Tag Archives: Gulf Coast

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Learning from Katrina

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hurricane katrina

As we look back upon the fifth anniversary of worst hurricane in U.S. history, two windstorms churn through the Atlantic. The first, Danielle, fortunately veered away from the coastline, its destructive power withering by the hour. The second, Earl, on the other hand, is strengthening, with sustained winds already reaching 135 mph and a trajectory that has the whole Eastern Seaboard on watch.

Katrina taught us many things about disaster preparedness and response. It gave us vivid, appalling visions of a new worst-case scenario. Even more powerfully, Spike Lee put together two gripping documentaries that unveil the true, long-term magnitude of the tragedy, the second of which, If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise, recently premiered on HBO and is a much-watch look into just how much the city has suffered — without crumbling — since the floodwaters receded.

At Risk Management magazine, ever since the storm, we have tried to tell some of the city’s other stories. I wrote an article about the New Orleans Museum of Art’s harrowing days after the storm and the commando art restoration team that saved collections throughout the city. Another story detailed how a casino risk manager in the midst of a major merger had to deal with $1 billion in lost property after his company’s riverboat was thrown 2,000 feet by storm surge. And we tried to find some semblance of a silver lining by offering these lessons that all of us can learn from a disaster of this magnitude.

Unfortunately, it seems as though few lessons have actually been learned. Oh, they have been discussed ad nauseum and the outrage expressed has generally been genuine. But actual behavior has largely remained unchanged. Still, most people admit that they are unprepared for disasters.

Hopefully, most companies and organizations are more confident. But many are not — or at least have no cause to be. Along these lines, we plan to spend the rest of this week (and much of September, which is National Preparedness Month) remembering what happened on August 29, 2005, and emphasizing the importance of disaster preparedness and response.

I encourage you to click some of the links above and check back soon for more.

Are Oil-Eating Bacteria Cleaning Up the Gulf?

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It appears that way.

So you know how BP and various others have been trying to sell us on the idea that the gargantuan oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico had somehow magically disappeared? Well, now some Berkeley scientists have confirmed that this actually may be happening, but it isn’t magic. A newly discovered microbe, a particularly gluttonous form of oil-eating bacteria that have existed for millions of years on the ocean floor, appears to have multiplied rapidly since the April 20 spill and gobbled up so much of the dispersed oil as to render the plume “undetectable.”

That is pretty amazing if this is actually going on. Nature, man. Truly remarkable.

Since scientists know science, I will cede all knowledge on the subject to the researchers doing the researching and hope to hear more good news about the Gulf cleaning itself. But, I think FSist’s take is pretty well aligned with my own.

We remain slightly skeptical, but consider our minds blown.

Blown indeed.

eat oil

Energy Company Net Income: 2007-2010

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Guess which company the blue line represents?

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Says CanOils Database (from which the image comes via press release):

BP stands out with its spectacular $17 billion reported loss in the second quarter, and even if we look at its underlying performance by removing the effects of non-recurring items, growth in adjusted earnings was just 15% – much lower than any of its peers. (see Normalised Net Income graph below). So not much cheer to report here.

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Well, BP did at least stop the oil flow and the cemented well seems to be holding. Plus, the digging on the relief wells is not too far from completion so “bottom kill” — the long expected final solution to the leak — may be a reality soon.

I’m not sure that’s worth cheering, but a nice golf clap in probably in order.

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By the Numbers: The Gulf Oil Spill

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Newsweek has created a great slideshow illuminating some staggering numbers about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. I suggest you head over there and read it in full as they include insightful synopses/explanations of each, but these were the few figures I found the most interesting:

  • Time it would take the United States to use the oil spilled so far: 4 hours, 24 minutes
  • Number of response workers: 42,000-plus
  • Percent of the spill that’s natural gas: 70%
  • Cubic feet of natural gas set ablaze: 1 billion
  • Number of suggestions received with ideas to stop the spill: 112,000

Along with that last factoid, Newsweek also included the below video of Kevin Costner talking about his invention that can siphon polluted water from the Gulf, extract the oil from it and dump the clean water back into the sea. He came up with this “oil distiller” while filming Waterworld when he — for God knows what reason — partnered with his brother to create an actual, working version of a prop used in the film. Obviously, the device did not need to work in the movie. It’s Hollywood make-believe and we viewers would have just believed that the theoretical physics they discussed worked considering it is, ya know, a movie set in the distant future that featured a plot where the globe was entirely submersed by ocean and “dry land was a myth.” But, nope, Kevin needed realism within his work of fiction, so the brothers Costner fabricated a working model of this centrifuge-based “Ocean Therapy” technology.

And now, hopefully, we will all owe the man a big round of applause. After conducting a few tests, BP purchased 32 of the machines from Costner a few weeks ago and has already begun using them to aid the clean up efforts. The technology is not perfect (as you can learn about here), but it is helping — which means Kevin has almost certainly done more to help the Gulf of Mexico, marine life and affected coastal communities than you have.

Overall, it’s easily the best thing he has done since Thirteen Days.