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The reported suicide of a Gulf charter skipper begs comparison. There is no exact number, but many suspect at least 30 people in Alaska or who worked on or were ruined by the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) killed themselves over the succeeding 20 years, one as recently as last year. I knew three of the victims, one very well.
Alaska had about 500,000 residents at the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
At least 11,000,000 gallons were spilled
Approximately 30 people killed themselves.
The gulf spill will likely effect areas with at least 40 million residents.
Unabated over the summer it may end up being 20 times larger than the EVOS.
Should that happen, following the Alaska model, there may be 48,000 suicides over the economic and emotional hardships brought on by the spill over the next 20 years.
I don’t claim to be a statistician, so maybe somebody here can help me out, because the number seems high. I suspect the number of suicides over this during the next generation will be more in the 4,000 to 6,000 range, but it is all just guessing.
I’ve been thinking about this for days, but my own EVOS PTSD has held me back. I figure there have been other suicides over this already, that haven’t been reported in context.
39 Comments
The devastation widens every day, slowly and steadily. So does our comprehension of the devastation. We don’t understand its extent yet, and won’t for a while. And that means it’s worse than we think it is today.
You don’t think I’ve underestimated this, do you?
ET, I hope that you can find a way not to dwell on thoughts of worst-case outcomes for people in the gulf.
There’s going to be much pain, but the people there have been plagued by pollution for decades.
This is a tough one, but they’re pretty tough people.
After Katrina
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11061910/
I’m not enough of statistician or actuary to offer any useful opinion on that, ET. I was thinking more about the long psychological process by which one comes to be so overwhelmed by the disaster and its effects that ending one’s own life seems like it make sense. I think you’re right that the seeds of that will be very widespread; but how many of those seeds will grow to awful fruition, rather than being stopped or diverted in time — well, maybe statistical methods can estimate that, but seems to me only time will tell for sure.
As it all gets worse, and proven to be worse, people will lose hope.
Some will not be able to face the daily struggle.
Rcc’d.
More deaths are inevitable it seems, and suicide will be one of the reasons for death.
Can’t tapdance around these realities.
Hold tough yourself . . . . don’t let the reality overwhelm you, you have family that depends on you.
…. well, that’s why I’m bringing it up now. Community counseling was not Exxon’s forte after the EVOS, and unless people start some action in this particular realm now, as businesses go belly up and family problems are exacerbated by financial losses or ruin, BP will not do anything about this potential of 40 Jonestowns.
You’re quite right to raise the issue. And astute to have thought of it.
Been thinking about it since the day they announced that there was a lot of oil leaking under the sunken rig.
Your experience makes you an especially valuable observer of this situation. I thank you.
I’ll second that notion…! Rec’d ET…!
One thing I can Guarantee You is no one in the Government will kill themselves for making this mess the catastrophy it is.
Thad Allen won’t quit or Kill Himself, and He has by letting BP do as they wanted made this as bad as it it is.
Every Government agency is still making them quit cleaning up the oil, stop building the sand birms, and won’t let people do things to actually help.
The tar balls that came ashore in Pensicola could, should, and needed to be stopped off shore, but the Coast Guard is still pussyfooting around with the sucking up of the oil.
Many want BP’s people prosicuted for this, but the Governments people really caused it, have hampered the clean up, and are still working against those trying to save themselves.
Yet like good Americans we will just let our Government keep making it worse, and not even complain about it. When we should be calling for these Government peoples heads.
A very good point E.T. I knew a few of those folks also. What i do remember most was the pervasive depression that hung on the community of Cordova that fall after the EVOS. that i believe would lead to many bad decisions be it money or life changes. Expand that to the size of the gulf and you are right we have yet to see how far inland this mess reaches.
I love Cordova. My wife has been unwilling to go back there since the spill (I lived in Cordova from 73 through most of 76, she was my deckhand on the Flats and Coghill River in 75 & 76). I haven’t been there since 91. We hope to finally go over this summer.
I fear this is a gross UNDERestimate.
The entire state of Florida has the potential to become uninhabitable in the perfect storm scenario. Consider the variables. Half of Florida home owners are under water on their mortgages, and if they walk away, they can (and will) be sued in court via deficiency judgment for the shortfall still owed. The REAL unemployment rate in the state is well over 20%.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/23/fannie-mae-strategic-default_n_623562.html
Whether or not this early evidence of oil rain is accurate or owing to circumstances on the ground and the illusion of “oil rain,” it is coming in some form.
That Corexit dispersant they been dumping into the Gulf forms a gas, and when combined with all of the other “blood” being spilled from the earth’s core (methane, etc.), I have no reason to assume these toxins would not evaporate off the super-warm Gulf waters to mix with storm clouds. Combine this concept with a Cat. 5 hurricane that forms in the Gulf and proceeds east across the south Florida peninsula, and the potential exists to destroy the Everglades ecosystem and render the water table (drinking water) toxic, to say nothing of the air.
Americans have been programmed to be optimistic, and have no basis for comprehension of a circumstance as I have just described, an entire State rendered too toxic to support life.
Could it happen? If it did, then what?
So what is Corexit 9500 that is being used to “pull the wool over our eyes”?
Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC9527A are chemical solvents that break up the oil into minuscule particles. The active ingredient in both Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC9527A is 60% 2-Butoxy-ethonal, a neuro toxin pesticide that can be absorbed through the skin and cause damage to both human and aquatic life, causes cancer, as well as damage to internal organs, has a history of damaging reproductive organs, as well as genetic mutations. Both of these chemicals are more toxic than oil, and can cause long term damage. The effectiveness of the chemical dispersants is mediocre at best. The effectiveness of Corexit 9500 is 54% and the effectiveness of Corexit EC9527A is 63%. Not only is the effectiveness an issue, but these dispersants do not eliminate the oil, nor do they decrease the oil’s toxicity. The worse part of this is, when mixed with the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, its molecules will transition from a liquid state into a gaseous state, which can be absored by clouds. Thus causing toxic rain.
