US Goverment Fails To Act Eventhough They Had A Plan. Instead Blames BP.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.

The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.

The "In-Situ Burn" plan produced by federal agencies in 1994 calls for responding to a major oil spill in the Gulf with the immediate use of fire booms.

But in order to conduct a successful test burn eight days after the Deepwater Horizon well began releasing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf, officials had to purchase one from a company in Illinois.

When federal officials called, Elastec/American Marine, shipped the only boom it had in stock, Jeff Bohleber, chief financial officer for Elastec, said today.

At federal officials' behest, the company began calling customers in other countries and asking if the U.S. government could borrow their fire booms for a few days, he said.

A single fire boom being towed by two boats can burn up to 1,800 barrels of oil an hour, Bohleber said. That translates to 75,000 gallons an hour, raising the possibility that the spill could have been contained at the accident scene 100 miles from shore.

"They said this was the tool of last resort. No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning oil before the spill gets out of hand," Bohleber said. "If they had six or seven of these systems in place when this happened and got out there and started burning, it would have significantly lessened the amount of oil that got loose."

In the days after the rig sank, U.S Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said the government had all the assets it needed. She did not discuss why officials waited more than a week to conduct a test burn. (Watch video footage of the test burn.)

At the time, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouguet -- who helped craft the 1994 plan -- told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. "The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away."

Gouguet speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.

Bohleber said that his company was bringing several fire booms from South America, and he believed the National Response Center discovered that it had one in storage.

Each boom costs a few hundred thousand dollars, Bohleber said, declining to give a specific price.

Made of flame-retardant fabric, each boom has two pumps that push water through its 500-foot length. Two boats tow the U-shaped boom through an oil slick, gathering up about 75,000 gallons of oil at a time. That oil is dragged away from the larger spill, ignited and burns within an hour, he said.

The boom can be used as long as waves are below 3 feet, Bohleber said.

"Because of the complexity of the system and the obvious longer production time to build them, the emphasis is on obtaining and gathering the systems," he said.

Bohleber said his company has conducted numerous tests with the Coast Guard since 1993, and it is now training crews on the use of the boom so workers will be ready when they arrive.

"We're arranging for six to be shipped in. We keep running into delays. Hopefully, they will be here by Wednesday to be available for use on Thursday. Bear in mind, two days ago, we thought they would be here today."

link

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Obama hates seagulls.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Obama hates seagulls.

someone should pay Kanye to come out and say that. It'd be damn funny. Or at least SNL should do a skit on it.

[chri'stina 190]

Obama hates seagulls.

That is true. He told me that.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Shortly after President Obama finished a quick, tough-talking trip to Louisiana on Sunday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked by reporters if Obama is mindful of the comparisons being made between the administration’s response to the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Bush administration’s much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In an illustration of the administration’s tightrope dilemma whenever the ghosts of Katrina are invoked, Gibbs both rejected and embraced the comparison.

"Other than the geography, I don't see how” the two disasters are similar, Gibbs said. Then he added: "I'm happy to compare the response."

Publicly, White House officials have challenged most attempts to equate Katrina and the oil spill, aggressively working to deflect the accusations of government ineptitude that dogged President Bush after the hurricane.

But behind the scenes, Katrina weighed heavily on the minds of the Obama officials who raced to Louisiana after learning of the rig explosion last month.

“From the beginning,” said David Hayes, the deputy Interior secretary, who was among the first Washington officials to respond to the accident, “we didn’t want this to be a Katrina episode, in terms of lack of coordination and help.”

Asked directly about the parallels in a press briefing Saturday, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security John Brennan said, “One of the things that the president said very early on is that he wants to be aggressive and proactive and not wait for things to happen, but to anticipate them.... Clearly there are some lessons from Katrina, and adjustments in the federal government as a result of them.”

Administration officials had repeatedly “war-gamed” responding to Katrina-style disasters over the last year, including a mock oil spill drill in March.

Hayes said the drills prepared him to move immediately when he learned of the rig explosion at 8 a.m. on April 20, hours after it occurred. By 11:30, he and Interior colleagues were flying to Louisiana.

They didn’t have time to pack, so the crew bought spare underwear at a local K-Mart.

Hayes set up shop at a government command center with a direct feed to the BP response center in Houston. His boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, called nearly hourly for updates.

“We just went,” Hayes said in a phone interview. “We didn’t realize the significance of it [initially], but we saw the potential significance.”

