White House: No Katrina here, we were ‘immediately’ on top of Gulf oil disaster
by George Bennett | May 1st, 2010
Gibbs
Gibbs says President Obama “immediately began actively monitoring the incident and consulting on the response.” The word “immediately” appears four other times in the post and “quickly” appears twice, along with “rapidly” and “early on” and “from the start.”
Tags: Hurricane Katrina, oil spill, Robert Gibbs
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May 2nd, 2010 at 1:25 am
The White House says it “immediately began actively monitoring the incident and consulting on the response.”
Great, because “monitoring” and “consulting” are just what we need in a crisis.
Now has anyone figured out how to stop millions of gallons of oil from washing up on Florida’s shores…?
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:08 am
It may take a couple of months so reaction time is mute. BP was in charge of disseminating info from the start and underestimated size of spill. Oh yeah and they were running the rig that busted wide open, maybe we should blame BP and Big Oil and Bush admin for laxing security standards and misinforming the public of the dangers.
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:22 am
Seth, oil companies file “worst case response” plans with the federal government. BP filed its’ environmental impact plan for the Deepwater Horizon in 2009.
I know Democrats try to blame everything on Bush, but no offense, he left office a couple of years ago and well before BP filed the Deepwater Horizon response plan with the Obama Administration’s Mineral Management Service.
What’s amazing is that the response plan dismissed any thought of a spill of this magnitude and it went unchallenged by the feds.
It’s been 12 days and neither the federal government nor BP has issued a master clean up plan. It took eight days for the federal government to react.
As of yesterday, local Louisiana fishermen were being used to lay out boom material.
Also, BP is not “in charge of disseminating info” as you state. The US Coast Guard (under DHS) is the designated national incident authority for the Deepwater Horizon fiasco.
It wasn’t until this past Thursday that President Obama declared the spill to be of “national significance”, which allows the quicker deployment of assets.
It also wasn’t until Thursday that Obama ordered DHS Secretary Napolitano and Interior Secretary Salazar to coordinate the federal response.
It wasn’t until Friday that the first Air Force planes carrying oil dispersement spray were ordered to the area.
Booms should have been in place the day the well exploded as a precautionary measure. They weren’t.
Here’s just a few of examples of what the Obama Administration could do but STILL hasn’t done-
1. The Obama Administration should immediately convene a meeting with the CEO’s of all major oil companies to ascertain what resources each company has that could be devoted to the drilling (a relief well still needs to be drilled) and clean up effort.
2. The Obama Administration should begin proactively reaching out to international experts and accept international offers of assistance. Thus far, Canada and Germany have offered, but the US has yet to accept.
3. The Obama Administration should order more than 2 Air Force planes to contain the spill.
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:30 am
Oh and FEMA should also have already begun a very public process of asking for volunteer to assist in coastline cleanup. It’s only a matter of time before the oil hits, yet this hasn’t been started yet.
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:09 am
We’ve been listening to right-wingers chanting Drill Baby Drill for years now. Bush was in bed with BP on Gulf drilling from day one. Now in the face of a horrible disaster made possible by misguided Bush policies, the increasingly irrelevant and desperate GOP are trying to blame President Obama? I wish you traitors would take your Limbaugh and Fox and the rest of the idiot echo chamber and go find yourself another planet to destroy.
May 2nd, 2010 at 7:59 am
Yeah? Well, where the hell is the federal government in Palm Beach County directing local officials and state officials on how to protect our beachers?
They’re just full of hot air. Where are the protective barriers? They are doing NOTHING other than talking. So typical.
Be proactive, start putting out absorbents NOW along our beaches. Gather volunteers, locals who are ready to HELP.
Federal Government=Useless
May 2nd, 2010 at 8:55 am
It took the administration SEVEN DAYS to actually do something. That IS NOT IMMEDIATE. That’s between a crock and a car load of BS.
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:00 am
To bad the Marine Life in the Gulf of Mexico can’t sue Transatlantic, BP, and whoever else is responsible for turning the water black!
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:29 am
Umm, oil rigs were in the Gulf well before Bush and will be there well after Obama. Obama was in the process of extending such drilling when the incident occurred.
There mere existence of rigs in the Gulf isn’t the problem. The reality is the nation needs oil. That doesn’t excuse the Obama Administration’s failure to prioritize the spill. Heck, Obama didn’t even cut his vacation short. If anything, you would have thought he’d learn from Katrina.
The problem is the feds accepted a poor disaster response plan from BP for the Deepwater Horizon well last year and didn’t take the incident seriously for the first week of the spill
C’mon, the feds waited over a week before responding and as of the time I’m writing, still have yet to take some basic, common sense measures.
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:48 am
Love your thoughtful and insightful posts JGP.
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:06 am
I think the focus should now be on how to stop this. Would pouring tons of concrete on the seabed floor over this pipe stop the flow? What about creating a massive dome that would cover this and pouring concrete over that? Isn’t there a way to cover the hole? How big is the hole? I’m wondering if this solution isn’t being discussed because they don’t want to lose this oil well. Eventually it can be salvaged and oil captured again for sale. Where are the solutions???
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:03 pm
nemo you are a douchebag,If you knew anything about the oil industry contingency plans for oil spills you would have not opened that hole under your nose. You rail against the administration for doing anything that relates to meddling in business but when something like this happens you criticize them for a slow response. The administration started to monitor this from the start and has to, according to the lease agreement with the oil companies, allow them to put their contingency plan into play. Would you like them to push them out of the way? Then you would cry about the government interfering. Which is it schmuck?
You want it both ways. What about Katrina? Guess that was handled just fine with you wasn’t it? Loss of life? No sweat. Well, there is NOTHING the president can actually do about a broken pipe 5000 feet below the surface. He can send in the military which he did days ago, not 7 days.
You sir are anti American and are the reason this country is so divided. You and your ilk are just what Germany was under Hitler. Why don’t you crawl back under that rock of yours.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Ken G., there is the possibility of placing what would essentially be boxes made of metal and concrete over the location.
BP is currently working on finishing the first of three such boxes that is being made by a Louisiana-based contractor. Unfortunately, the boxes were never built ahead of time (i.e.: see my point about poor planning). Federal regulators never required it. And nobody knows if it will work.
If you read BP’s original plan, it describes a “worst case” scenario for Deepwater Horizon as releasing 162K barrels/day. It’s now believed that nearly 200K barrels/day are being released.
The long term solution is to drill a relief well, but that could take 2-3 months.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Someone get Brownie on the horn. We need another heckuva good job here.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Chaz, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Brownie WAS running the federal government’s response…
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Well JGP, we both know that thinking ain’t your strong point, so there’s no surprise with your comment.
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:47 pm
We are now for sure against oil drilling..we think…will it affect our election if we are for it or against it? We are for it? Against it? We were for it before we were against it?
We are against oil drilling? Wait….our polls say we are against it.
Yes we are against it.
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Chaz, I base my comments on facts rather than sound bites. Of course, that requires doing things like reading primary source materials rather than regurgitating MSNBC talking points. Sorry if that offends you.
The Obama Administration “monitored” the situation for a week. Unfortunately, “monitoring” didn’t include doing things like laying out preventative oil booms.
It appears that most of the Administration’s time thus far has been to engage in a high-profile PR effort.
You may now return to your lemming-like ways…
May 31st, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Of course this ain’t no katrina. Hurricane Katrina was a terrorist attack. Just check out the book Katrina Nights. Or go to http://hurricanekatrinakaif.com/chapterone.html