Audio of confusion after devastating S.F. ship collision:

[cboy4]

A series of dispatch recordings between a San Francisco fireboat crew, the Coast Guard and local dispatch operators show a breakdown in communication among emergency personnel in the hour after a container ship struck a Bay Bridge tower on Nov. 7.

In the first call, a fireboat lieutenant tells a San Francisco dispatch operator that he learned about the crash from a member of the Army Corp of Engineers, who also is a former fireboat pilot who happened to be on the bay at the time. In the second call, a dispatch operator calls the Coast Guard and learns that the crash occurred an hour earlier. In other calls, fireboat crew members tell dispatch operators the Coast Guard does not need the crew's assistance on scene and that the entire call has been canceled.

Listen: 4:17 min

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=5&entry_id=22150


Coast Guard denies calling off S.F. fireboat responding to spill

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/22/MNO3TG5CI.DTL&tsp=1

A U.S. Coast Guard commander disputes claims by Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials that the agency unilaterally canceled the response of a city fireboat to this month's oil spill in the bay, saying the decision was made by the San Francisco Fire Department.
Podcast: Hear the dispatch recordings

Meanwhile, city officials acknowledged that the fireboat never actually left the dock the day it was dispatched to the spill, despite the officials' earlier assertions that the boat was en route to the disaster when it was turned away by the Coast Guard.

"We never directed them and said 'No, don't get under way,' " Coast Guard Cmdr. Jon Copley said Wednesday. "They would have been more than welcome. If they had already been under way, they would have been in the vicinity of the Bay Bridge. We could have directed them to check out the damage."

The conflicting accounts about the fireboat's aborted response in the hours after the container ship Cosco Busan sideswiped the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7 are significant because the boat crew stationed on the city's waterfront could have provided an additional set of eyes as 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil spilled into the bay.

[natrat]

1. all involved should be cleared out