Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Oily mess in San Francisco Bay could have been prevented

What do you do when you make a mess? Ignore it and hope for the best? That doesn't work when your mess is 58,000 gallons of highly toxic fuel oil spilled from a cargo ship, all within spitting distance of more than 7 million people. Even worse, some of the oil washed up on the Berkeley shore, where people make pollution outrage into a lifestyle.



This YouTube video shows the San Francisco Bay oil spill from above, and shows how we missed the boat on containing it. The mess could have been contained if proper procedures were followed, and floating containment booms were in place in 2 hours.

Oil spills happen, and a quick move to contain the mess can prevent most of the harm. This point was made years ago, but nobody paid attention. Argh, why do we wait until after the mess to learn our lessons?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Quite agree with you.It is really painful even after the technical advice of HSE personnel,the concerned people create the incident and face the music.
All the incidents and accidents are preventable provided the timely communication and corrective actions are carried out.