Some analysts have said that the use of fire booms earlier in the containment process would have averted much of the damage caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., Ron Gouguet, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator, helped craft the 1994 “In-Situ Burn” plan which called for the immediate use of fire booms in case of major oil spills in the Gulf. Gouguet said that the officials responsible had pre-approval to burn off the spill.
“The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away,” Gouguet said.
Gouguet said that burning the leaking oil could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled out of the well, according to the Press-Register.
The first test burn was conducted on April 30, 2010, eight days after the British Petroleum oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, sank and began leaking oil into the Gulf. No fire booms were immediately available at the time of the spill.
According to the Press-Register, Elastec American Marine, the Illinois based company that provided the fire-boom for the test burn, said it only had one of its patented Fire-Hydro booms in stock when the spill occurred. It was rushed to the spill site along with six other booms which the government borrowed from Brazil.
Jeff Bohleber, chief financial officer for Elastec American Marine, said that if six or seven fire booms had been immediately put into place, the accident could have been contained 100 miles from shore. A single fire-boom can burn up to 1800 barrels of oil an hour, which translates to 75000 gallons an hour
Craig Taffaro, a Louisiana fisherman, has been helping cleanup crews at Breton Sound Marina close off waterways to prevent oil from reaching environmentally fragile inland marshes, according to The Advocate of Baton Rouge, La.
“We don’t have a consistent volume of supplies that we need and we feel like our window is closing,” Taffaro said.
The cost of the oil spill goes beyond the monetary cost of clean up and the cost of the oil lost. Costs also include the financial impact of lost jobs, wildlife lost, and overall damage to the environment.
