Louisiana officials have complained that BP was not doing enough to stop or collect the spill. (April Buffington/NYT Institute)

Ramon Antonia Vargas, a reporter at The Times-Picayune, rolled out of bed at 5 a.m. on April 21 to check the local news and came across the press release from the Coast Guard.

The press release said the previous night an oil drilling rig, known as the MODU Deepwater Horizon, had exploded and caught fire at 10 p.m. in the Gulf of Mexico, about 45 miles southeast of Venice, La.

“It was about a minute after I had woken up and I had already made my first call to the Coast Guard,” said Vargas.

In those same predawn hours, 16-year-old fisherman Nguyen Johnson was sitting in his father’s boat, east of Venice, smoking a cigarette, when he saw a glow on the horizon.

“I thought it was the sun,” he said. As he stared at the glow, his father told him it was a burning oil rig.

In New Orleans, Vargas was one of two reporters who were the first to arrive in the newsroom that morning. Vargas’ first call led to the earliest post about the accident, at 6:10 a.m. on April 21.

Vargas reported that seven of the 126 crew members had been injured on the drilling rig, which was operating in deep water. “I’m pretty much responsible for anything that happens overnight and early in the morning, and that just happened” while he was on duty, he said.

Shortly after, 90 survivors arrived on a crew boat at Port Fourchon in Lafourche Parish and the search for other survivors began.

Rescue boats were sent to and from Port Fourchon to the smoldering rig. Eleven workers were missing. Their bodies have not been found.

The day after the explosion, a second blast at 10:22 a.m., caused by 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board the smoldering platform, caused the rig to sink.

So far it seemed like a tragic, but not unprecedented, industrial accident.

But on Saturday, April 24, Coast Guard officials reported the first sight of leaking oil spurting from the pipes that had snaked a mile down into the ocean.

“That’s when I knew it was going to become an environmental crisis,” Vargas said.

BP, the oil giant that was drilling the well from the Deepwater Horizon, first estimated that the well was leaking about 42,000 gallons of oil a day. But it soon raised that estimate to 210,000, gallons a day, a figure that many scientists said was still too low. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began tracking it.

Brennan Matherne, the public information officer for Lafourche Parish, said: “When the rig exploded, our first thoughts were about the workers’ families. We were aware of the possibilities of damage to various businesses throughout the parish but until we saw the NOAA trajectory that would put us at risk for the oil to start affecting our parish directly, we did not declare a state of emergency.”

Within that first week, Matherne said, “we noticed that the plume of oil would not be staying to the east of the Mississippi River,” and that there might be the potential of oil touching the shoreline and perhaps “lasting effects for the oil and commercial and recreational fishing industries. We knew that there could be long-term effects.”

A week later, BP had tried two methods to control the leak: offshore burning of oil on the surface of the ocean and the use of robot submarines to try to close valves on the well.

A pungent smell tinged the Louisiana air as a growing slick estimated at 48 miles wide and 39 miles long began to head toward the coastline.

More than 400 species of marine life, from whales to shrimp, were at risk, and Louisiana state officials began to shut down fishing grounds off the coast, endangering the livelihoods of thousands of people who depend on seafood.

Early in May, BP had made an ambitious attempt to stop the oil flow by lowering a 100-ton box on top of the leak, with the intention of siphoning off the leaking oil. The attempt failed when ice crystals clogged the four-story box as it descended far into the depths of the ocean.

As the oil flowed unabated, BP continued to try to break up the crude with a dispersant called Corexit 9500. Fears that the dispersant might be as dangerous as the oil itself led the federal Environmental Protection Agency to ask BP to try to find a less toxic dispersant. But the company said there was no safer dispersants and continued to use the Corexit, though it said it would use much less of the chemical.
Politicians began to arrive, among them President Barack Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
By now, the spill had reached the fragile Louisiana marshes that pockmark the Mississippi Delta, and dead birds, turtles and fish began washing up on shore. Beaches were closed as globs of oil washed up or as booms were laid to try to prevent that.

And still the oil flowed.

By the end of the May, the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf was being estimated at between 500,000 gallons and 800,000 gallons a day — meaning between 18 million and 29 million gallons had spilled. That makes the Deepwater Horizon spill the largest in the nation’s history, eclipsing the 11-million-gallon spill from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.

