Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska The "Joseph Hazelwood" Full Employment Act 1989

That was the "start" of the END of the 13-year economic depression. The actual end took about four years.

Remember watching that on the news on the day it happened. Plenty of people made serious money renting their boats for clean up.

The largest armada since the D Day invasion

Same thing happened in the Gulf of Mexico BP blowout of 2010. I was there as a LEO. BP hired every boat available to lay boom which ended up not containing anything. Just as happened in the big Mexican blowout in Campeche Bay decades earlier the first serious blow that came through cleaned up everything. The environment can handle the oil. I believe the surfactants or dispersants hurt the recovery more than they helped.

I was there, working for Alyeska pipeline at the marine terminal that day. Flew over the grounded tanker that morning. I can tell all kinds of stories about the event , and the months following during cleanup snd its affect on the communities and environment. The short of it , and not trying to make excuses cause there isn’t any, but Joe Hazelwood was drunk when he came back aboard Exxon Valdez . The pilot took the ship out beyond the narrows and then disembarked, shortly afterward Hazelwood turned the helm over to the third mate, a guy by the name of cousins with instructions to make course change at such a such time and bearing. Hazelwood had previously made a course correction from normal do to ice(calving from Columbia glacier) Cousins failed to make the course correction in time and only did so when a mate on the bow alerted him via radio they were getting dangerous close to Bligh reef, well it was too late and they ran aground Total human error, the night was beautiful , clear as a bell and no wind to speak off, prince Williams sound was smooth as glass, Alyeka’s oil spill response was slow due to a number of factors, some of which were bickering among agencies as to who was incident commander, shortage of oil recovery vessels on hand. Oil spill equipment buried under record snowfall, and shortage of personnel. For two days the sea was calm, there was some debate about lighting the oil on fire to burn it offf? and about the time they begin to get equipment on sight and the oil left on board of the Valdez lightered off to the the Exxon SanFransisco the wind came up and begin to spread oil through the entire sound, off shore from the communities of Valdez and Cordova.. Turning the catastrophe into a two year long cleanup. Which is a huge story in itself that I have not enough time to relate, let’s just say 4 billion dollars of Exxon’s money has not to this day completely mitigated the effects.

And they still pay the federal government to this day for it.

And.....only a one of three compartments were ruptured.

Not true 8 of 11 tanks were ruptured , total estimated loss was 10. 8 million gallons of a total cargo of 53.1 million gallons or 1.2 million barrels . The crews working on littering off that much oil , in those conditions, wearing full scba gear, in an atmosphere that one little spark would have sent up a huge fireball was heroic

The Captain of the Coast Guard had been drinking with Hazelwood that night. That might have slowed their response. Many of the people who worked on the spill died of cancer. Mohall57 You might have known Larry Hodges. My uncle was guidance counselor down there. He told me- while the money might be fantastic- the risks would be great too. Some of my relatives like Doug Cranor worked through the whole thing without problems but his wife, my actual cousin and many of her siblings that worked on it got cancer.

Correct sent you a pm Don

You obviously have never ignited crude oil...

Exxon wanted to torch it ASAP. In hind sight it was a huge mistake in every respect not to, especially for Exxon. I was in PB FS2 Control Room when the word came down via cryptic message.

Interesting. We have been there numerous times since 95 and have not really seen anything left over. Fish are fine. Wildlife fine. Nature recovers. It has to. Its stronger than we think.

No kidding. Or even refined into diesel...

How would Red Adair answer that post? Why do we install LEL detectors in all our crude oil handling facilities. Give me a break , the light ends off vented crude oil is highly explosive give right conditions.

Having spent significant time in PB, including time running drill stem tests on exploratory wells where keeping the flare running was a difficult "thing," the drama of the explosivity of cold crude light ends flashing off in open air is a huge step short of spooky.

The fire triangle was extinguished decades ago when they realized there is a minimum temperature requirement squaring up the triangle. Enclosed spaces are a whole different thing. Puns intended.

Brings to mind a very cold night, about 40 years ago, on an exploratory well being produced to offset some costs... I climbed atop a tank to verify the sight glass. It was being filled via a central downspout. Huge, beautiful, blue static arcs were everywhere, jumping from the crude stream to the tank walls. The tank was being filled while it was being drawn down... being well above the upper explosive limit there really was no problem, basal temp requirements were gravy.

Forgot the question about Red. He told ARCO to call someone else if there was a problem at the Central Compressor Plant (CCP.)