Here are some aerial pix of the oil spill by Plains All American Pipeline near the Refugio Beach park and campground in Santa Barbara County, CA. The spill began sometime around noon on May 19, 2015 and we flew over the region about 3pm the next afternoon. This is where the oil reached the ocean, a little West of Refugio Beach.
1514 Oil Meets Water
At the top you can see a few of the many workers and volunteers along with all sorts of equipment cleaning up this mess. Just across the railroad tracks and 101 freeway from this spot is where the 24″ pipeline burst.
1505 Pipeline Burst (click to enlarge)
The crude oil came to the surface from the buried pipe just above the two black boxes at left, and filled the shallow ditch. After the pipe was shut off and the culvert running to the beach at right was plugged, trucks were brought in to empty the ditch. Offshore the Ocean Sentinel sweeper boat joined other boats deploying oil containment booms, and began collecting oil off the water.
1482 Ocean Sentinel
When I snapped this it didn’t seem to be catching much oil, but maybe it was heading toward the many other large oil and tar patches we saw. This smaller boat was working on some small patches.
1374 Boat Sweeping Oil Spill Off Refugio
I’ve put many more and larger pix from this flight on my Photo Page (right column of this page). Some different smaller versions are in John on Edhat (also at right column of this page).
John & Anne Wiley 
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