George Inlet Cannery; George Inlet, Ketchikan, Alaska

George Inlet, Ketchikan, Alaska | 1997-May-10

Initial Notification: On May 10, 1997, a caretaker at the old abandoned George Inlet Cannery ten miles east of Ketchikan, Alaska discovered that a storage tank had fallen off its platform onto the beach, ruptured, and was spilling Bunker C oil onto the beach and into the water. Approximately 100 gallons of oil had discharged, creating a sheen approximately 2,000 by 300 yards in George Inlet impacting approximately 1,200 feet of shoreline. The Cape Fox Native Corporation was the RP and, using sorbents, attempted to remove as much oil as possible from the rocky cobble, mostly sheer rock, and hard shale shoreline. A log and a sorbent sausage boom were deployed around the oiled-beach area. The oil had been in the tank for so many years that it was tarlike, was not spreading, and resembled a creosoted piling, even after using sorbents on it. The oiled shoreline had very little bioactivity, only some seaweed and barnacles. In the end, nothing was done, nothing was apparently affected, and only a hard tar coating on the bottoms of some of the rocks could be found to show that anything had happened. USCG district 17. Keyword: log boom, PES-51, sausage boom, sorbents.