The Exxon Valdex Story

A detailed Summary of The Exxon Valdex Story

How to assess blame in such a horrible and heinous tragedy as the Exxon Valdez crash is not an easy task. There are multiple recipients and no one will ever really agree. It isn't much of a stretch to say that there will never really be a right or wrong answer as to who is the most responsible-there are many different opinions. I think that the one thing people can agree on, though, is that blame is well beyond warranted. The margin for human error didn't seem very big when the ship set out that night-this was a run that had been done over and over again, the captain was well experienced and traffic control was watching them on radar. Yet, as the story slowly unraveled, the viewer slowly learned that all was not as it seemed. That small margin suddenly seemed huge, and the catastrophe that occurred as a result of it only proved it.

The one person whom I am sure deserves top blame in this situation, is the captain of the ship. Joseph Hazelwood was well beyond the legal blood alcohol limit while piloting the tanker. He was given multiple warnings by a shipmate that the ship was coming closer to shore every minute and something should be done. Nothing was. As the viewer later found out

This brings me to the people whom I think more than fit to carry the second most amount of blame: Exxon. Why did they let a man with a known history of drinking, and perhaps even carelessness at times, pilot such an important boat full of such hazardous material in the most pristine wilderness in the United States? Why wasn't their so-called contingency plan ready to go when this happened? I think the answer was that they were not only ill prepared, they were to busy trying to pass the buck to do something. This was a major factor in all the damage done. By the time they got there, hundreds of miles had been contaminated. In over a week Exxon managed to clean up less than two percent of the oil. Countless animal lives were lost due to the carelessness of an "evil-empire." Exxon makes me sick. For not having a contingency plan ready. For passing the buck. For looking for a scapegoat instead of dealing with the problem at hand. For letting a known drunk pilot a huge tanker full of millions of gallons of a hazardous substance in the last pristine place in the nation. For firing the one employee (Dan Lawn) who truly cared more about what happened to the environment then how he looked on the news and dared to speak out about the stupid and cavalier attitude of Exxon. For letting thousands of lives be lost and destroying the last pure region in the U.S.A.

Fifth, I blame the Coastguard. Why didn't they notice that the ship was going off their traffic radar? Then when they did, why didn't they do something about it? They should have warned the ship to get back where they could track them. Something is obviously wrong if you can't track your ships; they should have known better. Also, why didn't they do more with the cleanup? They were spending more of their time in a power struggle with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) than actually getting out there and cleaning up the spill. What was wrong with these people? By the time they really, truly got out there and made an honest effort to fix things, they had already lost the battle; things were too far gone. These people could have helped so much, but they acted just like everyone else and tossed blame and struggled for power on the political fighting grounds instead of doing something.

Lastly, I blame Alyeska. Building a pipeline of that size over such a substantial amount of land and sea can only spell catastrophe. These people let greed get the best of t

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Approximate Word count = 1653
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History