55 million barrels of oil tore its hull.

On this day, March 24, in 1989 the Exxon Valdez, en route to Long Beach entered Prince William Sound, off the coast of Alaska. A lapse in command and an inadequate radar map led the supertanker brimming with oil directly on top of a reef, causing a spill of 11 million barrels of crude, if not more. The largest marine spill recorded until the Deepwater Horizon incident of recent years.

In some ways it was even worse than the Torrey Canyon: the response from Exxon was lagging at best and criminally negligent at worst. For two days, with the weather clear and the seas relatively calm, the spill was mostly localized; then bad weather greatly magnified the problem. Exxon not only did nothing, but blew off the media at every turn. The company’s CEO ignored the press until ignoring was no longer an option, and then gave scant, and often contradictory information.