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01/19/97
Spill chronology
A year after the North Cape spill, scientists are still studying the environmental impact. The final price tag is yet to be determined.
The tug Scandia, towing a barge filled with 4 million gallons of home heating fuel, left Bayonne, N.J., Thursday, Jan. 18, 1996, headed for Providence.
A day later, the combination of a fire aboard the tug and a winter gale set in motion Rhode Island's worst environmental disaster.
Five miles south of Point Judith, the Scandia crew reported flames coming from the engine room. Unable to get the fire under control, the crew abandoned ship, setting both the tug and the 340-foot barge, the North Cape, adrift in wild seas.
Despite a daring effort to stop the barge by members of the rescued tug crew, the North Cape went hard aground that evening off Moonstone Beach -- the southern border of the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge.
Before the night was out, winds had blown the acrid smell of fuel inshore for miles.
The North Cape was leaking.
The Coast Guard estimated 828,000 gallons of No. 2 home heating fuel leaked from the barge, fouling the fragile salt ponds and killing more than a million lobsters, tens of thousands of clams and hundreds of birds.
Cleanup crews from around the country descended on southern Rhode Island But despite their efforts very little of the oil was recovered.
Most, Coast Guard officials said, was driven underwater by the heavy surf. It formed an enormous underwater blob of dilute oil that sloshed back and forth along the south county beaches for days before finally dissipating.
The spill shut down much of Rhode Island's multi-million-dollar fishing industry overnight. Some 250 square miles of Rhode Island Sound was ordered closed to fishing and contaminated lobsters were found as far away as three miles offshore months later.
The last of the closed areas would not open for six months.
More than 1,000 local businesses, fisherman and others filed claims for losses. Already the insurance company for the North Cape has paid out more than $13 million to cover clean up costs, environmental studies and business losses.
Scientists are still studying the environmental impact while others work to determine the final price tag for the North Cape spill.
-- TOM MOONEY
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