You are in the current BP disaster ROV, number 220. Number 219 is here.
Please DO NOT Rec this diary, rather REC THE MOTHERSHIP instead. She needs your love to stay afloat.
Please be kind to kossacks with bandwidth issues. Please do not post images or videos. Again, many thanks for this.
PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's Diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
For a description of the mothership/ROV liveblogging process, check out this thread.
Must read: Lax Oversight Seen in Failure of Oil Rig's Last Line of Defense. Watch video and interactive graphic page, too. Best overview of how the BOP works, and doesn't work, and the management interference that caused the accident.
Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill Reference Material - from Whitis is the best source for everything.. The quantitative data diary has also been moved there.
Jeff Masters of Weather Underground posted his take on the effects of a hurricane passing through the Gulf and making landfall.
Please DO NOT Rec this diary, Rec the Mothership here.
BP put up a video explaining the LMRP procedure and the future plans.
Go to the Deepwater Horizon Data Summary for a wealth of actual data from the Department of Energy.
This is what BP DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE. The following images are guaranteed to make you SICK AT HEART.
These images are not for the faint of heart - DO NOT VIEW THEM LIGHTLY.
Really, I mean it. Hold somebody's hand. Grab a tissue.
A brief reference guide to nicknames you may see in the ROV diaries:
- Gertrude, aka Gerty: the oil volcano
- Lizzy: the diamond saw cutter
- Clampy: the cute ROV
- Crunchy: 30 ft shear. bit the pipe, now a movie star
- Wanda: the dispersant sprayer
- laundry basket: yellow thing that brings things up and down
- Thingy: those things, you know, those things
- Shiny Thing: those really neat things
- Ms. Blanche Flo, aka Blanche, aka Flo: the manifold thingy
Thanks to dov12348 for publishing a diary on Oil Terminology.
Here is a tutorial on the sources of pressure on the well
H/t to Pluto for finding this:
The official casing configuration under the wellhead.
The initial approach above will be followed by open hole and drill pipe magnetic ranging. After they get within 5 feet of the blown out well's lower casing they will ream, case and cement the relief well prior to reaming through the blown well's casing. (Photos from The Oil Drum)
Audio, a slide presentation, and a transcript from Kent Wells' 6-28 briefing is available.
The video feeds we are watching:
==== ROV Feeds =====
44287/44668 - OceanInterventionROV1
44838/45135 - OceanInterventionROV2
46566/54013 - Viking_Poseidon_ROV1
55030/56646 - Viking_Poseidon_ROV2
31499/31500 - Boa_Deep_C_ROV_1
22458/23729 - Boa_Deep_C_ROV_2
45685/49182 - Skandi_ROV1 (herc14)
45683/45684 - Skandi_ROV2 (herc6)
47175/21144 - Enterprise_ROV_1
21145/21327 - Enterprise_ROV_2
37235/37270 - Q4000_ROV1
35523/35624 - Q4000_ROV2
41434/41436 - Oly_ROV1 (Olympic Challenger's ROV1)
40788/40789 - Oly_ROV2 (Olympic Challenger's ROV2)
24951/24975 - Inspire_ROV1 (Discovery Inspiration's ROV1)
30948/35246 - Hos_ROV1 (HOS Adventure ROV1)
35461/36301 - Hos_ROV2 (HOS Adventure ROV2)
Possibly outdated or redundant links (from The Oil Drum):
46245 - BP "Official" #1 (primary)
46260 - BP "Official" #2 (secondary)
46661 - BP mystery feed #1
46663 - BP mystery feed #2
Restricted to web browser based viewing:
CNN Video Streams Note: multi-view is sometimes unavailable.
PBS (fewer security issues than some others)
BP videos Links to all available live feeds from BP.
WKRG - Mobile/Pensacola (Contains link for an iPhone app at the bottom.)
ABC 7 Chicago Live Video Multiple ROV Camera Views (h/t to temptxan for the great find).
Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth):
Bobo's lightweight ROV Multi-feed: A great low impact multi-view page
The best multi-view feed Be patient as load time may take a bit.
Markey's multi-view page
Lusty/papicek/sullivanst multi-feed page (originally created by papicek, small improvement by Lusty, and huge improvement by sullivanst)
Vote For America's awesome clickable multi-view Courtesy of one of our very own Kossacks.
A multi-view Contains feeds from BP, C-SPAN-2, WKRG, and PBS
High-def video feeds
See this thread for more info on using video feeds and on linking to video feeds.
Again, to keep bandwidth down please do not post images or videos.
Links, courtesy of several Kossacks
ACTION
- X Prize Competition for oil spill fix announced
- Requiring a Relief Well: Let's Write a Bill! A diary series by Garret
- National Science Foundation rapid response research grants for Gulf oil spill research
- ERMA: Environmental Response Management Application
BACKGROUND
- Google Crisis Response page for Gulf Oil Spill
- Wikipedia: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
- BP has a good diagram of the cutting process that partially succeeded
DATA
- Sketch Map of Subsea Operations - from Another Kevin
- GeoPlatform - Gulf Response: Mapping the Response to BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
- Kent Wells' technical update, June 10, 2010
- dov12348's oil toxicity links
- dov12348's Ocean currents, wind currents, and hurricane links
- Visualize the spill
- SkyTruth
- Images of the Oilpacalypse, from Tomtech.
