REPORTER: David Brill

 

 

As I walked up the main street of Cordova, I saw a wonderful old hotel that had been a real landmark of the town for many, many years, it was just rotting away - you could see the sides collapsing and the glass all broken. I went down to the wharf and they are quite a few fishing boats that were just rotting - you could see grass growing up through the hull of these fishing boats - rusty, tackling gear. When you stood on this dock and realise what a beautiful, calm place on the surface this town is, but underneath it, there is tremendous sadness, frustration, bitterness.

 

MARY LITTLE: The heart of the people - it is still broken. It is not something that you really can fully recover from. You can come back and do life differently but it will never be what it was.

 

REPORTER:  It won't be the fishing place it was.

 

MARY LITTLE:  No.

 

REPORTER:  And what will it be, and what is it now then?

 

MARY LITTLE: It is evolving still. Remember, we had just finally finished up the Exxon settlements.

 

REPORTER:  21 years later?

 

MARY LITTLE: Yes, and it was not anything that people expected. So there was a lot of heartache in that and still a lot of trying to come to acceptance for the small amount of money they did receive.

 

They wanted $5 billion. They ended up getting $500 million.

 

CAPTAIN NOEL PALACE:  We waited 20 years and got basically nothing

 

REPORTER:   What damage did it do to the community and the town itself.

 

CAPTAIN NOEL PALACE:  We had a guy today who committed suicide up in……

 

REPORTER:  Today?

 

CAPTAIN NOEL PALACE:  Yeah.

 

REPORTER:   And what was that related to?

 

CAPTAIN NOEL PALACE:  Well he was a Vietnam vet, he was a fisherman.

 

REPORTER:   Yeah, you knew him well?

 

CAPTAIN NOEL PALACE:  Yeah. He was in here actually.

 

REPORTER:   Only yesterday? And you think that is partly to do with the stress over the time?

 

CAPTAIN NOEL PALACE:  I know it was. I've known him for 30 years. Lost everything.

 

REPORTER:   And he was a successful fisherman?  Lost everything?

 

And I felt - gee, I mean, 21 years later, people are still suffering. I heard incredible stories from so many people - the so-called tough Alaskans. But they felt isolated and they were very worried about what would happen to the people in the Gulf states.

 

TORY BAKER: They don’t have national response set up. They didn't - they were not prepared. They do not have citizens oversight, they do not have a progressive safety program down there and I think the Alaskans that have gone down there, I think we have been really shocked, not so much that it is the deja vu of the disaster all over again, but that how basically ill prepared we have - we are in this country for disasters of the size.

I just remember that our experience - the longer and longer that we got away from the actual disaster, we would see up ad pages or comments from politicians or Exxon or whatever that was - you know just get over it. Just get over it. And I just remember it just feeling like well some people can't quite get over it, some of us can't make a living. Some of us will make her living, some of us will diversify, some of us will move on. But I also made a commitment to myself that if and when another disaster of that magnitude were to happen and it has happened in the Gulf, that I certainly would not say "Get over it" and I would be there to help in any way that I could.

 

I met this wonderful man, RJ Copcheck, who is a fisherman and a scientist. He runs a research scientific station in Cordova.

 

R J COPCHECK, SCIENTIST: We are out of fish, so it does not mean that there are no heron, but it means that a population was so reduced and so damaged by effects that there is no longer the massive fish able to produce in numbers to keep their population at a level we can harvest for us.

This is probably one of the thick deposits. Look at this.

 

I noticed outside his office there were are all these bottles, filled that oil.

 

R J COPCHECK:  Look at this, this is ridiculous. There are still places in Prince William Sound that has that thick, yucky, smelly poison. This is what the rocks look like. It is just absolutely…. This is not mud - that is thick, ass-fault-like oil. That is just, just... thick and oily and stinky and poison.

 

REPORTER:   And when would that have been collected?

 

R J COPCHECK: This was collected only about a month and a half ago. This is what is going to happen in the Gulf. There is going to be a lot of places where oil gets locked in, or gets trapped into the estuaries and it is going to be there - And for how long?

