San Francisco Beaches Threatened by Oil Spill

One fender of the Bay Bridge, a vital transportation route that connects San Francisco to Berkeley was seriously affected by the crash of a Chinese container on Wednesday morning.

The Cosco Busan, one of the China COSCO Holdings Co LTD’s containers left the Port of Oakland at 6:31 in the morning and two hours later hit a fender around a support tower due to the limited visibility caused by the foggy weather, Reuters reports.

The crash caused an oil spill, which forced the U.S. Coast Guard to close four beaches near San Francisco: Baker Beach, Fort Point, China Beach and Crissy Field. The authorities are working now to clean up the oil, the Coast Guard said.

However, the authorities are concerned about the situation that caused people near the spill to suffer headaches and nausea because of breathing the vaporized oil from the air. The leak also puts in danger the seals, fish and birds, Wil Bruhns, supervising engineer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board said in a statement: "Bunker fuel oil tends to be rather heavy, and it doesn't float as well as other oil. It's harder to contain."

The authorities are now investigating the cause of the accident and want to find out how much oil spilled into the bay. According to early reports, 58,000 gallons of fuel poured in the bay.

The good news is that the traffic on the bridge was not affected by the incident as the California Department of Transportation said. The bridge is still safe to cross.