the pipeline finally ends when it reaches the south coast of Alaska at the port of Valdez the pipeline comes through the hills through the hills arrives here and ends in this huge Bank of storage tanks I've put into pictures while some are on the rest winter on the right because that's 90 different views and they both help understand the process okay so the oil flows night and day into the storage tanks every few days ships arrive and tie up at these these wharfs here you can see a couple of ships in port and the oil is pumped from the storage tanks into the ships once the ship is full the ship takes off and the tanks go back to filling again and this is a continuous process 24/7 oil flowing down the pipeline into the tanks ships arriving and taking it away one after another after another so let's talk about the Exxon Valdez one of the tankers that arrives to collect the oil from the port and ship it out anybody know the cause of the accident well a few years ago when I asked that question half the class put their hands up the answer the captain was drunk yes he was the captain Joseph his wood had been indulging in too many martinis in Port the night before they sailed he was asleep in his cabin sleeping off the effects and that is completely irrelevant to the accident press big dumpling made a big deal out of it that is completely there are two the accent think about this for a mote is the captain the only person who can navigate the ship of course the ship is going to be out on the ocean for several weeks if captain had to be on the bridge all the time he'd die he needs rest just like everybody else bite it back the first officer the second officer and the third officer have master certificates they're all fully quite hired to run the ship at the time of the accident the Exxon Valdez was under command of the third officer the captain was where he was supposed to be in his bunk asleep he was off watch so what happened the port of Valdez with the storage tanks the end of the system here end of the pipe line is up in this near the head of this narrow field shape something like this couple of islands out here maybe okay um and the ship starts from yeah now this is this fjord is pretty narrow there's a lot of ship traffic oil tankers cruise ships our fishing boats how do they avoid running into each other well just like the highway they'd have a navigation system you drive on the right okay there's a series of marker buoys down the center here and ships coming in stay on this side ships coming out stay on that side so the course of the Exxon Valdez should be like this coming down around like so now as left out one rather important piece of the picture here over here is the Columbia glacier a large glacier which is carving dropping off icebergs and as you can see the theoretical course yeah it goes through the ice box well we all know about ships and icebergs remember the Titanic not a good idea so the obvious thing is to go around is it safe to drive the wrong way on the street no it's not but yes it is if the highway is closed and you know that nothing's coming think of those car commercials spare any film high-speed Zyra driving around dents blind corners on a mountain road there's a film on the road up to a big bet they rent a couple of the leased cars the police cars park mile apart and they're in touch by radio and on cue they close the road the both ends the driver then does his amazing stunt work and about a minute later they reopen the road again perfectly safe the terror both sides commute so the Exxon that he's called up the Coast Guard who's in charge of this area and asked for clearance to go around the ice box and the Coast Guard replied yes no problem there's no traffic coming you can divert go around the icebergs and then resume your normal course the Exxon Valdez like most tankers in this area course was to head south straight down to the Port of Long Beach where the cargo would be pumped through pipelines from the port to the Wilmington refinery that's the one with the big American flag on it that you see from 405 freeway there the oil will be turned into Arco Castle so guess what if you buy gasoline from Arco because it's the cheapest you are driving around on Prudhoe Bay oil from Alaska almost entirely so what happened the ship set off middle of the night sail down here sail down here sail down here at this point here the third officer instructed the steersman to turn left change course onto this cross fjord heading and stayed to watch that course correction take effect now when you put over the wheel on a dirt oil tanker does the ship immediately spin around the other new course no it doesn't for the first five minutes or more nothing seems to be happening then ever so gradually the ship changes course takes maybe 20 minutes to complete the direction change so seeing the time the ships drawn to its new course the third officer left rich after instructing the steersman in two hours or whatever the appropriate time is you make the reverse correction to swing into line this way so at the at the appropriate time the steersman put over the wheel to turn right a few minutes later the third officer reappears on the bridge alright did you make the course correction on schedule I said it's dark can't see much but we're looking out here why is the ship not swinging around panic ensued they searched the bridge and discovered somebody had leaned on the wrong switch they cut in the autopilot the ship was responding to the computer not to the man on the wheel so they cut out the autopilot and put the wheel hard over but the ship is still proceeding in a straight line and right here is a rock and the ship run on the rock the rock rib to hold at the bottom so what does all this look like here is a tanker coming in from the Gulf of Alaska and sailing up into the field the area ahead the field will get narrower it's an overcast day but even so the scenery is pretty spectacular notice that the ship is sailing on the right side of the waterway huge mountains on the other side of the fjord spectacular waterfalls oh there's one of the marker buoys markers marking the center of the channel this one is on a rock surrounded by sea lions and seals most of them are on buoys floating in the water over on the far side of band you can see fishing boats approaching final destination is getting pretty foggy but in a moment you'll see the storage tanks marking the facility at the end of the pipeline there they are hidden in the fog the tanker is now a tanker in fact you can see there's the superstructure the rest of the ship is hidden in the fog it's already starting to take on oil nearby is the Columbia glacier we were talking about pretty big spectacular glacier producing icebergs like you see here most of them very small nothing that the ship would need to worry about but some of them are much larger you really wouldn't want to run into something like this okay so here is the Exxon Valdez itself this map here is from ABC News on the day that actually happened the maps a little bit primitive but it does show the ship leaving the port of Valdez and heading down through the Narrows and out into the larger field down here you see the icebergs coming from the Columbia glacier which are the cause of the problem so right here is where the ship turns to the left to go around the icebergs and as we know it failed to make the right turn to return to its course it went straight ahead and right there is a rock called Bligh reef by reef is visible at low tide more or less below the water at high tide just marked by a flag the ship ran onto the reef as you see here in more detail as soon as the accident happened the ship began to leak oil rather rapidly the rock had torn a hole in the bottom the ship was stuck firmly on the rock so that's the accident and it gets much worse from here on immediately after the accident the Exxon Valdez call him on the radio to report what had happened the Coast Guard immediately said this happened in waters that we are in charge of we will take charge and coordinate the response within an hour or so the state of Alaska chimed in absolutely not it's our state tourism we will coordinate the response and shortly after that US fisheries chimed in it's our industry we're in charge and neither of you are so here we have three major government agencies one federal one state one military bickering like kindergartners each one saying that they are in charge and the other one isn't and whatever course of action one of these agencies proposed another one would veto now it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that an accident would happen eventually you've got tankers coming and going pretty much every day night and day winter and summer good weather and bad eventually something was bound to go wrong so when the oil companies got to develop the oil fields put in the pipeline and the terminal they had to agree to provide facilities equipment men to be ready to go in the case of an accident this was the first time he'd been called out and this is the point that we discovered that the oil cameras had skimped the men weren't adequately trained there wasn't enough equipment they weren't ready but they did what they could and got out there and started work as soon as possible