Pilot lost situational awareness in thick fog, NTSB told

摘要

The bar pilot on the bridge of Cosco Busan lost situational awareness in a thick fog just before the containership struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, according to testimony at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing. None of the ship's officers protested the pilot's decision to sail even though they were amazed that he was getting underway from the Oakland dock in visibility that was as low as one-eighth of a mile, witnesses said at the April hearing. A medical expert testified that a combination of medications the pilot was prescribed should have disqualified him from having a Coast Guard license. Cosco Busan, a 901-foot container ship, scraped a bridge pier on the morning of Nov. 7, 2007. The contact with the bridge carved a 200-foot-long hole into the ship's side. The subsequent 53,000-gallon fuel spill was the worst in San Francisco Bay in two decades.