Exxon Valdez oil spill - March 24, 1989

On this day in 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, it's Eaves again and welcome to
another episode of This Day in History Class. Today it's March.

(00:24):
The day was March. The Ex Valdis oil tanker spilled
eleven million gallons of oil and Prince William Sound in
the Gulf of Alaska. The oil spill caused extensive damage
to the environment and was the largest in US waters
until the deep Water Horizon spill in Ex Valdis was

(00:46):
one of the newer ships in the X and Shipping
Company's fleet. The night before the spill, EXN Valdis left Valdis,
Alaska and was headed to Long Beach, California. It was
carrying more than fifty three million gallons of crude oil.
Captain Joseph Hazelwood had been drinking alcoholic beverages that day,
which would later become a point of contention. The tanker

(01:10):
left the dock not long after nine pm, but just
after midnight on March the crew realized that the tanker
was off course. At twelve o four a m it
hit Bly Reef in Prince William Sound. Eight out of
the eleven cargo tanks were punctured, soon ten point eight
million gallons of crude oil had spilled into the surrounding waters. Eventually,

(01:35):
the spill polluted more than one thousand miles of shoreline
in south central Alaska. Thousands of seabirds, sea otters, and seals,
bald eagles, and fish died because of the spill. The
disaster had a significant effect on wildlife environment really on industries,
recreational fishing, and tourism. In investigations after the disaster, it

(01:59):
was found on that Captain hazel Wood was not at
the navigation bridge. Third mate, Gregory Cousins, was in charge
of it. Cousins had called Hazelwood just before the vessel
struck blyth Reef, recognizing there was danger, but it was
too late. When investigators found out that Hazelwood had been
drinking before boarding Exon, Valdis EXSN fired him. He was

(02:23):
cleared of being intoxicated at the time of the incident,
but he was convicted of misdemeanor negligence find fifty thou
dollars and sentenced to one thousand hours of community service.
After years of appeals, Hazelwood began community service in Exon.
Was deemed responsible for the disaster, along with the company's

(02:45):
incompetent and overworked crew. Blame was also placed on the U. S.
Coast Guard for a poor system of traffic regulation. In
Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act, which created measures for
responding to oil spills and increased penalties for spills. It
also called for the eventual banning of single hold tankers

(03:08):
from US waters. Now all tankers for oil, liquefied natural gas,
and chemicals are double hold. Over the years, x AND
paid billions of dollars on restitution, cleanup costs, and personal damages.
XN employees, federal responders, and Alaska residents helped clean up

(03:29):
the spill. They used chemical dispersants and booms and skimmers
for mechanical cleanup, but some methods workers used removed oil,
yet killed plants and animals, and a portion of the
Alaskan coastline is still polluted with subsurface oil. Exon Valdis
was repaired, renamed, and soon returned to service. It was

(03:53):
sold for scrap in. Though the Exxon Valdis oil spill
had a huge impact on the environ ironment, and industry,
there have been plenty of other incidents that resulted in
much larger oil spills in world history. I'm Eve step
Code and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. And you can send us

(04:16):
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media dot com. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll
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(04:43):
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