- Visit the Oil Spill Crisis Map to see where oil, mousse, tar balls, and eau de crude have been reported on the Gulf coast.
- The BP Deepwater Horizon Unified Command official website. Wherein you can read latest post warning of employment scams associated with the event and much more from the folks handling this.
- Timeline of response here.
- Department of Energy BP Deepwater Horizon Spill site updates.
- Department of Interior BP Deepwater Horizon Response site provides updates, reports, data, links to pictures, etc.
- Rigzone for specific disaster news and news about the offshore industry, in general.
- Courtesy of profgoose here is a list of links from The Oil Drum links on newer developments, etc
- Maritime ship tracking -- courtesy of johnsonwax
- Map of things on the sea floor there. -- outdated, based on unreliable data
- Calculator for distance from BOP. -- not reliable
- NOAA Spill tracking site
HEALTH AND SAFETY
- 2010 Gulf Oil Spill Crisis Wiki
- NIH National Library of Medicine Crude oil spills and Health
- ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry) Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH): ToxFAQs™
- CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response: 2010 Gulf of Mexico
Includes fact sheets and health and safety information for Gulf Coast Residents, Response Workers, and Health Professionals
- Reducing Occupational Exposures while Working with Dispersants During the Gulf Oil Spill Response
- EPA Response to BP Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Includes Air Monitoring Data Reports, Daily Average Particulate Matter, Air Sampling Data Files, Real-time Air Monitoring (including TAGA data), and Downloadable data set of hourly air monitoring
- Hester's Special Guest Mothership on Human Health Issues and the BP Disaster
LEGISLATION/FEDERAL RESPONSE
- Administration response to spill.
PERTINENT BLOGS and collections of Oil Spill-specific JOURNALISM
- The Daily Hurricane: Blog run by Bob Cavnar
- Nola.com Oil Spill News
- Sun Herald (Biloxi, MS) Oil Spill News
- Mobile (AL) Press-Register Oil Spill News
- St. Petersburg Times (FL) Oil Spill News
- World newspapers oil section
- The Oil Drum
- Oil & Gas Journal
- Offshore Magazine
- Petroleum News
- Your Oil and Gas News
- World Oil
- Bit Tooth Energy blog (technical discussions) by the famed Heading Out, well known key poster on The Oil Drum blog site.
WILDLIFE
- Help Cornell Lab of Ornithology collect bird information on the Gulf
- Center for Biological Diversity list of Gulf species threatened by the spill
- International Bird Rescue Research Center: Info on bird survival rates
- Summarized tally of affected wildlife
- US Fish & Wildlife Service Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Response h/t to CindyMax Left side of page has "Daily Wildlife Collection Reports" that details wildlife found oiled, alive, deceased, and/or released.
- BP doesn't want photos of dead animals
- Washington Post: People Come Together to Save Coast's Oil-Covered Wildlife (h/t Humphrey)
Previous liveblog ROV diaries:
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #219 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #218 - Darryl House
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #217 - The Test's Time is UP - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yasuragi
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #216 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Gulf Watchers Overnight/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #215 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yasuragi
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #214 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Darryl House
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #213 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Tomtech
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #212 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Gulf Watchers Overnight/David PA
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #211 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #210 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - alkalinesky
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #209 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
------------------
I've been thinking a lot about Camille lately. The hurricane, that is. In this post-Katrina age, it's oh-so easy to forget that other monster storms have grown out of the Gulf that sustained us. But Camille was the first to serve as a benchmark to my parents' generation. Things were dated in "before Camille" and "after Camille." My aunt and uncle went dining and dancing at Baricev's "before Camille". My Mom and Dad considered getting a place at the Richelieu Apartments when Mom seemed a shoe-in for a teaching job in Pass.
My childhood was colored by that storm, though I was born 11 years after it. We'd drive by the S.S. Camille, and Mom would take us in when our inland cousins came down to visit. Gas stations along HWY 90 had the high water mark well-labeled on the posts supporting the canopy over the pumps. (I once made an ass of myself when, at 9 or 10, some tourist remarked to her husband that "that stripe for 'camellia' should at least have the flower by it". I told the lady that it wasn't for a "stupid flower," it was for the "biggest hurricane ever." Mom was mortified.)
Every year, as storms blew in off the Gulf, we'd make the inevitable comparisons and statements of fact: "Aww - CAT 1? No worries. This ain't no Camille." "Sure, honey, you can go stay with your friends in Biloxi for the storm. Their house made it through Camille." Life on the Coast was dated by hurricanes - my parents knew landmarks "before Camille," just as I can vividly picture my coast "before Katrina."
