Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
It was April 20, 2010, when a massive drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico caught fire in an explosion, killing 11 men. When the fire began, the U.S. Coast Guard office in New Orleans had given our NOAA Office of Response and Restoration department in Seattle a head’s up as they always do in potential spill events. Our scientists and modelers kept their eyes on the possible implications of the rig’s fire, but they were particularly concerned about the “riser:” the long umbilical cord-like pipe connecting the platform to the oil wellhead 5,000 feet below on the sea floor. If that ripped away, there would be no way to quickly contain the wellhead’s flow of oil.
For two days, they played out potential scenarios for an oil spill and had a team of people on stand-by to go down to support the response. Those of us on the data team had our heavy, black plastic Pelican cases ready with routers, electronic cables, printers, and hard drives of data and storage. Flying around the country to respond to oil spills was our routine, but we never fathomed that more than six years of exhausting work lay ahead.
After two days of trying to rescue the lost men and salvage the rig, on April 22, 2010 - Earth Day - the first responders on-scene watched as the Deepwater Horizon platform succumbed to defeat and dropped its crippled mass to the sea floor, taking the riser pipe with it.
Fireboat response crews attempting to extinguish the blaze aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, April 21, 2010. Photo USCG
ICP Houma
My coworker and I took a redeye flight to New Orleans then rented a car for the hour drive to the BP headquarters and incident command post in Houma, Louisiana. After introductions and finding a spot at the table, we went straight to work on several immediate jobs. We we in charge of providing the USCG with the situation status (of the spill, the weather, the assets on the water, the trajectories, etc) and with the environmental resources at risk along the southern states’ coastlines and in the deeper waters. Our scientists and the USCG had several helicopter overflights each day and they returned with photos and data about where the surface oil was headed and what environmental resources might be in its path. We compiled, we mapped, we provided reports, we helped determine potential impacts. This was routine work, but with the uncontrolled flow of oil, we were in new territory. The coast of Louisiana is an ecosystem of its own: estuaries and wetlands, abundant fisheries where generations of Louisianans work their fishing boats to haul fish and shellfish. Dolphins nestle in families along the seashore, and sea turtles cruise up from the deep water to lay their eggs on sandy beaches. It is an aquatic Eden sharing its garden with some of the largest oil producers in the world.
Within a day of being at the command post, the realization of what was happening sunk in. This would not be a routine spill where the USCG’s Priority 1 is “ensure safety of lives” and Priority 2 is “contain the spill.” There was nothing to contain when a well is spewing oil 5,000 feet underwater. I remember being on a speaker phone call in a small windowless room with our Seattle office. We were all quiet and unemotional. Just factual. I was in a stunned daze of disbelief trying to relay the impossible situation, but we were without words. On the other end of the phone, they asked us what we needed. I told them, “Everything.” While no oil had hit shore yet, there was an ominous feeling that it was out there gathering strength, like a mortal enemy beyond the horizon before daybreak. We knew it was armed for destruction, but all we had were little sticks and stones to defend ourselves.
Crying under the bus
The next weeks were “all hands on deck,” and in order to keep a two-week rotation of hundreds of NOAA staff on-going for months, they brought people out of retirement and recruited others from different NOAA offices. If you could do science or manage data, you were on board. In hindsight I feel bad at how poorly they were probably trained (yes even by me), but as the months rolled on, the mental toll was awful. Not so much the ecological impact. Like doctors and EMTs, we were used to compartmentalizing scenes of destruction in order to focus and get the job done. Part of the toll was the constant competition and mind games with BP, the responsible party (RP) that (per the Oil Pollution Act) we had to play joint roles with. Were they sharing all their data? Did they invite us to their meeting? Why are they behind closed doors and what are they hiding? We were pressured to play political games with them when all I could manage was staring at my computer looking numbly at photos that I had just downloaded from an overflight’s SD card. “The money shot,” as we called it and my stomach sunk. Hundreds of dolphins leaping through streamers of bright orange, emulsified oil.
Dealing with an RP is a routine situation at a response that we were used to, but much worse was the mental toll from putting so many of our own people together who had never worked on a response or been in such a stressful environment before. They had no way to cope other than creating irreparable fractures in the team: They were self-serving and didn’t work well with others, they should never have been put in charge of managing people, they didn’t like working 18-hour days, they didn’t understand that you couldn’t control situations 1,000 miles away in your comfortable office and bed, or that there was no concept of “weekend.” No, this cannot wait until Monday!! I was thrown under the bus more times than I could count. The most integral credo of a team - Trust - was perilously thin. I mentally shut down many times. I cried alone, hiding in the women’s locker room. Once, a kind woman heard me and brought me a roll of toilet paper to wipe my face. I threatened to quit over email a few times. There was no off-switch. There was no escape from the internal or external stress.
Even back in Seattle after my two-week rotations, the work didn’t ease up. My kitchen stove sat cold for months as I just bought take-out or filled containers from Whole Foods’ prepared foods buffet. My friends didn’t understand why I was gone so much or why I had disappeared from bike rides or racing. They vaguely heard of a big oil spill far away, but they had racing to do and couldn’t be bothered to understand. I was supposed to be the captain of our women’s team, and was even thrown under the bus by a few of them for not being able to support their summer racing ambitions. I believe their words were, “We are the worst team,” implying it was my fault while responding to a huge ecological disaster. So I burst into tears in front of our racing team board even though somewhere inside I knew they were just being petty. (For the record, I came back to racing the next year and did very well while they had already quit, never reaching the greatness they thought they deserved.)
