Digital Extra

They were the hundreds of ordinary people who left their daily routines to volunteer their time and effort to fight the North Cape oil spill and its ugly consequences.

They were people like Laurie McDonough, a graduate student at Brown, who lives in Cumberland, but who made the trip nearly every day last week to South County to wash birds for five hours at a stretch.

She says she volunteered because she's an animal lover who wanted to be a veterinarian when she was a child -- and for another reason.

"It's an opportunity to really do something," she says. "There isn't much you can do about environmental disasters. You can recycle and carpool, but you really don't see the positive effect. When you clean up an oiled bird, you can see something good happening. You're helping a living creature."

McDonough spent much of her volunteer time in the Narragansett town highway garage, where the Tri-State Bird Rescue company from New Jersey set up its rehabilitation station.

"It's a sad thing to see wild birds in such rough physical condition," says McDonough. "But it's a good feeling when you see them start eating, when they perk up and take an interest in what's going on around them, and you see some hope that they really might make it. That's when it's heartwarming."

McDonough says she was impressed by the commitment in her fellow volunteers. "I saw the same people coming back again and again, some staying for two shifts a day. They were taking time away from their own jobs and businesses. I drove from Cumberland, but other people drove in from farther away, from Massachusetts and Connecticut."

AT THE CENTER of the volunteer effort was Save the Bay, the statewide environmental organization that assumed the task of coordinating volunteer support for the state and federal agencies working on the spill.

Save the Bay spokesman Fred Massie says the group took the names of more than 2,000 people who wanted to volunteer, and then began screening the volunteers to learn who had prior experience in oil spill assessment or wildlife rehabilitation.

When the DEM and other agencies needed volunteers, Save the Bay provided them. When the volunteers needed training in one area or another, they got it. In all, said Massie, Save the Bay put more than 600 volunteers to work on a variety of tasks.

Most of the volunteers went through training sessions that were conducted twice a day at Narragansett Town Beach. There, says Massie, they learned to do "simple but very important visual surveys of waterways and shoreline to look for the presence of oil. We also asked them to look for dead and injured wildlife."

He says all the volunteers were given survey forms to record what they found. "We hope to collect all the information and assess how far-reaching the damage was. Then, we can use the information to supplement assessments by state and federal agencies."

Massie says among the volunteers were some who worked far from the scene of the spill -- at the offices of Save the Bay in Providence.

"We had 50 or more people in here doing nothing but answering phones as people called to volunteer, and then calling the volunteers back when we needed them," says Massie. "They worked all shifts. They came in early and left late. They made a tremendous effort."

Volunteers brought prepared meals to the feed the volunteers. And the Red Cross also sent crews to prepare meals for relief workers.

IN ADDITION to the mainland effort, another group of volunteers was at work a dozen miles offshore, on Block Island, where residents managed to keep oil out of the environmentally fragile Great Salt Pond .

Ed McGovern, the island's first warden, says that when they heard last Saturday that oil might be heading for the island, volunteers and island officials mobilized and decided it was essential to set oil booms across the entrance to the Great Salt Pond.

"We called the mainland and asked for the boom, and got some from Clean Harbors (cleanup company)," says McGovern.

By Sunday, 18 to 20 volunteers from the island had stretched two tiers of booms across the entrance to the pond and had anchored the ends firmly to the shore. By Monday, they had two more tiers in place.

Additional volunteers from the Committee for the Great Salt Pond, a conservation group, posted watches from 6 in the evening until 6 in the morning to monitor the booms.

McGOVERN SAYS all was well until folks on the mainland tried to send assistance.

"They were supposed to be bringing us lights and some people to help monitor the boom," says McGovern, adding that he very carefully explained to the mainlanders exactly how and where he wanted their boat to come in. "I couldn't have made it clearer how they were to proceed."

But at around 8 o'clock Tuesday night, with McGovern and others standing by, yelling into radios and screaming from the shore, the mainland boat failed to stop outside the pond as planned, but instead "drove right over the boom."

When the boat finally docked, McGovern says, the crew received a decidedly chilly reception from the islanders on hand. And then came the kicker.

"When I finally calmed down, I said to them, `Where are the lights?' They said, `We didn't bring any lights.' They didn't bring any manpower, either, to help with the booms. They said their orders were just to come over here and drive into the harbor."

McGovern says he immediately called the cleanup command center in Galilee.

"They asked if there was anything they could do for us. I said, `Yes. Don't send us any more help.' "