Carl Senna's List: Catastrophes

HE NEWLYWEDS are perfectly happy, can’t you see?Enlarge This Image
Wang Gang for The New York TimesREBUILDING LIVES Liu Yinhu says he spent a month persuading a grief-stricken Zhao Yonglan to marry him.Enlarge This Image
Wang Gang for The New York TimesDeng Qunhua, a former seamstress, started her matchmaking service after losing her home and business in the earthquake.In the poster-size wedding photographs that cover the walls of their home in rural Sichuan Province, the couple frolic in a field of green clover. They nuzzle against a backdrop of autumn leaves. They cuddle on a beach under an azure sky. In each soft-focus image, the bride — a 25-year-old former clothing vendor named Xue Ying — appears in a strapless white gown and a glittering tiara. The groom — Yang Chun, a 37-year-old shuttle-bus driver — wears a white tux and a bow tie; his crooked, nicotine-stained teeth appear straight and white.
The image set against the fall foliage is captioned “Romandic Story,” in garbled English. On the tropical beach, Xue leans back into Yang’s arms, her veil blowing in a breeze; a smile sparkles on Yang’s face. The caption, again in English, a language neither understands: “I Make a Wish With U.”
Yang and Xue invited me into their home one afternoon last fall. They married in July and were pleased to show off the trappings of connubial bliss. The dreamscapes were an artifice, a confection of false memories manufactured by a local photo studio. Digital enhancement brightened their smiles, erased their blemishes and slathered their marriage in a gooey layer of romanticism. It hardly seemed to matter that Yang and Xue lived in the mountains of landlocked Sichuan Province in southwestern China and had never been to a beach. The photos served a more fundamental purpose: to paper over a past too painful to bear.
For the past two years, Yang and Xue have been striving, in their own separate ways, to escape the shadow of May 12, 2008. On that day, at 2:28 p.m., a 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan. In barely 80 seconds,

Half a World From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old

Jane Hahn for The New York Times
A boy playing by Bodo Creek in Bodo, Nigeria. As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, experts said. More Photos »
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: June 16, 2010
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BODO, Nigeria — Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.
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Battered by Oil
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With Criminal Charges for Oil Spill, Costs to BP Could Soar (June 17, 2010)
Times Topics: Nigeria | Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)

The Niger Delta region contains fragile wetlands. More Photos »
Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.

Not far away, there is still black crude on Gio Creek from an April spill, and just across the state line in Akwa Ibom the fishermen curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore Exxon Mobil pipe in May that lasted for weeks.

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

S

June 18, 2010
Vast Amounts of Methane in Gulf Spill Pose Threat
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:17 p.m. ET

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Vast amounts of natural gas contained in crude escaping from the blown Gulf of Mexico oil well could pose a serious threat to marine life by creating ''dead zones'' where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.

The danger presented by the methane has been largely overlooked, with early efforts to monitor the oil spill focusing on the more toxic components of oil. But scientists are increasingly worried about the gas that can suffocate sea creatures in high concentrations.

At least 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas -- and possibly almost twice that amount -- have leaked since April 20. That's based on estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey's ''flow team'' that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas are escaping for every barrel of oil.

''This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history,'' said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer.

The oil gushing from the well at the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, Kessler said. That means nearly half of what's coming out of the leak is methane.

Small microbes that live in the sea have been feeding on the oil and natural gas in the water and are consuming larger quantities of oxygen, which they need to digest food. As they draw more oxygen from the water, it creates two problems. When oxygen levels drop low enough, the breakdown of oil grinds to a halt; and as it is depleted in the water, most life can't be sustained.

Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people's homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That's exactly what BP is doing with gas it started capturing from the leak 15 days ago.

A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily on

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Our Life, Between Sea and Oil
By MARTHA SERPAS
Published: July 9, 2010
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I WAS born and raised on Bayou Lafourche, 30 miles from Grand Isle, which is Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island and also the setting of Kate Chopin’s 19th-century novel of maternal disorientation, “The Awakening.” But “Frankenstein” offers the more appropriate narrative lesson for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Mary Shelley begins her story with the anti-hero Victor Frankenstein declaring his admiration for scientists who “penetrate into the recesses of nature.” Full of hubris, he “pursued nature to her hiding places,” bringing horror upon his family and community. He has no foresight, only the belief that “maternal nature” can be manipulated by unvetted technology.
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Luke Best
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Times Topic: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
Today, we are both the victims of such shortsighted overreach and culpable for its grim results. Despite our long experience with the delta’s powerful waters, we misplaced our confidence in yet another industry claiming dominance over the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.

Grand Isle suffered some of the earliest damage from the disaster. The oil moved slower than a hurricane, but granted less opportunity for experienced preparation. It moved faster than coastal erosion, which takes a football field of land every 45 minutes or 25 square miles a year. Bayou Lafourche, a major Cajun settlement, was once an important tributary of the Mississippi, but was cut off from the river by a dam in the early 20th century, depriving the vital wetlands of nourishment. What with nitrates flowing down the Mississippi, the leveeing of New Orleans and dredging by the oil and gas industry, my home, even if it escapes the crude, will sink into the gulf.

The Cajuns who live on Bayou Lafourche and elsewhere on the gulf have long exhibited resilience in the face of natural and manmade disasters. This fortitude is a legacy from

Key Rig Alarm Disabled Before Blast: Rig Worker
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By REUTERS
Published: July 24, 2010
Filed at 6:43 a.m. ET


HOUSTON (Reuters) - An emergency alarm that could have warned workers aboard the doomed Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico drilling rig was intentionally disabled, a rig engineer told U.S. investigators on Friday.

Mike Williams, chief engineer technician aboard Swiss-based Transocean Ltd's rig, said the general alarm that could have detected the cloud of flammable methane gas that enveloped the rig's deck on April 20 was "inhibited."

"They (rig managers) did not want people woke up at three o'clock in the morning from false alarms," Williams told a six-member federal board in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, Louisiana.

Williams' appearance capped a week of testimony from company officials involved in the rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank two days later, killing 11 crewmen and sparking the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The Transocean-owned rig was drilling a well a mile beneath the Gulf under contract for London-based BP Plc..

However, written statements from several rig personnel taken by U.S. investigators and obtained by Reuters refer to alarms sounding on the rig.

"At time of incident, I was in engine control room working on nightly log," wrote Douglas Brown, the rig's chief mechanic. "At which (sic) multiple gas alarms went off."

"The general alarm configuration on the Deepwater Horizon was intentional and conforms to accepted maritime practices," Transocean said in a statement. The rig "had hundreds of individual fire and gas alarms, all of which were tested, in good condition, not bypassed and monitored from the bridge."

Four Transocean witnesses declined to appear voluntarily on Wednesday at the hearings before a joint U.S. panel convened by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement.

The board on Thursday declared two BP officials "parties of interest" in the investigation, after they