Coast Guard: Human error caused crash

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A preliminary investigation found human error caused a cargo ship to crash into the Bay Bridge, leading to San Francisco Bay’s worst oil spill in nearly two decades, the U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday as rescue teams raced to save hundreds of seabirds.

“There were skilled enough individuals on board this ship. They didn’t carry out their missions correctly,” said Rear Adm. Craig Bone, the Coast Guard’s top official in California.

Coast Guard officials declined to lay blame on any specific individual or provide further detail on the mistakes that were made during mid-week crash.

Investigators were focusing on issues surrounding the ship’s official protocol for safely navigating out of the bay, including possible communication problems between the ship’s crew, the pilot guiding the vessel and the Vessel Traffic Service, the Coast Guard station that monitors the bay’s shipping traffic.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Andrew Wood said “the mere fact that they collided with a fixed object” offered clear evidence that a communication problem had occurred.

But a language barrier between the vessel’s pilot, Capt. John Cota, and the ship’s all-Chinese crew was not likely a factor in the crash, since ship’s captain and officers are required to speak English, officials said.

Cota, who is American, is among a group of specially trained pilots who are not members of a ship’s crew but typically come on board to maneuver large cargo vessels in San Francisco Bay.

The Cosco Busan was headed out of the bay when it sideswiped a support on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Wednesday morning, leaving a gash nearly 100 feet long on the side of the 926-foot vessel. The crash ruptured two fuel tanks, which leaked about 58,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel into the bay.

Bone acknowledged that there were communications between the ship and the Coast Guard’s traffic facility before the collision. He said the communications involved the ship’s course and speed but declined to comment further on the nature of the exchange.