Last Wednesday, LA County lifeguards were preparing to do a certification swim in the ocean in front of their training center at 2600 The Strand in Manhattan Beach when they spotted what appeared to be globs of tar.
Soon the U.S. Coast Guard arrived, by helicopter, boats and on foot.
The LA County Department of Public Health closed the beach from the El Segundo jetty to Longfellow in Hermosa Beach.
By late Wednesday afternoon, red signs saying “Beach closed for swimming” were planted in the sand. Workers in white hazmat suits were bent over at the shoreline, picking up bits of tar and putting it in plastic bags. Photographers roamed the beach.
Still, a family sat on a blanket by one of the blue lifeguard stands, kids playing in the sand.
A swarm of TV news vans descended on the lifeguard center, where various federal, state and county agencies had taken residence.
LA County Lifeguard Captain Kenichi Haskett, who saw the tar balls first come in and grew up in Venice, said he had never seen oil wash up on the shore like this in his 20 years as a lifeguard.
“Usually it’s more spread out,” he said, over a greater distance along the shoreline.
Chevron, which has a refinery onshore in El Segundo and tankers offshore, halted transporting its oil as it began checking its equipment for leaks.
Later that day, the closure was extended to the border between Redondo Beach and Torrance when oil was spotted around Avenue C in Redondo. The affected area had grown from about two to seven miles.
Thursday
By Thursday, the substance had officially been identified as oil.
“It’s not a liquid oil slick or sheen,” said U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael Anderson. “It’s like a ball or patty.”
The Coast Guard set up booms in front of Ballona Creek north of Playa del Rey and Kings Harbor in Redondo Beach as a proactive measure to keep oil from floating in. Vessels were allowed to pass through.
The event had made national news with a story by the Associated Press.
In the afternoon, officials announced at a press conference attended by Supervisor Don Knabe and his deputy Steve Napolitano that the beach would be open Friday at 6 a.m.
“As long as we don’t have tar patties washing up, we are fairly comfortable it would be safe for the public to enjoy the beach tomorrow morning,” said Mike Rogers from the Los Angeles County Public Health Department.
The U.S. Coast Guard wanted to wait through a full cycle of tides before opening the beach, said Captain Charlene Downey.
Officials asked that the public stay east of lifeguard towers until that time, to help with the cleanup and for safety reasons.
“We would not like the public to come in contact with petroleum product,” said Rogers. “It’s not a healthy thing to do.”
Downey said that Chevron had been “very cooperative since the beginning.”
She also said that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was assessing if it was possible that the oil came from the May 19 spill off Santa Barbara County.
The company that the Coast Guard contracted to clean up the beach, Ocean Blue Environmental Services, had picked up about 30 cubic yards of tar so far. A giant red dumpster that sat on the beach behind her.
“We had significant progress overnight,” she said.
Later that afternoon, an expert from NOAA said that the source of the oil was most likely local and not from the Santa Barbara oil spill.
“It’s hard to imagine that it would travel 100 miles, hit one piece of shoreline and not hit other places or be detected,” said Doug Helton, the Incident Operations Coordinator for NOAA’s Emergency Response Division, which responds to oil spills across the county.
Coast Guard Officer Anderson said that the probability that the oil came from Santa Barbara was “extremely low at this point.”
Helton and Anderson cautioned that they had not ruled any possibilities out, however, including the possibility that the source is natural seepage.
“It’s just like a crime scene — we’re investigating a crime,” said Anderson. “We don’t eliminate anything until we can completely eliminate it. We’re taking every possible suspect.”
As of Thursday evening, the Coast Guard had noticed a “little more heavy concentration of oil south toward Redondo Beach,” Anderson said. As a result, they announced that the beach would not open Friday morning. They would monitor the beach overnight and then determine Friday morning if it was safe to open.
So far, they had not seen any oil near the booms the Coast Guard set up in King Harbor in Redondo Beach or in Ballona Creek north of Playa del Rey, Anderson said.
About 90 people were working on the response, including those manning the booms and cleaning up the beaches. The cleanup was paid for by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is funded by fines from those responsible for past oil spills.
The Coast Guard noticed some natural seepage near King Harbor in Redondo Beach, although it didn’t believe that it was related to that coming ashore.
California has many natural seeps, both on land and offshore. The Santa Monica Bay alone has at least a dozen, Helton said.