ET, thanks for sounding the alarm about the potential scope. This disturbing BBC retrospective piece on the Exxon Valdez spill, which aired last week, highlights the degree to which the devastation persists 2 decades later.
I guess that means I’ll be an ecodisaster tourist when I visit the area this year. (Homeroid, FYI, that will include a couple of days in Homer.)
Thanks, Ralphbon.
Just home from picking Ms ET up at the Anchorage airport. 100 mile round trip, but my Golf TDI only burned 2 gallons of fuel. Hopefully, someday soon, there will be a more economical way to do that trip, eh?
UPDATE: Shannyn Moore has posted a profoundly sad and prescient essay on this subject at her blog, Just a Girl from Homer, called Dying Over Oil. It focuses on one of my three friends who killed himself over the EVOS.
[edited]
For everyone we lose to suicide we will likely lose hundreds to poison and hundreds more to the massive internal migration away from the dead gulf and well oiled eastern seaboard. Americans in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver and Portland have not yet realized that they too will be effected by this disaster. It ain’t jus Cajuns and pelicans y’all.
Uh oh. I smell a Corporate Social Responsibility bonanza, whereby pharmaceutical companies saturate the Gulf magnanimously with free samples of their latest brand-name antidepressants. After the last news crews drift away, work-deprived folks can petition their junk COBRA carriers to maintain the scripts. Laissez les bons temps…
Yoiks, get some shut-eye (or did you beat me to it)?
What will they call their new anti-depressant? Core Non-Exit?
I did an airport run. Just back and catching up on emails from people going on the next Gaza flotilla.
Jimmy Buffet’s new hotel is near this beach.
No I don’t think he’s going to kill himself over the TOTAL LOSS of building a massive new hotel that will NEVER be occupied, but he’s now in a position where he’ll need to rely on BP to recoop any of his loss, and therefore legally prevented from speaking out on behalf of his beloved “Mother Ocean” – as a contract condition to be paid on his loss.
Multiply that inner-turmoil and heart break times a-few-million, and you begin to grasp the complexity and magnitude of the unfolding and hopeless calamity. In his case, it’s not about the money (as I’m sure he mostly committed his name and other people’s money)- but you get the point.
Images of Floridians standing on the beach, crying their hearts out, are coming soon.
Intense
Don’t get this wrong, I do think it’s a completely serious question, but: I would like to see some math on what kind of concentrations of crude oil, methane, Corexit and their seawater byproducts we would expect to see in evaporation, in clouds, and in precipitation over land. I mean before assuming it’d be up to an Everglades-destroying concentration, for example. We need quick, intensive study on all kinds of aspects of this situation.
Agreed on both points. I have no idea whether ET’s estimate is high or low, and I doubt I would even if I were an expert statistician. There are so many unknowns at the moment, it strikes me as impossible. All I know for sure is that this charter boat captain won’t be the last, and if there are only 29 more suicides related to this we will have gotten off very easy on that score.
Amen
Factor in a bad economy with those numbers somehow and the numbers will get bigger.
Dear Edward,
I don’t think it is too early to begin thinking long term about this disaster. Your suicide model is sound enough for initial analysis although you may be light in your estimation because of some very basic difference in the two events. EVOS was largely considered a freak arising from single hull tankers and drunken ship captains and so could be seen a little more as a lightning strike–that is, very unfortunate for the one who gets hit but extremely unlikely to occur again. In the gulf we have an ongoing disaster and the string pullers don’t seem too concerned about it which is bad enough until you factor in the number of wells drilled and active and drilled and capped and then it is flat out depressing. Really now, does anyone think there will be a tremendous amount of responsibility by future corporate entities when a capped casing fails? How will we even find out when an abandoned well head fails and leaks into the ocean.
Maybe if we skipped bombing brown people for one whole day we could develop an effective arm of the navy or coast guard to actually deal with this type of threat rather than just participate in the cover-up. The US government could have effective resources on this problem first thing in the morning if only AIPAC would tell them to do it. Does anyone believe that BP(Anglo-Iranian Oil) are the only people in the world who can operate deep sea subs or contend with fractured well case because I don’t.
The persons continuing to advocate for deep sea oil drilling should be sat naked on a stool in a public place with a pointed dunce cap on their head and donkey urine poured over them. Might save a suicide or two.
Thank you for this post,
Conrad C. Elledge
Consumer Protection recalls 2 million drop-side cribs because of approximately 30 babies killed over the last however many years,but a federal judge rules against a moratorium on deep-water drilling because one unsafe deep water oil well doesn’t mean the next one might be a potential hazard in need of a safety review? Excuse me?
Thanks, Conrad.
A beautiful essay. Thank you for putting out this cry for help for the anguish in the Gulf.
Thank you ET.
A needed call to sanctity of life in all situations, especially the GC oil spill.
I just got back from Spain and rented a Mercedes about the size of a KIA Sportage or Hundai SanteFe. It got 57 miles per gallon of diesel. Why is this car not sold here? ….or this type. Imagine, 57 miles per gallon! Probably similar to the TDI Golf.
Truly the hole of death.
Thanks for this, ET.
My guess is that your numbers will end up being low, but we won’t know that for sure because it will be hard (if not impossible) to track, given the size of the area impacted by the spill.
Very intelligent comments.
What are you doing on this site?