Many of my Sout Lou’siana homies are still struggling daily with the aftermath of the 2010 BP oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Most Americans are not aware of the continuing effects of that disaster, which was by far the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Ironically, today Al Jazeera is giving the situation as much attention as any stateside media. (See linked article, below.) Novelist James Lee Burke is also a South Louisiana native. In his 2012 novel, “Creole Belle,” he speaks sharply and vivdly of that disaster. Here’s an excerpt: “This particular blowout has been referred to again and again as a spill. A spill has nothing to do with the events that occurred southeast of my home parish. A spill implies an accident involving a limited amount of oil … leaking from [a] tanker … not pressurized or on fire and incinerating men on the floor of a drilling rig.” “… When a drill bit hits what is called an early pay sand … an unlimited amount of fossil decay and oceanic levels of natural gas that are hundreds of millions of years old are released in seconds through one aperture … the explosion of flame is so intense in velocity and temperature that it will melt the spars of a rig and turn steel cable into bits of flaming string. In minutes the rig can take on the appearance of a model constructed from burned matchsticks.” “It seems to me that a ‘spill’ is hardly an adequate term to describe the fate of men who die inside a man-made inferno.” [“Creole Belle” / James Lee Burke © 2012] Meanwhile, much of Congress wastes immesurable resources re-voting on good laws which were passed and vetted quite a while ago. ~CJFA
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 07:09:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015