When you work non-stop there is no concept of days, so these signs were posted around the command post to remind us. A wonderful day is questionable.
Liquid Recovery
If my shift at the command post was over before any restaurants closed for the night, I would take the rental car through one of Houma’s Drive Thru Daiquiri stores. Yes, in Louisiana you could order alcohol to go in your car as long as that small piece of masking tape covered the straw. We did a lot of drinking, and a lot of comfort food eating. “Deep fried low tide.” We found a great little hole-in-the-wall hidden in the back of a gas station to debrief with our team. Fried food and beer to wash away the day. I remember a few days after the spill had begun and it was really hitting the news. The waitress asked our chief scientist in her deep Southern drawl, “Will our life on the water be over?” The locals had every reason to worry about their livelihood that revolved around the Gulf. Ed, with ever the calm voice, answered her truthfully because that’s what she deserved when she didn’t know who or what to believe. “Ma’am, it is going to be bad. But then, over time, it will get better.” She nodded and thanked him for his honesty.
I Played Hookie. Once.
Everyone worked two-week rotations at the command post and the days bled into one another as the months went by. Every day was the same:
Wake as late as possible at the hotel, maybe 6 a.m. I learned to bring my own pillow cases to give myself a comforting sense of home. They were bright pink cotton with little white smiling skulls. The housekeeper always propped them up to make the room a little more cheery.
Make hotel room coffee and grab some yogurt from the small refrigerator.
Drive the 10 miles to the command post. I chose the scenic backroads route past old plantations and huge sagging willow trees. It was my only connection to nature.
Park as far away as possible from the command post in the ever-expanding parking lot and walk. This half a mile was my only exercise. My muscles completely atrophied and my pants turned into compression tights. I learned to only wear free-flowing skirts to accommodate the weight gain.
Arrive for the 7 a.m. command post briefing. Put on sweatshirt because the air conditioning is blasting, but it’s better than the 90 degree heat and humidity outside.
Sit in an uncomfortable folding chair at a makeshift table until lunch at the cafeteria. Then back at it until 7 p.m., or later if need be. In the early days we were there until midnight.
Drive back to hotel, maybe pick up a drive through daquiri or take out food. By this point the introvert in me was drained being around people and I couldn’t go out to dinner any more. I just went back to the hotel and decompressed.
Watch cable tv until my brain settled and could fall asleep.
It’s important to note that this kind of routine can really shatter morale, especially under the pressure of such a highly publicized event where no one in the media or public understands what is really going on behind the scenes. The details of the response are tightly controlled by the Public Information team and for good reason. They only want to release verified facts, and in a constantly evolving situation that is difficult. That’s not good enough for the public media, though, so they sought out their own sources, ones often looking for their 15-minutes or to gain some scientific notoriety.
Luckily, I worked with a few very intuitive leaders who knew when a break wasn’t just needed, but crucial for us to keep working. One afternoon I was surprised when my team leader, Ginger, subtly suggested that we get out for the afternoon. I was stunned! What? Leave? But there’s work to do…..she didn’t care and knew that our mental well being was more important. She had looked up a short afternoon tour for us, to actually get out into the environment and as far away from the command post as possible. Swamps and alligators sounded perfect! I had been working in Louisiana for months and had never even seen a swamp.
We took off in her little rental car and drove down into the mangroves to a little wooden shack. We signed up for a one-hour Swamp Tour that was a perfect reset. We felt human again. We recharged along the water and leapt with excitement at the alligators that paddled up to our pontoon boat like puppies. They were smart and, yes, gentle, patiently waiting for the chicken scraps to be held out by the boatman who talked to them with Southern endearments. We were only gone a few hours, but it felt like days. I’ll always appreciate her sensitivity to our needs.
Let Them Eat Cake
As the months and years rolled along, boosting morale was an important objective for our team back in Seattle. I became known as the Maker of Cakes. This one below was made for the One-Year DWH anniversary. Contrary to what some people made up, we were not “celebrating” the spill (who does that?!!), we were celebrating the work of our team and appreciating each other’s selfless contributions to this difficult event. Food always had a way of lifting spirts and luring us away from the computer. I got quite creative with this map-inspired Gulf of Mexico cake that featured many of the data pieces we were working on (please don’t judge the stained Pyrex!):
Mike n' Ike SCAT segments
Licorice Loop Current
Swedish fish kill
Gummy Vessels Of Opportunity
Chocolate jimmies oil spill
Cookie seastar command posts
Chocolate covered raisin tar balls
Licorice north arrow and scale bar
Up until April 20, I had been training with a track cycling coach in Portland, Oregon, with the goal of making it to Masters Nationals. I was in the best shape of my life and whipping around the track with the men. Everything was going as planned, except that life never keeps you on that plan. I was on a new trajectory and never got back to what I had started. And it’s ok that I never stayed on that plan. It wasn’t meant for me. I invested years of my life into helping our government prove a case against BP that resulted in the largest natural resources settlement in history: $20 billion that would be used for restoration in the Gulf. I became an expert on sea turtle and marine mammal data, in charge of their photos and GPS data that would prove their place and time during the spill and impact on their habitats. I gave conference presentations and had my name on a few papers. My altruism burst at its seams, because I gave all I had for the sake of doing the right thing for our environment and so “the good guys” would win.
There were hundreds of NOAA staff working not only on the ecological impact, but also on the pivotal legal case against BP. Our data contributed to the evidence by proving damages to the natural resources of the Gulf. Six years later, NOAA was awarded $20 billion settlement, the largest in history, and we had final moral-boosting party.