Following three weeks of failed attempts to plug the well, the oil company hooked up a mile-long tube to funnel as much of the crude as it could into a tanker ship. Then, on May 26, BP tried a “top kill” of the well, pumping mud and concrete directly into the well’s entrance, with some success.

As the attempt to seal the well continued, President Obama returned to the Louisiana coastline to get a closer look at the devastation.

“We’re going to keep at this every day until the leak is stopped, the coastline is cleaned and your communities are made whole,” Obama said in Grand Isle, a fishing port just over 100 miles south of New Orleans. “That’s my promise to you. It’s a promise on behalf of a nation, and it’s one we will keep.”

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The chief mechanic of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig testified Wednesday that a BP official and a Deepwater rig manager were arguing on board the rig, just hours before the April 20 explosion.

The testimony of the mechanic, Douglas Brown, was given during the first day of the second session of federal hearings about the explosion that has led to several million gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. BP leases the Deepwater Horizon well from rig owner Transocean.

Brown said he witnessed an argument between a BP representative and Jimmy Herald, a Deepwater Horizon offshore manager, around 11 a.m. on the rig. According to Brown, the debate ended when Herald left the meeting grumbling to himself, saying “I guess that’s what we have those pinchers for.” Brown told investigators he believes this statement was in reference to the shear rams on a blowout preventer, the device used to slam a well shut in an emergency. Eleven hours later, the well exploded and the preventer failed to work.

“Somewhere before 10 o’clock you heard a large air leak sound,” Brown said. “We started hearing gas alarms going off and they kept piling on top of one another and more and more over the radio. And that’s when the power went out, and we were in the dark. After that was the first explosion. There was a hole in the floor and I fell through it. When I tried to get up the second explosion happened.”

The U.S. Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service are conducting a joint investigation into the April 20 blast and subsequent oil leak. One round of hearings was held two weeks ago and focused on the explosion itself. A second round started at a Kenner Hotel on Wednesday, focusing on the emergency preparedness of the crew, and a third round, known as the “technical verification” stage, is tentatively planned for July.

Investigators have said a final report will be released some time after the hearings conclude.

Brown’s testimony was the most vivid during a day that was dominated by technical explanations. During questioning from a BP lawyer, Brown was asked detailed questions about the emergency preparedness of the Deepwater rig, including what emergency materials were in the lifeboats. In response to many of the questions, Brown’s lawyer told the court that his client had suffered a severe head injury as a result of the explosion and would be unable to answer very specific questions.

At various points during the hearing, Transocean officials said that BP was responsible for certain tasks, while the sole BP official to testify raised questions that implied that Transocean bore more responsibility.

During the testimony of Steve Tink, BP’s health, safety and environmental manager, the atmosphere changed in the hearing room. People crowded in, but instead of taking any of the nearly 30 empty seats, they stood in the back and listened intently.

Tink’s testimony pointed special attention to a document that described the company’s safety plan. The precise content of the document was only broadly discussed, but prompted numerous questions. Tink claimed to have never seen the document, but it was later revealed that he wrote it.

“This document was done by my people,” he said

Tink said he was unable to answer many of the questions posed by the commission, stating they were not in his area of expertise.

The hearings are scheduled to resume at 8 a.m. Thursday and continue through Saturday.

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Thick, brown oil continued to make its way along the Louisiana shore, touching southeast Louisiana parishes Wednesday, according to satellite and high altitude images.

Marsh Island, an uninhabited marshy island off the coast of southeast Louisiana and the tip of the Mississippi delta, suffered the most harm from the oil.

Gov. Bobby Jindal confirmed during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that the oil-laden water had reached parishes of Jefferson, St. Bernard, Terrebonne and Lafourche.

According to the Louisiana Office of Tourism, all nine coastal parishes and areas were unaffected by the oil spill and remain open for commercial and recreational fishing.

The primary affected areas are east of the Mississippi River. More than 80 percent of Louisiana’s coastal waters and charter’s fishing providers are in unaffected areas.

