On March 23, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker left the port of Valdez, Alaska, bound for Long Beach, California. The ship contained 53 million gallons of crude oil. Shortly after midnight, the ship struck the Bligh Reef, a well-known navigation hazard in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
The collision tore apart the ship’s hull and caused 11 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the water.
The factors for the crash were:
1. Exxon failed to provide a rested and sufficient crew for the ship. Authorities found this was a widespread practice throughout the industry.
2. The shipmate steering the vessel failed to properly manuever it, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload.
3. Exxon failed to properly maintain the Raytheon Collision Avoidance System (RAYCAS) radar, which would have showed to the shipmate that an impending collision was close. The radar was broken for over a year before the accident.
Exxon labeled captain Joseph Hazelwood the scapegoat for the accident. There were many reports he was drunk at time of the accident, but we later discovered he was not steering the ship at the time of the accident.
Initial attempts to contain the oil failed, and the spill spread to eventually cover about 1,300 miles of coastline. Exxon employees, federal responders and 11,000 Alaska residents worked to clean up the oil. The clean-up crew used a substance called Corexit. Though the substance is approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, a later report by David Kirby of TakePart, stated the substance contained a chemical that caused liver, kidney, lung, nervous system and blood disorders in the clean-up crews following the spill.
Exxon ended up paying $2 billion in cleanup costs and $1.8 billion for habitat restoration and personal damages related to the spill.
Prince William Sound was a pristine wilderness habitat before the spill. Because of the oil spill, about 250,000 sea birds, 3,000 otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales were killed. The oil spill decimated the salmon and herring supply in the area. Many fisheries went bankrupt and the economies of the local towns suffered. The local herring supply never recovered. 40% of the sea otter population was killed, and the population didn’t recover to its pre-spill levels until 2014.
As of 2014, federal scientists estimate that between 16,000 and 21,000 US gallons of oil remain on beaches in Prince William Sound and up to 450 miles away. As of 2014, Exxon still owed $92 million to the state of Alaska. They estimated the spill to have caused an economic loss of $2.8 billion to the region.
In the spill’s aftermath, the U.S. Congress passed the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. The Act increased penalties for companies responsible for oil spills and required that all oil tankers in United States water have a double hull (the Valdez had a single hull). With a double hull, the spill still would have occurred, however much less oil would have escaped the ship.
The Exxon Valdez still transported oil in Europe until 2002, when the European Union banned single hulled tankers. The ship then moved to Asia, where it transported ore instead of oil. In 2012, they sold the ship for scrap metal to an Indian company and dismantled it. The Exxon Valdez oil spill is now the second largest oil spill in U.S. history after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
Mistakes were made:
This story is a real-life version of the snowball effect. The effect is when an initial state of small significance builds upon itself, becoming larger and larger, and eventually dangerous or disastrous. Think of a small snowball that starts at the top of a hill. As it rolls down, it gains more and more snow to the point when it reaches the bottom and is now the size of a boulder.
Exxon not fixing the ship’s radar, with the additional effect of overworking its crew and not giving them enough rest led too:
1. The ship hitting a reef and spilling oil into the waters.
2. Thousands of animals and creatures being killed because of the spill and nature is still feeling the effects of the spill.
3. With the fish being wiped out, the local fishers have no fish to fish and therefore the economy of the local cities cratering.
4. The brave people who helped clean up the spill experiencing negative health effects because of the chemicals used to clean up the spill.
We can see how minor mistakes led to a monumental disaster that the region still hasn’t recovered from. It’s important in business and life to not gloss over minor mistakes otherwise, they will turn into bigger disasters. Sadly, we don’t heed this lesson until the colossal disaster occurs, where if we just took the time, money or effort to fix the minor mistakes it would save us and the world from the disaster.
Think about when you discovered a slight problem with your car, but you ignore it because it’s still drive-able. That slight problem eventually turns into a bigger one, that’s more costly to repair and ended up adding more damage to your car. If we learn anything from this story, it’s to not ignore small imperfections or mistakes because they can lead to much bigger problems.
