REPORT OF CAPTAIN"S DRINKING DISPUTED
UNQUALIFIED THIRD MATE AT CONTROLS

By GEORGE FROST and DAVID HULEN and RICHARD MAUER
Daily News reporters

VALDEZ- Four hours after the Exxon Valdez piled onto Bligh Reef, starting the largest oil spill in U.S. history, the Coast Guard asked a state trooper to come to the ship to investigate a report Capt. Joseph Hazelwood had been drinking, according to Commissioner of Public Safety Art English.

The captain, who was not on the bridge when the ship crashed, left an unqualified officer at the helm, in violation of federal regulations and company policy, Exxon officials said Sunday afternoon.

At a press conference Sunday night in Valdez, Coast Guard Admiral Edward Nelson Jr., commander of the Coast Guard in Alaska, said of English's report, "That's probably in the area of rumor." An earlier Coast Guard press release said the trooper had been asked simply to witness blood tests given to Hazelwood and two crewmembers.

At the same press conference, Exxon Shipping Co. President Frank Iarossi said Hazelwood had a drinking problem in the past.

"One of my people said there was a history more than five years ago," Iarossi said in answer to a question.

Iarossi said he knew nothing about whether Hazelwood had been drinking before the Exxon Valdez left port. But he said Hazelwood's previous history should not be taken as evidence of misconduct.

"What happened five years ago is not germane to this incident," Iarossi said. "Everyone should recognize that."

State Fish and Game Trooper Mike Fox, the only state law enforcement officer in Valdez when the accident occurred, was called twice by the Coast Guard, English said Sunday. The first call, at about 2:30 a.m. Friday, was a simple alert that a spill had occurred, English said. Then at about 4:30 a.m., the Coast Guard made another call to Fox.

"The Coast Guard had received information that the captain possibly had been drinking, and asked for our assistance," English said Sunday. "The Fish and Wildlife officer responded to offer his assistance where needed."

Fox arrived at the vessel about 7 a.m. to assist two Coast Guard corpsmen in the investigation, English said.

In Valdez, Fox refused to say what he was asked to do and what happened on the ship. He said English had ordered him not to discuss matters under investigation.

"I didn't arrest anybody," Fox said. "I had no reason to."

Fox said Assistant District Attorney Bob Linton of Anchorage was scheduled to arrive in Valdez today to oversee an investigation by state troopers. He would not say what the investigation involved.

Fox said he witnessed blood tests taken from crew members on the Valdez, and said it was his understanding that urine samples were taken as well. He wouldn't say when the tests were taken.

The Coast Guard said in a press release that the blood was drawn at 8 a.m. English put the time at 11 a.m.

Those blood samples, taken from Hazelwood, Third Mate Gregory Cousins and helmsman Robert Kagan could be of little value in detecting drinking before the tanker left port at 9:30 p.m. Thursday.

Bernard Seigel, director of the University of Alaska Anchorage Center for Alcohol and Addiction studies, said that alcohol metabolizes out of the body at a rate of about threequarters of an ounce per hour. That means that in an average adult a sixpack of beer would pass out of the bloodstream in about eight hours.

Tenandahalf hours elapsed between the Exxon Valdez's departure and the time the Coast Guard said the tests were taken.

Dr. Michael Propst, an Anchorage physician who frequently is an expert witness in the prosecution of drunken driving cases, said the passage of at least six hours before a blood test may make it impossible to scientifically determine how much alcohol is in a person's blood.

"I've not been involved in a case where I have tried to extrapolate back that far," he said.

Sevenandahalf hours elapsed between the time of the accident and when the Coast Guard said the tests were taken.

An average male adult is legally under the influence when blood alcohol reaches .10 percent, equal to drinking four quick shots of 86 proof alcohol.

To detect any alcohol after six hours, an average male adult must have downed a minimum 5 or 6 ounces of booze within an hour, or even more over a longer time.

"The bottom line is that during a sixhour time period an impairing level of alcohol could have been excreted away," Propst said.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Steve McCall, captian of the port of Valdez, said Sunday the blood samples had been sent to Anchorage, then Federal Expressed to the Lower 48 for analysis.

Details of what occurred on board the vessel in the hour before it ran aground 25 miles south of port remained sketchy, but in a briefing to reporters and townspeople Sunday afternoon, Iarossi indicated that serious human error was at fault.

The events were reconstructed by physical evidence from the ship itself, from log entries and automatically recorded data, and interviews with crew members other than the three under investigation, he said.

Iarossi said he could not explain why Hazelwood had left the bridge shortly after midnight Friday morning, or why Cousins was left in command.

Cousins was not licensed by the Coast Guard to pilot a tanker through Prince William Sound, so his doing so was a violation of both federal regulations and company policy, Iarossi said.

The Coast Guard has said that Hazelwood, Cousins and Kagan are the focus of the inquiry into the cause of the wreck. They have been subpoenaed to give evidence to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB investigates marine accidents in which Coast Guard activity may have been a contributing factor.

Iarossi gave the following account of events:

The ship left port around 9:30 p.m. Thursday and passed uneventfully through Valdez Narrows under the command of a harbor pilot.

The captain was on the bridge when the pilot left the ship at the southern end of the narrows around 11 p.m. Thursday. A short time later, Hazelwood retired to his cabin, one flight of stairs below the bridge. The third mate and the helmsman are believed to have been the only people left on the bridge.

While Cousins has a Coast Guard certificate to command the ship in most waters, a special endorsement is required for Prince William Sound, which Cousins didn't have.

The Valdez sought and received permission to leave the normal southbound shipping lane because of earlier reports of ice from Columbia Glacier. Such a request is common in the spring.

The ship was supposed to steer east into the empty northbound lane. Instead, it continued to the east and beyond the shipping channel entirely into a charted area of rocky reefs.

Iarossi estimated its speed at about 8 knots, but said it could have been higher.

"At about that point, we believe the mate realized he needed to get back into the traffic lane," Iarossi said.

He estimated the ship was about onequarter mile outside the channel when it struck the first rock.

It tore three holes into the starboard tanks and ripped out a portion of the hull.

The first strike caused no damage to the ship's mechanical or navigation systems, he said.

Although the ship had begun to turn toward the west, inertia kept it moving in a southerly direction. About two miles south of the first pinnacle and by this time more than a mile from the shipping lane it grounded on the reef.

The rock punched eight holes in the hull. The two largest were 8 feet by 15 feet and 20 feet by 6 feet. In addition, the rock is thought to be protruding into the ship through another, larger hole.

Officials still don't know the extent of the damage to the structure of the vessel and have called in salvage experts to monitor the oil transfer. One of the biggest fears is that the load will become unbalanced and that the ship will capsize or break apart, spilling the remaining 40 million gallons.

Daily News reporters Craig Medred and Charles Wohlforth contributed to this story.

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