EDITORIAL COMMENTS: Close encounter of the complacent kind
I spent a lot of this summer, like many of you,reading BP stories. From all the reports, speculations,editorials, attacks and defenses, one word kept coming up - complacency. BP, its partners and contractors, possessed the knowledge, the equipment, the safety experts, the top engineers, the protocols, plans and management systems that should have prevented the catastrophe.
But as a past VP of safety for BP said in an email passed along to me, fatal decisions were made on the rig “because they had done so before” and gotten away with it. According to a federal investigation, a Transocean rig supervisor told a maintenance technician who protested that a crucial safety device had been bypassed, or disabled:“Damn thing been in bypass for five years.Matter of fact, the entire (Transocean) fleet runs them in bypass.”
Bad decisions. Missed warnings. Pushing the limits. I can relate. One Sunday this past July was another 90+ degree day in the Philadelphia region.We’d had at that point more than 30 days over 90 degrees in June and July. And it’s no dry heat in the Delaware Valley. There’s always a blanket of smothering humidity. “Horrid heat grips region”was a headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer that particular Sunday. The National Weather Service extended its excessive heat warning. Fourteen deaths in Philadelphia had been confirmed as heat-related,according to the paper.
So there it was: knowledge. I read expert advice on how best to yield to the heat. I had the requisite experience, too: it had been a record-breaking sweltering summer. So what did I do on this Sunday in July? Decided to take a run, a jog is more like it, through Valley Forge National Park, a short drive from home.
Again, let’s compare notes. More than 50,000wells had been drilled on federal leases beneath the Gulf before disaster struck. I’ve run through Valley Forge hundreds of times. I had my plan, my protocols,just like the drillers. Run early, before eight a.m. Bring along a water bottle. Wear a flimsy tee short, light clothing. Run on the trail that affords the most shade. On the stinking hot days, lay off the hills.