“Imagine the La Brea Tar Pits, but underwater,” he said.
He described a seep as a “crack in the sea floor with oil bubbling out of it.”
“Like the Beverly Hillbillies,” he said. “The oil blossoms as it hits the surface. That’s why they’re drilling out there.”
However, he acknowledged that the amount seen was a “larger quantity than you might otherwise expect” if the source was natural, which was why he thought it was probably a spill.
The Coast Guard cross-matched samples of the oil with known natural seepage from the area and found no match, Anderson said.
The oil that has washed ashore has been in the form of clumps, or tar balls, and not liquid. It can take from days to weeks for oil to turn into balls, Helton said.
“If it was fresh discharge, it would be more liquid,” said Helton. “It takes time for tar balls to form.”
Factors such as the type of oil and weather conditions determine how long it takes.
“Some seep oil is already weathered like a tar ball when it comes out,” he added.
Rod Spackman, a spokesman from Chevron, said later that afternoon that the company hadn’t found any leaks.
At 7:10 p.m., the Coast Guard posted a photo on Twitter of an oil-soaked loon in a cardboard box that had been brought to the LA County Lifeguard Training Center in Manhattan Beach. Its finder didn’t say where he’d captured it, according to Anderson, so they weren’t able to determine if it is related to the oil spill.
It was given to the Oiled Wildlife Care Network and was “currently stable and alive,” Anderson said.
So far, it was “the only wildlife presented to the response team,” he said, although a marine reconnaissance team from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife continued to monitor the area.
Friday
At 11 a.m., the agencies announced that the beach would remain closed until further notice.
Anderson said that no new tar had washed up since Wednesday and 90 percent of it had been removed. However, the LA County Department of Public Health wanted all but a naturally occurring level of oil gone before opening the beaches.
“We want to return the beach to the way it was Wednesday,” said Anderson. “That’s our goal.”
That didn’t stop some surfers from paddling out Friday morning in El Porto in Manhattan Beach, near where the oil was first observed.
LA County Ocean Lifeguard Specialist A.J. Lester said they hadn’t arrested anyone for violating the ban.
Given the number of people ignoring the closure, he said, “We don’t want to inundate the local police departments.”
“They’re adults and can make their own informed decisions,” he said. “The last thing we want is for a family with small children going in without knowing” about the tar.
Skin irritation is one of the biggest risks, Lester said. He advised the public to ask a lifeguard before going in.
Officials didn’t have an estimate for when the beaches would be open, but said they would send out an update when they knew.
They had picked up 40 cubic yards, or about three dumpsters full, of tar since Wednesday. Given that three quarters of that was picked up Wednesday, and only one quarter was picked up Thursday, Lester said he hoped they would be able to open the beaches in a “timely fashion.”
Representatives from the Coast Guard and lifeguards also couldn’t say when they would know where the oil came from. Two labs were comparing the South Bay samples with databases with millions of different oils, Anderson said.
“It’s like trying to match a fingerprint,” he said.
Samples were taken from the Chevron vessel currently sitting offshore in El Segundo and one that was there earlier.
The labs still hadn’t determined if there was a match with those samples.
“We want to find the source so we have a chance to prevent if from washing up again,” said Anderson. “We’re not just cleaning it up.”
Around 7:30 p.m., officials announced through Twitter that they had reopened the beach.
They gathered on the patch of grass next to the lifeguard station for a final news conference. The sun had set and the wind was strong.
“We’d like to thank everybody for their patience, understanding and flexibility while we cleaned the beaches,” said Captain Charlene Downey from the U.S. Coast Guard.
“We completed a pretty significant task in a relatively short period of time,” she said. Downey estimated that around 41-42 cubic yards of tar were removed.
The Coast Guard would continue to monitor the area from Point Dume in Malibu to Redondo Beach through the weekend.
A spokesperson from the LA County Department of Public Health said Friday night that they’d “determined there was no longer a risk.”
Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael Anderson said they had “wanted to doublecheck everything, go over it with a fine-toothed comb” before opening the beaches.
Aftermath
Around 5 p.m. on Monday, a Coast Guard spokesperson said they still hadn’t determined the oil’s origin. They would know in one or two days, she said, but she couldn’t confirm if the samples had arrived at the labs.
Other than the loon, no other reports of oiled wildlife had surfaced from the incident as of Tuesday morning. ER
