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The frustration that everyone has at the unmitigated disaster that this oil spill has become shouldn’t surprise anyone. With millions of gallons of oil spewing into the gulf doing incalculable damage to wildlife and fragile ecosystems, not to mention the economic calamity for folks in the gulf who have already faced their fare share of trauma, we should all be outraged. As we’re beyond the 50 day mark with no end to the gushing in sight, we can expect the outrage to increase, not slow down.
However, as the scale of this disaster is beyond anything we’ve had to deal with before, I’m also not surprised that the response has had some gaps and gone through some difficulties. Is it realistic to think that with that much oil, spread over that big of an area, that we are going to be able to have none of it hit the shores or to experience some problems with the clean-up and containment? I don’t think so.
Blaming people and placing judgment on the work that people are trying to do makes us feel better. Maybe it helps give us some kind of sense of control knowing that someone else is fucking up, like a better job could be done if it weren’t for incompetence. But I think that the scale of this disaster is beyond that. It’s just too big to be handled perfectly. There is always going to be some room for second guessing with a calamity this huge.
Here are some numbers that I got from a thread from yesterday about the scale of the response.
The administration has authorized 17,500 National Guard troops from Gulf Coast states to participate in the response to the BP oil spill.
More than 24,000 personnel are currently responding to protect the shoreline and wildlife and cleanup vital coastlines.
More than 4,500 vessels are responding on site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts—in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units.
Approximately 2.17 million feet of containment boom and 2.6 million feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 520,000 feet of containment boom and 2.3 million feet of sorbent boom are available.
Approximately 16 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.
Approximately 1.14 million gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—798,000 on the surface and 346,000 subsea. More than 500,000 gallons are available.
More than 145 controlled burns have been conducted, efficiently removing a total of more than 3.62 million gallons of oil from the open water in an effort to protect shoreline and wildlife.
17 staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines.
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