The inevitable comparisons come up between spill and storm because Coast people are used to dating things by disaster. When you run the risk every year of losing your home on Highway 90, you develop a sort of numb reaction to storm reports, even as you plot their tracks on the big map that comes in the Sun Herald the first weekend of the season. It's when you use your French curve to arc the storm into land at Pass Christian or Biloxi or Gulfport that you start getting a little nervous. But the ability to track a storm on your kitchen table, the practiced ease of nailing plyboard over windows, being handy with a chainsaw as a 14 year old girl... those qualities get into your blood just like the salt and silt of the Sound. Getting ready for, riding out, and recovering from a hurricane is nothing new for anyone who's lived on the Gulf or East coasts. And we try to apply our hurricane-logic to this oily disaster, only to find that very few points line up.
So now in the era I'll forever think of "After the Oil," it's time to begin the recovery. This time has a rough hurricane equivalent of taking down plyboard and tearing out carpet. If we were recovering from a storm, we'd be picking up pinecones, cutting topped trees, and putting tarp, then new shingles, on roofs. But what actions can coast people take to foster recovery? We aren't people who take "you can't work on this" lightly. It's our coast, for fuck's sake. At the same time, we're also wary of pulling out the checkbook and signing one off to some national organization so someone else can come in and clean for us. We're hands-on people who want to have a central role to rebuilding the coast.
The problem lies in the fact that no one is letting us help. Not in a "take this sledgehammer and knock out this wall" sense, anyway. All we're being allowed to do is wait, now that the oil is here. Before it came in, many of the beaches were pristine because so many locally-organized cleanup crews were trudging with their garbage bags. Now that it's here, though there aren't any safe options for non-OSHA trained locals to do anything. So, frustration mounts. Frustration that seethes in the heat and humidity in Biloxi, Mobile, Gulfport, and Grand Isle, provoking half-baked reactions from locals that only grow in the regional and national media. So, some of the loudest voices who might usually be silenced by fatigue are blasting anyone they can, regardless of facts. That, I think, is part of the reason we hear so many foaming at the mouth about this response or that response. I know if I were home right now, I'd be tearing around the house, there wouldn't be a dirty piece of clothing or a dirty dish in the place, and I'd have probably put in my Mom's new wood floors by this point.
But there's only so much you can do at home before the helplessness of the situation starts to eat away at sane conclusions and reasoned arguments. Living away from the coast just makes the proponents of such tripe look like loonies, reinforcing stereotypes of the region. Fora like these - what we have here in the Gulf Watchers community on Kos - help to tamp down the crazy, yes, but as we move away from Gertie and on to cleanup and recovery, we have to remember that the people whose lives come from the Gulf are going to need constructive tasks they can perform to aid recovery. I don't have any idea what those tasks are - but I hope like hell there are some.
------------------
in the dark time we held vigil,
we held vigil against the night,
we raged against the storm,
we moved with the force of nature
to right a great wrong,
to howl like the wind,
to hold the line,
to renew an ancient vow,
a sacred purpose,
to recall to life the human spirit,
to safeguard that which is most holy to us,
to forge and reforge,
this, above all, to be true,
to awaken our greater nature,
to commune from the deepest regions of our soul,
to heal this realm, to heal our people,
to guard all life, to guard life,
for this generation,
and all to come,
this is why we hold vigil ~
~ ArthurPoet ~
| We Are Here |
| We are here. |
| We are watching. |
| Years from now, |
| if anyone asks, |
| we will tell them: |
| We were there. |
| |
| Maybe it will not matter. |
| Maybe nothing matters. |
| But if we throw up our hands now, |
| maybe someday, |
| years from now, |
| we will ask ourselves, |
| why did we not at least keep watch, |
| why did we not? |
| |
| Maybe someday, some of us |
| will talk with someone younger, |
| and tell of the time we watched. |
| Maybe that someone younger |
| will try harder next time, |
| will do more next time, |
| remembering |
| the time we watched. |
| |
| -- bigjacbigjacbigjac |
We're all stunned and horrified by this disaster. Huddling with good people to calculate the damage and monitor progress, have a laugh when we can, share the sorrow we feel, and learn a lot in the process... That's what I'm really here for.
This is how I best cope. And if it turns out to be a useful thing to others, then that's great.
Kimberley
This is where you want to be for discussion, worrying, tearing up, and caring for each other. It's also where you're welcome to be angry and scream and curse and cry and rant at the criminal negligence and greed that have brought us all together. Most importantly, though, it's where we can learn from those kossaks among us (I'll not name names for abject fear of leaving one of you out, but you know who you are.) who bring the light of knowledge - sometimes with heat, sometimes without it - and teach us about what's happening beneath our Gulf of Mexico. On a personal note, I'll ask you to please be kind to each other in our little boats. There's enough hurt going on outside without bringing it here. - khowell
Bandwidth Warning: NO IMAGES and NO VIDEOS. Readers who are on DIALUP will thank you!