Disasters In Disaster Relief

what's worse a natural/accidental disaster?

or what we has humans do to cover, control and clean up the disaster?



Torrey Canyon Supertanker

The worlds first supertanker on march 18, 1967 the Torrey Canyon was set off course by an ocean current by 8 miles now east of the Sicilly Isles and heading straight for Seven Stones reef.

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due to a few compounding and time consuming events such as gaining their bearings, adjusting to a safe course and realizing the ship was in Automatic control therefore unable to be controlled manually by the ships wheel and wasted time ruling out a list of other mechanical malfunctions that weren't there.

The Final blow came when they tried to adjust course while under Auto. control, the time wasted not knowing why the ship would not steer is what sent the Torrey Canyon into Seven stones Reef.


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the full story of how it all happened is a good read. Torrey Canyon story



The Disaster gets worse with the cleanup

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12hrs after the initial crash and spill the British navy decided the best option for cleanup was to use "Detergents" on the 20 mile long oil slick.
These so called Detergents were industrial strength Emulsifiers and solvents used in machine shops, toxic chemicals that only made it harder to clean up the oil (any of this sound familiar?)

The oil, Barker noted in his reports, was winning. Using detergents to break up slabs of oil on the ocean was "like trying to pick up quicksilver with boxing gloves", he wrote: "There is this constant feeling that the government has fluffed the issue, and that an early political decision might have worked." The government continued to insist it was right to leave salvage attempts to the companies involved. "Clearly we have no responsibility in law for what has happened," observed Foley.

Coincidentally BP manufactured this detergent and was able to provide a large supply..

The "sluggish black smear on the Atlantic" was an eyesore but Dutch experts dispatched by the ship's owners, the Bahamas-based Barracuda Tanker Corporation, itself part-owned by the American Union Oil company, insisted the ship could be salvaged. The government agreed, and its man in charge of the crisis, Maurice Foley, undersecretary for defence (navy) – a title that did not suggest the spill was a top priority – insisted there was "no question" of deliberately destroying the supertanker.

Les Hosking from Marazion, Cornwall, remembers the moment the government began bombing the tanker in an attempt to sink it and some of its deadly cargo, and burn off the slick. "We saw the Buccaneer bombers coming in. They dropped bombs and that didn't do anything," says Hosking. The press was critical because a quarter of the 42 bombs missed the target. Other methods also failed. Foam booms to contain the oil slick took ages to assemble and broke up in rough seas. Attempts to burn off the oil by dropping aviation fuel on it also foundered when high tides put the fires out. So, extraordinarily, the authorities dropped Napalm on the slick. "When that came in there was a sheet of flames," remembers Hosking. "I've never seen anything like it. The smoke went up into the sky for what seemed like miles."

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Another Bright idea was to store the oil that was pumped out of the sea in an old quarry, not just any quarry mind you, it was used by Germans in WW2 as an armaments dump, so excavating with a manned excavator is out of the question so far over 160,000 liters of oil have been pumped from the quarry and every time they reach soil the oil fills right back up.

still affecting the area to this day...
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In fact it turned out that human ingenuity was not just powerless against the oil slick; it made it much worse. Three days after the ship ran aground, Anthony Tucker, then science correspondent of the Guardian, warned that no toxicity tests had been carried out on the detergents being sprayed on the oil and their effect on marine life had never been studied. "There may be little point in spending many millions of pounds simply to convert an unpleasant but visible marine poison into another kind of poison that is insidious and entirely unknown in its effects," he presciently wrote.

the detergents ended up being the worst thing like Corexit that was used in the recent Gulf disaster it made the scene of the crime look good the oil disappeared BUT in doing this made the oil soluble and accessible to organisms.







Healing our Oceans Reef's

In 1972 off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Our very own Rubber Reef was imagined and approved by US Army Corps of Engineers as a way to discard old tires and lure more game fish to the area with an artificial reef.

Although this may sound like a good theory while chatting at a bar over a few drinks, ignoring the fact that steel is corroded by saltwater the tires were only bound together by nylon and steel clips leaving over two million small tires floating around the reef soon after the project started.
Anything that might have attached to them to use as a reef was quickly knocked off while the tires went tumbling with the ocean currents destroying natural reefs in the area causing another major problem.

the damage doesn't stop there, the tires are also emitting a "minortoxin" this toxin is of little concern compared to the size of the ocean and the damage the tires are doing.
in 1995 a hurricane laid thousands of tires over the FL panhandle and in 1998 a hurricane dropped thousands more tires onto North Carolina beaches.

seems like the ocean is throwing our trash back at us.






Rats Vs Opossum

"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. ... If I watch out for the rats, because they'll definitely eat my face off." -Frank Sinatra







Its no secret NY has a rat problem, as we are being shown its not always the problem that causes the most damage, lets look at the solution..


Giving up on traditional forms of pest control poison, traps and even Digitally Mapping Rat Populations
going as far as creating a NYC Rodent Control Academy.

New York decided to collaborate with nature on this one and bring in who we thought were the rats enemy the Opossum.
A sort of coup d'état... pay the Opossum Rebels to overthrow the Rat regime tactic.
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again with no forethought NY releases Opossums who are omnivores thinking they will wipe out the rats and then just die off or leave NYC for lack of food?
also worth noticing is rats are Much much faster, also rats have on average 5 litters of 14 babies a year, so it would be nearly impossible for the Opossums to catch or eat that large of a population of rats that has been thriving for the last 100 years.

by 2010 people now live in fear of rats and Opossums with razor sharp teeth the size of large cats.

It turns out the opossums thrive along side their Rat friends.