The Katrina experience is well-imprinted on the man the administration tapped Saturday to lead the federal response to the spill: Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, who stepped in to lead the Bush administration’s embattled Katrina response in September 2005.

The two disasters differ vastly in nature and in response, Allen said in an interview. After the rig explosion, the Coast Guard spent the early days on a massive search-and-rescue operation, then pivoted to coastal defense and attempted to stop the leak from the wellhead.

“We have a failure of critical infrastructure at 5,000 under the ocean,” Allen said. “That’s the only comparison to Katrina, when we had failure of critical infrastructure everywhere on land.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/katrina-on-obama-administrations-mind-in-oil-spill-response.html

[spookyturtle 9,466]

It's all the governments fault and they are coming to get Paul and Shooter.

[Heracles 417]

At the hands of a negligent profit-first company, America is screwed yet again.

Interesting enough, according to some (no names) the free market should have prevented this. Wrong! Strong legislation, regular inspections and hefty fines prevents such disasters. Someone cut corners and now the entire gulf coast will pay the price. Job well ###### done.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

At the hands of a negligent profit-first company, America is screwed yet again.

Interesting enough, according to some (no names) the free market should have prevented this. Wrong! Strong legislation, regular inspections and hefty fines prevents such disasters. Someone cut corners and now the entire gulf coast will pay the price. Job well ###### done.

And a hefty price it will be. It will be years before the full effects will be known.

[Heracles 417]

And a hefty price it will be. It will be years before the full effects will be known.

Rocks can be cleaned and possibly replaced. Whereas, marine life is screwed period. Not to mention as are we, considering 20% of our seafood comes from there.

Once the investigation is completed, someone better go to jail. I have no tolerance for oh oopps or negligence like that.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Booyah!

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Rocks can be cleaned and possibly replaced. Whereas, marine life is screwed period. Not to mention as are we, considering 20% of our seafood comes from there.

Once the investigation is completed, someone better go to jail. I have no tolerance for oh oopps or negligence like that.

Including the government officials who took over a week to act to do something when there was already a plan in place?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Rocks can be cleaned and possibly replaced. Whereas, marine life is screwed period. Not to mention as are we, considering 20% of our seafood comes from there.

Once the investigation is completed, someone better go to jail. I have no tolerance for oh oopps or negligence like that.

How much negligence do you think there was? Do you think that anyone involved was prepared for something like this? And I really wonder what they could do if the pipe in the well collapses as I have read that this would turn it into a geyser, completely out of control with tens of millions of barrels flowing from the reservoir of oil.

[Heracles 417]

Including the government officials who took over a week to act to do something when there was already a plan in place?

Paul please. Disasters like these are where Libertarian ideals and logic go straight out the window. On one hand you want no government and to return to the pilgrim days, now you are blaming them. You can't have your cake and eat it.

After seeing that, like Arnie, I too don't support offshore drilling. Certainly not without proven safety measures covering every scenario and one that includes multiple backup equipment. Sure, such incidents don't happen often but when they do, the area is totally fubar.

[Ban Hammer 13,343]

Obama hates seagulls.

and cute baby seals

[Heracles 417]

How much negligence do you think there was? Do you think that anyone involved was prepared for something like this? And I really wonder what they could do if the pipe in the well collapses as I have read that this would turn it into a geyser, completely out of control with tens of millions of barrels flowing from the reservoir of oil.

Someone clearly screwed up or something failed. If something did fail, then why in the hell was there no backup or safety measure? I'm not even in that industry and could think of a number of backup measures off the top of my head. Like having a second drill point drilled but closed; just in case something like this scenario happened.

There is no excuse as they are sucking oil out of the ground, not building the next generation stealth fighter.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Booyah!

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Paul please. Disasters like these are where Libertarian ideals and logic go straight out the window. On one hand you want no government and to return to the pilgrim days, now you are blaming them. You can't have your cake and eat it.

After seeing that, like Arnie, I too don't support offshore drilling. Certainly not without proven safety measures covering every scenario and one that includes multiple backup equipment. Sure, such incidents don't happen often but when they do, the area is totally fubar.

My point is, they've had a plan since 1994 in case a spill like this happened and they weren't ready and failed to act.

This actually IS the government's job to be able to react to something like this off of our coastline.

They had the plan, yet weren't ready... and took a week to do anything, after it was too late.