In reference to the enormous oil slick in the gulf that’s coming from the leaking well.
It was on fire and they put out the fire, right? Did it not occur to anyone that there might be a leak? If the fire had been allowed to burn then at least part of the leaking oil would be consumed. I heard in some news report that they attempted to ignite it when it was clear the slick was headed to the coast.
“They” I guess is the Coast Guard, I assume they’re in charge of the disaster.
Clearly there are more factors to the initial firefighting effort than are occuring to me.
they were hoping to rescue the 11 missing workers alive.
if the fire continued it would sink creating a problem. the leak may have been caused or worsened by the sinking, the valve on the seafloor didn’t close as designed.
My understanding is that a fire on a leaking oil well takes a real long time to go out naturally, becaus there is an enormous amount of fuel. Sometimes they can keep burning for months. That’s just too long – think about how much air pollution that would cause, for one thing.
Also, crude oil doesn’t burn that well (not like when refined into gasoline, kerosene, etc.), especially when it is surrounded by cold ocean water. It burns incompletely, leaving a lot of soot & other toxic byproducts behind.