Hundreds of workers Thursday raked, shoveled and skimmed away some of the estimated 80,000 liters of oil that spilled from a broken pipeline into the Pacific Ocean on California's southern coast, federal authorities said. Some officials hinted that the clean up operation may take months. "I do want to manage expectations," Captain Jennifer Williams of the US Coast Guard said at a news conference on a hilltop near Santa Barbara, about 153 kilometers north-west of Los Angeles. "Clean-up doesn't happen overnight," dpa quoted Williams as saying. About 300 workers on the shorelines of Refugio and El Capitan State Beaches and 20 at the culvert under the pipeline break are operating around the clock to remove oil-soaked sand, she said. At least 18 vessels have sponged about 30,000 liters of oily water from the ocean surface with about 1 kilometer of floating boom. The recovered oil is just a fraction of an oil slick that now covers about 23 square kilometers, and has spread 15 kilometers southeast along the coast.