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20, at least 210,000 gallons of oil has been dispersed into the Gulf of Mexico. Several attempts by the owner of the oil drilling rig, BP, have been unsuccessful. BP was ordered to release more footage of the remaining oil gushing from the well on the sea floor.

The footage showed the well releasing a plume of brown, rust-colored oily liquid.

BP said it is attempting a so-called top kill operation, in which heavy drilling fluids are injected into the well to stem the flow of oil and gas, followed by using cement to seal the well.

BP said that most of the equipment to carry out the process is on the site.

The company announced it would donate grants to promote tourism in each of the states, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, that are being affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

For Louisiana, the company said it would grant $15 million to help mitigate the results of the disaster.

BP also gave $1 million to the Associated Catholic Charities and the Second Harvest Food Bank, both in New Orleans, to provide emergency food assistance and other social services.

This map shows the 17 main sensitive shoreline monitoring areas that are under inspection of oil contamination and are being protected by the U.S. Coast Guard's Deepwater Horizon Unified Command. (Map by Brandon Coley, Source: U.S. Coast Guard)

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At left, Johnny Riley and Bryan Moore of the Louisiana Workforce Commission confer as Ewell Smith, right, of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board speaks to an attendee at a town hall with Mayor Mitch Landrieu. The meeting discussed the economic impact of the oil spill on the city of New Orleans. (Taylar A. Barrington/NYT Institute)

Louisiana must continue to emphasize the safety and quality of seafood in its marketing initiatives in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a town hall meeting Tuesday.

Meanwhile, other panelists advised business owners who were affected by the spill which financial records they might need in order to show how they were economically impacted.

The meeting at the Lindy Boggs Conference Center, attended by about 50 people, featured Landrieu and nine other panelists from different levels of government and British Petroleum. Area parish officials, including the Plaquemines Parish president, Billy Nungesser, also were present.

Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, assured the audience that Louisiana seafood remains safe at the moment.

Yet Landrieu said people are already beginning to think the worst: During a recent visit to a northern state. Landrieu said he noticed a menu that said, “We do not sell Louisiana seafood.”

Landrieu said efforts to certify Louisiana seafood, starting with shrimp, were already under way before the oil spill. This would be similar to the way Angus beef is certified.

Other efforts, such as moving forward with participation in the Guinness Oyster Festival in Chicago this fall, have become even more important because of the potential long-term effects on branding of Louisiana seafood caused by the oil spill.

Louisiana is a $2.6 billion seafood industry, accounting for nearly one-third of seafood consumption in the U.S., according to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board.

Closing some zones to fishing was a precaution, Smith said, because of a Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals mandate.

“We have to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best,” he said.

Loretta Poree, public affairs officer for the U.S. Small Business Administration, encouraged affected business owners to be prepared by locating tax returns and keeping financial records current.

However, the uncertainty of national financial support had some commercial fishermen at the meeting wondering exactly how they should proceed.

Local crab fisherman Joe Royes said he usually stocks up on traps for crab fishing, but he fears spending all of the money he’s allocated for that. He said he and others are holding off on purchases of materials for fear they might be shut down because of the oil spill.

Having spent 60 percent of his budget for buying traps, Royes said he’s reluctant to spend the remaining 40 percent and end up getting shut down in a week or month because of the oil spills. “I want to file a claim,” he said.

The mayor said the national government must support the state and its fishermen.

“You’re welcome to eat off our plate, but pay your bill,” Landrieu said of the nation.

The White House is working with Congress to lift the oil spill liability cap from $75 million to $10 billion, and Landrieu predicted the change would be made.

Audience member Charles Pizzo, who recently returned after living in Dallas post-Katrina, said citizens must move back to help. He said he felt a sense of urgency in returning to New Orleans after hearing about the oil spill.

“We’ve had two man-made disasters that have really hurt New Orleans. Now I’m mad,” Pizzo said. “Now the people of New Orleans who moved away need to come back and help their city.”

“Seafood drives our restaurants, drives our economy, drives our tourism. It’s the flavor of Louisiana. It’s what makes people come here,” he said.

Landrieu agreed, noting, “We’ve been here before. We are masters of disaster, experts of pain.”

The mayor likened it to fighting an alligator while keeping an eye on the gorilla approaching.

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