From what I hear it was somewhat familiar to this scene from Braveheart



for all you animal lovers the rats are doing just fine, none were harmed in this attempted extermination.
Manhattan borough president says city budget cuts causing increase in rats; Health Dept. disagrees
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Saving the Westslope Cutthroat Trout

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The Westslope Cutthroat Trout is an indicator species meaning based on its health and numbers we can see how healthy their habitat is, much like a parakeet in the coal mine but for water...

invasive species inter-breeding, overfishing, logging and habitat destruction have all played a major part in destroying the fresh cold water the Cutthroat trout needs to flourish.
both conservationists and people who fish are interested in preserving the species,
lets find out what humans have done to help the trout numbers.


Funded in part by a Unpopular to MT Ted Turner In 2005, Montana Fish and Wildlife authorities decided to do something about the hybrids and non-native brook trout that was destroying their beloved westslope cutthroat.

how would they destroy only one species of fish you ask?

Simple, with a Fish Poison called rotenone.

the plan was this : Make a barrier at the mouth of the stream so no more non-natives species of fish could get into the cutthroat habitat then poison the contained fish.
then when the invasive species is wiped out Authorities would restock the stream with pure Westslope Cutthroat Trout.


If only things had gone to plan, instead what happened was 100 percent of the fish that came into contact with the poison died and the supposed containment/spread of the poison was grossly underestimated allowing it to spread 13miles downstream.

Horton said he will "never know" exactly how the rotenone traveled farther than intended. "The main point is that the rotenone survived over 13 miles and over 13 hours as the stream doubled in size. It just doesn't make sense that it could do that," he said.

But while the accident remains mysterious, FWP plans to proceed with the final rotenone treatment, Horton said. The agency plans to take extra precautions, and will be treating a different stretch of the river, which he expects will ward off a repeat incident. Rotenone is commonly used across the west, and Horton has said it is extremely rare for a mishap like the one that happened last week.

"We're 100 percent confident we can stop the rotenone as we've done hundreds of other times," he said.

Since its inception, the project has drawn strong support and opposition. Adding fuel to the flames was the fact that much of the project took place on Ted Turner's land and that Turner helped fund the $500,000 effort.

Water Contamination

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A substitute truck driver with simple instructions of"once inside the gate, the aluminum sulphate tank is on the left." and a Guess is all it took to contaminate a British towns drinking water with 20 tons of aluminum sulphate.

the sulfate turned acidic within an hour. Article .

The horrible effects lasted much longer.

THE DAY the water was poisoned in Camelford, people's hair turned green, dogs began to shake and vomit and some folk reported toenails falling out. The following day came sickness, diarrhoea, nausea, rashes and pins and needles. Then came forgetfulness, inability to read, painful joints, problems with balance and terrible clumsiness. And, finally, there was ridicule and disbelief aimed at 400 people whose lives had been turned upside-down by an appalling blunder with aluminium sulphate.

After 900 complaints to the water company they Told residents to dilute the acidity with orange juice effectively making the acid worse. They did NOT tell anyone of the source of the problem or give a warning until 10 days later with a warning in the sports section of the paper.

The acid had also been stripping the zinc and lead lining of pipes, the fix given to the public for this now heavy metal, acid poisoned drinking water was to simply boil the water as if it was like some sort of bacteria that would burn off. sorry metals don't just boil into vapor.
flushing out the pipes was doing little to no good, the main tank had not been cleaned in 3 years. the tank was supposed to be cleaned 6 times a month so there was 3 years of sediment soaked Aluminum Sulphate at the bottom of the tank slowly letting the into the drinking water.

people are severely effected by this dying from cancer, early onset of Alzheimer and dementia.
more widespread and less noticed are the reports of loss of brain function, premature aging, and decreased cognitive abilities.
A bone biopsy of one victim revealed rings of aluminum in his bones like growth rings of a tree.







From these stories if we could learn only one lesson.

I would hope that lesson be, to stop using/abusing nature and realize we rely on her, there is a circle of life we as humans fit in that circle we are not in the center of this circle our mother earth is. lets build our technology off of this idea not the Monopolizing drive for money or power we see so common today.

we have everything we need, provided for us by our earth at birth lets try not to muck it all up...

reply to post by -W1LL


You re wrote an article that was on Cracked.com a couple of days ago.

That's pretty lame.

Natural disasters have killed more people and destroyed more property than any attempt to solve them ever has.

Kind of a bogus topic

Originally posted by Now_Then
reply to post by -W1LL

 

You re wrote an article that was on Cracked.com a couple of days ago.

That's pretty lame.

maybe to you.

read my thread, it was much better than the cracked article.

BTW what on the internet is not re-written in one way or another.?

Originally posted by Now_Then
reply to post by -W1LL

 

You re wrote an article that was on Cracked.com a couple of days ago.

That's pretty lame.

C'mon NT, it's a great thread and he put alot of effort in to it. So what if another article inspired him to make it?

Where does your inspiration come from anyways, thin air?


Let's all get along, or else I'll see you in the chat room.

Originally posted by -W1LL
BTW what on the internet is not re-written in one way or another.?

edit on 4/25/2011 by -W1LL because: (no reason given)

That is true, many of my fav books and films are re works of previous works, ideas are constantly tumbled and re used. - Maybe you should of referenced the cracked article in some way tho - many people who read this site will also read that site.

Originally posted by Now_Then

Originally posted by -W1LL
BTW what on the internet is not re-written in one way or another.?

edit on 4/25/2011 by -W1LL because: (no reason given)

That is true, many of my fav books and films are re works of previous works, ideas are constantly tumbled and re used. - Maybe you should of referenced the cracked article in some way tho - many people who read this site will also read that site.

I intended to have that link in there. I thought it was in one of the links in the OP but the original didnt have much substance.