Photos: Eric Laughlin, California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Yesterday morning, while much of the rest of the county participated in a tsunami drill, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was out on Humboldt Bay, near the foot of Truesdale, testing its response to a different kind of disaster: An petroleum spill at the the gasoline docks behind the Bayshore Mall.

Most of Humboldt County’s gasoline supply gets here via barge from San Francisco Bay. Barges tie up right there behind the mall to offload their product into the big tanks standing beside the derelict Parcel 4 and much other derelict bayfront industrial infrastructure. 

The dock is also right up against the mouth of the Elk River, which department spokesman Eric Laughlin calls “a species-rich area.” The Elk and its wildlife would be the first place impacted by a major, uncontained spill at the gas dock.

So local DFW personnel took to the bay to test its emergency protocol for isolating future spills from the rest of the bay, and the Elk in particular. A Marine Spill Response Corporation boat laid a boom out along the water’s surface, from point to point, walling off a hypothetical spill.

“Having a pre-planned strategy to protect sites like this is crucial in the event of an oil spill,” Laughlin told the Outpost.