Unnatural Disasters: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Unnatural Disasters: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill — page 1
introduction April 21 2010 Look back at newspapers from this day and you’ll find hardly a hint that a major environmental catastrophe had begun the night before in the Gulf of Mexico In St Louis a medical study on the health risks of salt made the front page The lead story in the Fort Worth Telegram-Star was about biofuel-powered trains And in Boston journalists celebrated the homecoming of travelers whose return trips had been complicated by a lava-spewing volcano in Iceland The world wasn’t yet aware of the massive oil rig explosion about 41 miles 66 kilometers off the shore of Louisiana People didn’t know that 11 of the 126 workers on the drilling platform had died in the blast and that another 16 were injured They didn’t know that workers leapt into the Gulf as flames soared as high as a 15-story building They didn’t know that the entire platform would sink 2 days later 4 21st century skills library