Stealth Journeys with the Steam Mapper

Chapter 67: Reminiscing About Environmental Disasters and Family Trips

On a more recent midsummer trip through Carrabelle, on the way to Pensacola to help with clean-up from the BP oil spill, Stef's family stopped to see their friendly neighbors on Gulf Drive, and learned that the old lady had died, mean as ever.    Meeting the Carrabelle neighbors back in 2001 had made for a nice summer, except for the old lady "sourpuss" missing sea shell disaster. Returning to the Florida panhandle after the BP Oil Spill of 2010, was an opportunity for the Fulton family to participate in the cleanup of the one of the worst environment disasters to hit the United States.

Stef was right in the thick of it with rescuing animals and cleaning up tar balls, all brought on by the "spill".   The spill was caused by an explosion on board the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig back on April 20, 2010.   The explosion killed eleven workers and injured 17 others, but the toll on other species was massive.   The oil slick that appeared on the water was later confirmed to be the result of the underwater well which leaked an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil each day. The process to cap the well successfully involved many steps and failed attempts.   The flow was finally stopped on August 5th.   By then, oil had come ashore in all of the Gulf States and caused great harm to all of the species of the environments it touched.    Attempts to rescue animals and protect beaches brought mixed results.

As a teenager, Stef was excited about helping with such a big response team.   By early June, nearly 6,000 volunteers had been trained in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida to help monitor the beaches and prepare for oil coming ashore.   Early on, only BP employees could come into direct contact with contaminated wildlife.  But over time the magnitude of the disaster would allow for changing requirements.  The National Audubon Society organized volunteers interested in helping the wildlife, and they were willing to work with older teens such as Stef. 

As a shy "home schooler", meeting other teens with like-minded, altruistic interests, this assignment was a dream project.  True, it hurt to see animals suffering, but helping them recover was exciting.   Seeing a duckling washed in Dawn dish detergent in a television commercial, always brought a swelling of pride for helping.

Later that year, The National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. created an exhibit to explain the cause and effects of the BP Horizon oil spill disaster and ongoing clean-up.  Stef's parents had been making annual visits to the museums in Washington, D.C, since they were children.  They recalled the giant squid on display, frozen in a giant coffin.  They recalled a diorama of Burgess Shale species that had imagined fantastical sea creatures from the Cambrian Era.   A giant squid model had hung from the ceiling in the earliest days of the Smithsonian.   It was something Ned and Eliza Land could have seen on their visit to America back in 1924.

Thinking of the BP Horizon Smithsonian exhibit, reminded Stef of the visit to the Valdez Museum in Valdez, Alaska.  It had been their first stop in Prince William Sound, before they headed westward to Hallo Bay, and then on to the Aleutians and the nuclear testing sites.  The museum had been loads of fun.  Much of the older exhibits featured the Alaskan Gold Rush era and the hardships encountered by miners and investors who had been sold a lot of misinformation.

The newer Exxon Valdez Oil Spill exhibit at the Valdez Museum gave the whole story of the disaster that happened back in March, 1989, a few minutes past midnight, when the Exxon tanker hit Bligh Reef.  Over 10.8 million U.S. gallons of oil had been spilled.  (Stef remembered that it was U.S. gallons that equal four quarts, not to be confused with Canadian Imperial gallons which hold five quarts.)

Many causes contributed to the worst-case scenario for this disaster.  The crew had been downsized and overworked.   The ship was outside of the intended channel because of suspected icebergs.  The captain had been drinking in excess, as revealed in a court case.   An awful storm blew in a few days later, pushing the oil ashore, creating a horrible scenario for wildlife of all kinds.  The fishing industry was devastated.  The clean-up was extremely hard because of the remoteness of the location.  The exhibit revealed the calamity caused by human error.  Each environmental disaster involving oil spills brings renewed interest in safety precautions, and each time different factors play a role.   Oil spills and bodies of water spell disaster: "Oil and water don't mix".

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill story was made into a movie starring Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell, which showed the complexity of a disaster aboard a gigantic offshore oil rig.  It was located 250 miles southeast of Houston Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.  The oil rig had been constructed by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea, being the largest shipbuilding company in the world.  In September of 2009, a well was drilled 35,050 feet deep, the deepest ever drilled.  On April 20th of the following year, a blowout occurred causing the extreme fire that killed eleven people and injured many others.  The fire could not be extinguished, the rig was destroyed and sank and the oil well began leaking.   It then became the largest disaster caused by an oil rig in the United States.  The blowout was caused by a buildup of methane gas, something that could not have been anticipated.

When man's inventions meet the unpredictability of nature and the physical environments within our planet, it is hard to forecast what might happen.   With each new design, more and more information from past experiences and disasters contribute to improvements in safety features for the next engineering feat.  These are very costly lessons learned at the expense of human life, and the destruction of the environment.  The beauty of the World Trade Center and its unusual construction, never expected for the girder design to be susceptible to extreme heat from large airplanes loaded with jet fuel exploding within the towers.

The hundreds of offshore oil rigs around the world, must be designed to withstand cyclones and tsunamis, earthquakes and large cargo ships crashing into the platform.  The designs have become very sophisticated, but there will always be the chance of something falling from the sky.   A plane, a bomb, space debris the size of a school bus, or even a large meteor.

Stef thought of the National Geographic show about engineering marvels, which explained the latest design built in Norway for the Perdido oil rig located about 250 miles southeast of Galveston Texas.  It was shipped in horizontally in sections, assembled, and then tilted to a vertical position, where the base was pumped full of seawater and lead added to stabilize it.  The rig literally floats in place, tethered by gigantic cables.   It is the size of a town and has helicopter pads to have eleven passenger helicopters bring in each crew of workers, and to come to the rescue if a disaster meant evacuation.  The show explained how innovations in flame retardant spray keep the metals onboard from heating to the point of softening and losing their strength.   This is a huge improvement for saving the structure and buying time for people and important data to be rescued.

The numbers of workers constantly monitoring the pressures and flows and temperatures onboard an oil rig was very impressive.   More safety was involved in the oil industry than the average person would ever consider.   An oil rig seemed a safer place to be than on a plane or ship or train or car.

The oil industry is currently one of the very biggest industries in the world.  Man relies on oil for thousands of products besides petroleum.  The wealth that oil companies control is unimaginable, and oil disasters spell very big trouble for each one of them.  It is hard to imagine a time when whale oil for lamps and sewing machines was the big market.  It is hard to imagine a time when oil and coal, fossil fuels, will all be replaced with renewable resources and unlimited resources of wind, and currents, and solar, and biomass, including sources from within the oceans.

Being an oceanographer with a role in finding ways to develop clean energy sources and ways to reverse pollution, sounded like a very noble purpose in life.   StLF and MYKA  had already spent evenings discussing many philosophical conundrums often ending with a stalemate about what was most important.