Following Wednesday's 58,000-gallon oil spill caused by a ship which crashed into the Bay Bridge (apparently the first time such a ship has ever done so since the bridge was built,) the Bay Area oil spill cleanup effort seems to be crawling along while hundreds of volunteers are being told to stay home and do nothing.
Volunteers who refuse remain idle are being threatened with arrest:
It was much the same in Marin County, where Sigward Moser led a 30-person volunteer group - including 20 monks-in-training from the Mill Valley Zen Center - onto Muir Beach on Friday. For his efforts, he was detained and handcuffed.
And it wasn't just monks from Marin who were threatened with arrest:
Beth Brown of San Francisco said she and her boyfriend spent about 15 minutes cleaning Baker Beach on Saturday morning, filling a couple of plastic bags with oily clumps. Then a park ranger and a cop appeared, told her the beach was closed and threatened them with arrest.
"I want to do what they want us to do but, right now, they want us to do nothing," Brown said. "And I can't do nothing."
Throughout the end of last week, sparse announcements urged would-be volunteers to refrain from cleanup until they were properly trained. Today's volunteer training sessions, however, brought more orders for volunteers to stay away:
Spilled oil is just too dangerous for ordinary citizens to clean up, the experts said.
The word came at an "informational session" for would-be volunteers at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium sponsored by the state Department of Fish and Game.
"Don't go to the beach, don't pick up tar balls, don't touch wildlife," said Yvonne Addassi, a wildlife director for the department. "We don't want you to be in contact with the oil. It's a hazardous substance."
Apparently, time is of the essence in oil-spill cleanups. But volunteers are not trained to clean up such hazardous materials, officials say. Today's volunteer training sessions turned out to be sessions at which volunteers were told to stay away from beaches, stay home and do nothing.
That's right. Don't just stand there and do nothing. Stay away from the beaches:
"We appreciate your passion," Addassi said. "We know you're trying to do the right thing. But if you want to help, please stay away from the beach."
Large numbers of people will "scare away" oil-soaked birds from landing on the beach, Addassi said. And Chris Powell, a spokeswoman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, said Ocean Beach is "not a place we need a concentration of people even though we know you want to help out."
Calling marine biologist/wildlife rescue experts - does this strike you as strange?