If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.
The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.
...
"They said this was the tool of last resort. No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning oil before the spill gets out of hand," Bohleber said. "If they had six or seven of these systems in place when this happened and got out there and started burning, it would have significantly lessened the amount of oil that got loose."
In the days after the rig sank, U.S Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said the government had all the assets it needed. She did not discuss why officials waited more than a week to conduct a test burn.
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/fire_boom_oil_spill_raines.htmlObama's paradigm that gov't is the first, best response has been shown to be just another pipe dream.
The plan was developed in 1994. That means it went through 6 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush and 15 months of Obama; nearly 16 years of neglect.
Yet, SOMETHING kept the USCG from test burning. I'm not going to indulge in the CTs of Obama wanting to discredit the oil industry (although I hear his admin never allows a crisis to go to waste) but I will say they are just as clueless as any other federal government admin and perhaps this would be a good opportunity for him to climb down from his high
horse unicorn of demagoguing Bush's Katrina response.
Unlike Katrina this is a strictly federal matter. Authorities in LA and NO had their own emergency plans in place and they had the resources, i.e. a flooded lot full of school buses. They were certainly entitled to declare disasters and seek federal assistance but the incompetence belongs mostly at the local levels (NEWS FLASH to lurkers: NOLA was not the only city hit by Katrina).