 

REPORTER:   And this can affect all the wildlife for many years to come?

 

R J COPCHECK:  For a long, long time.

 

This lady came along - this woman in the middle 60s. Tough, confident, been around. She is a fisherman - or she was a fisherman. Her name is Captain Anna Young.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: We lost our industry. My son became a drug addict during the oil spill. Our mayor committed suicide the next year. It impacted the whole town. A lot of people became alcoholics, a lot of divorces.

 

R J COPCHECK: Yeah, it was really tough.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: It was really tough. And we were way over exposed to all kinds of chemical things. And we are all having a lot of problems - physical problems.

 

REPORTER:   You are now, Anna - Because of the spill?

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG:  Oh yes, I believe so.

 

REPORTER:   Of course you would, it was the chemicals.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG:  We are breathing …. I mean I passed out several times from breathing the fumes of it. And we were down in the scaffs full of oil, scooping mousse into buckets with bread scoops, you know, flower scoops. At first, we were using pumps and then it got too thick and we were corralling it with our brooms, just like we corral fish, we were making sets on it.

 

REPORTER:   Have you had any tests for that?

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG:  They do not care. Who is going to pay for the tests? Where do you go for tests?

 

R J COPCHECK:  So one of the challenges has been that the occupation and safety and health folks have not really followed up at a level that they should have relating to folks that were exposed chronically to the spill.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: We were getting it. We were getting a whole bunch of it when we tried to take it.

 

REPORTER:   But in buckets. That wouldn't have done much good, would it?

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: It did a lot of good. It got that much oil out of the water. In time, my brother, Tom Copeland tried to make Exxon put a bounty on the oil and get all the boats out there trying to get it, but they did not want to get it back.

 

R J COPCHECK:  That is right. And the co-op fishermen, they used up about $5,000 worth of buckets, because I remember I am still on the co-op's board, so Exxon never paid the bill.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: They never pay the bill. I came in and got those buckets.

 

R J COPCHECK:  We send them the bill for about 5,000 bucks to pay for the buckets that was supposed to be for the herring eggs and you guys filled them with oil. I went out there. You guys filled them with oil. And they never paid us for the buckets.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: And Tom took the oil in and they would not even let him unload it. He was in there for about two weeks trying to get it unloaded. They wouldn't take it out of the spilling? They wouldn't take it.

 

She took me down to the wharf to show me her brother's boat. He still fishes for salmon.

 

REPORTER:   These just caught, are they? They are pretty fresh?

 

TOM COPELAND: Oh yeah, I caught them yesterday. Look at the size.

 

While we are there, he gave her a beautiful salmon. And she cocked it up for me.

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG: Nobody cares. Nobody cares what happens to us. A lot of people can't cope, couldn't cope then, they can't cope now and they are getting older and they do not have any retirements. You can only try and suffer for so long and then you get mad and then you start fighting back and that is what I have been doing. That's what makes me able to live with it is I am fighting back any way I can, all the time.

 

REPORTER:   21 years later, still fighting?

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG:  Oh, I will until the day I die.

 

REPORTER:   Fighting back for what?

 

CAPTAIN ANNA YOUNG:  For the environment - that big corporations do not ruin the environment.

 

The last day in Cordova was quite a moving day for me. I'd got the trust of the people. The comment to me all the time was the lawyers have done OK, the Government doesn't care. Honestly I can see the town still suffering. So what is going to happen in the Gulf states? 

 

GEORGE NEGUS:  A typically thoughtful David Brill in Cordova, Alaska, still in trouble 20-plus years after they were hit by an oil spill. Tell us what you remember about the Alaskan oil disaster on our website and there are links and a photo gallery documenting what happened back in 1989, through to the present day at: sbs.com.au/dateline.

 

 

 

Reporter/Camera

DAVID BRILL

 

Producer

PETER CHARLEY

 

Researcher

JANE WORTHINGTON

 

Editor

WAYNE LOVE

 

Original Music composed by

VICKI HANSEN