Digital Extra

As soon as fire broke out on the tug, the grounding of the unmanned barge was only a matter of time. With gale force winds blowing the barge northward, it was all too brief a time.

Tugs towing barges filled with millions of gallons of heating oil or gasoline are routine along the Atlantic Seaboard, indeed all over the industrialized world. Two or three a day proceed up and down Narragansett Bay, and many more transit Block Island and Rhode Island Sounds headed for other ports. Everyone who heats a home with oil, or drives a car, depends on them.

Light petroleum fuels -- diesel, heating oil and gasoline -- are highly volatile, and, environmental considerations apart, water is the safest medium in which to transport them. Indeed, the tug and barge combination has the further safety feature that there is no engine aboard the barge, with its ever-present risk of fire. But it is also by far the least expensive, because of the minimal crewing requirements -- and will remain so even after millions have been spent to clean up this latest spill.

The question to be answered is why the barge North Cape was unmanned. If there had been crew aboard the North Cape, it could have been anchored immediately when the Scandia lost power. Anchoring may or may not have held the barge in place, given the ferocious conditions of the gale, but could have at least slowed the rapid progress of the barge toward shore, possibly allowing time for another tug to arrive to pick up the towline while the barge was still adrift.

In addition to rescuing the crew, the Coast Guard was trying to bring another tug to the scene, and might have succeeded if it had had a few more hours.

As it was, the tug crew, having abandoned ship, had to wait to be picked up from the water by a Coast Guard rescue boat from Point Judith. Two crew members were then ferried to the barge to attempt to anchor it -- a very hazardous operation in itself -- but by then it was too late.

In matters of seamanship, effective action must be taken immediately when crises arise. In this case, action was impossible.

This would appear to be a serious fault in procedures. Strong regulations mandating that barges be manned, at least in extreme conditions, in order to anchor if the tug should loose power, would be a big safety improvement. And while they're at it, regulators might also mandate more anchors.

Once the tug and barge were aground, the situation was, from an environmental point of view, incomparably worse. The question at that point was whether the tug owners, Eklof Marine of New York, should have had primary authority over the salvage. The law on the question is pretty clearly in Eklof's favor, and in the event, it is not evident that Governor Almond had better options.

Certainly the state's interest on Saturday was stanching the escape of oil from the barge. Whether that was best accomplished by waiting for calmer seas in order to unload the fuel into another barge, or immediately trying to unload the fuel into trucks on shore, or some other more interventionist initiatives -- and whether such action would have been possible or effective in the rough conditions -- will long be debated.

What was impressive was the immediate deployment of booms and other barriers to minimize oil contamination in the salt ponds along the South Kingstown and Charlestown shores. The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and volunteers from Save the Bay and other environmentally concerned citizens reacted with impressive energy and zeal. The state is in their debt.

These fragile estuarine ecosystems are in their most dormant phase, and the hope is that much of the toxic oil will have dissipated before the cycles of natural activity resume. Nonetheless, the losses to shellfishermen and others who make their livelihoods from the sea will be enormous, and the losses will reverberate throughout the local economy.