Firefighters investigating a reported petroleum stench at a California beach last month didn’t take long to find a spill – oil was spreading across the sand and into the surf. Tracing the source, they found crude gushing from a bluff like a fire hose “without a nozzle,” records show. But critical time would elapse before the operator of a nearby pipeline confirmed that it had ruptured and spewed the oil. An employee at the scene for Plains All American Pipeline initially suggested to firefighters that the spill “was too big to be from their pipeline,” according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press. The description of what firefighters found May 19 at Refugio State Beach was detailed in records Santa Barbara County firefighters filed with state officials. It indicates that firefighters who arrived just before noon quickly recognized that “some sort of […]