When Capt. Kuchta realized what she had done, he reprimanded her, she says.
“I didn’t give you authority to do that,” he said, according to Ms. Fleytas, who says she responded: “I’m sorry.”
The more that industry is regulated by government, the more they begin to resemble it;
The vessel’s written safety procedures appear to have made it difficult to respond swiftly to a disaster that escalated at the speed of the events on April 20. For example, the guidelines require that a rig worker attempting to contain a gas emergency had to call two senior rig officials before deciding what to do. One of them was in the shower during the critical minutes, according to several crew members.
An excellent piece from the WSJ, via Cjunk.
and now we find out that the hiring of locals and their boats to sweep areas with cleaning booms has been delayed because the ObamOcracy requires drug tests for all the crews.
Excellent.
The more that industry is regulated by government, the more they begin to resemble it..
– Kate
You’ve never written a truer sentence in your life. And not having run a regulated entity like I have for 30 years, you don’t even know quite how true your true statement is. BINGO.
G-d you’re good, you!
Meanwhile, over at the National Post, Diane Francis is blaming Booooosh (using Obama sycophant Joe Klein as her source). Apparently Cheney mind-controlled Bush into relaxing regulations (with the tacit assumption that regulations are infallible, of course) which led to the blowout (whose cause we aren’t actually certain of yet, but that kind of detail doesn’t concern the likes of Francis or Klein). Somehow that caused the feds to drag their feet for weeks on making a decision on allowing Louisiana to erect the berms they wanted to put in place. I’m sure lackwit Diane will find a way to pin that on Cheney too. No dirt dare get on her lazy incompetent boyfriend Obama.
From Cjunk
“Chinese fire-drill on water………”
“… and in the meantime, the O-team struggles to find a way to take advantage of the crisis.”
A drilling rig appears to be a queer cross between a ship and a factory….the blend of the change of command…is typical of government.
Indeed the US government is the poster-boy of this writ large. A flawed policy that doesn’t work is intensified rather than abandoned—sorta like fire-arms laws.
The dramatic difference between the rig’s command and control and the support ship proves this.
The more that industry is regulated by government, the more they begin to resemble it..
– Kate
Me No Dhimmi, you are absolutely right.
Now we have some idea of the chaotic mess that the Soviet Eastern Bloc was for approximately seven decades.
Is everybody forgetting the fact that BP helped finance the Zero’s election?Fox guarding henhouse??
The guys/gals on board that rig knew it was dangerous,but not one had the fortitude to throw the snivelling BP twits off and tell them to start swimming back to their socialist paradise called Britain.They KNEW the BOP was f**ked,but no one shut the rig down.When you get rubber coming back up your pipes,it ain’t pretty.Oh.And lets remove the mud that is trying to keep everything under control!I just hope the families of the 11 dead sue BP into non-existence.
Of course BP supported Oblamebush, they want to get out of that risky oil business and get into that lucrative carbon credit trading scam I mean business.
Overdetailed and inappropriate “safety” regulations
which curtail individual initiative and common
sense are a great problem. A friend of mine on
one occasion saw a fire break out in a space in a
pontoon on a semi – he rushed in with a fire
extinguisher and put it out, with some difficulty.
He had called for a hazmat suit, but if he’d waited for it the fire would have been very large
and probably beyond control. He narrowly
escaped a reprimand from the company suit when
his captain pointed out that his prompt actions may well have
saved the rig.
On another occasion he was supervising the
transfer of a fluid into a large storage container. By a mistake not his the fluid
was saturated with H2S. In violation of “safety”
regulations he was not wearing a “safety” harness,
which would have held him in the poisonous gas. As
it was, when he passed out he fell off the storage
container and so did not die. Furthermore, as he
passed out he ordered the flow to be shut off.
He explicitly disagreed with the “safety”
requirement for the harness, and that saved his
life. Because of the extra moment of consciousness, his shutoff order probably saved
the lives of his workmates.
The attempt at total control by bureaucrats is not typical of government in all its generality.
It is typical of the Soviet government,and in particular the Soviet government in WWII.
Russian soldiers and airmen were strictly controlled by their superiors.
No initiative was tolerated. Consequently they died like flies; but there were always more of them.
The German soldiers and airmen on the other hand were certainly well disciplined but they were
taught to show flexibility and initiative. Hence Erich von Manstein’s troops (for example) could handle even
5 to 1 odds against them. Erich Hartmann, the ace of aces, counted two
Russian planes down as equivalent to one Brititish or American plane; the Russian pilots were so predictable and easy.
Discipline, mutual reliance, and flexibility were emphasised by the Germans.
On occasion senior commanders would explicitly order their juniors not to ask for further orders in the heat of battle.
The Western Allied pilots were much closer to the German battle doctrine than to the Soviet.
Justthinkin
“I just hope the families of the 11 dead sue BP into non-existence”
—-
Sorry, no can sue gov’t.
I miss W.
John Lewis, a bit off-topic, but the autobiography of Erich Hartmann was a fascinating read in my youth (along with Wilfred May, William Avery Bishop, etc etc).
He was just a patriot fighting for his country, he was no Nazi ideologue. What he went through after the war was beyond belief. Well, within belief, but I can’t comprehend it.
“The more that industry is regulated by government, the more they begin to resemble it.”
A catchy soundbite; too bad it ain’t true.
The faceless “Government” bogeyman is of course a favourite SDA punching bag, but really, any large hierarchical organization — a public service department, a Fortune 500 company, an organized crime syndicate, the Hell’s Angels, an organized religion, the US military — will have and expect general compliance with a formal (usually onerous, frequently perverse) chain-of-command structure and protocol.
So yeah, go ahead and blame any absurd play-out of Transocean’s safety procedures aboard the Deepwater Horizon, like you do with everything else, on “Government.” Just know that you’d be doing it only to indulge your own petty grievances.
Davenport is conflating very different organizational cultures. Re-read what John Lewis wrote Re: the German vs Russian pilots.
I can’t speak for Kate but personally I detest the stultifying bureaucratization that results in the very needless death and destruction that the bureaucracy was created to prevent.
Somehow having a safety officer with no hands on experience insist you do a job in an unsafe manner because his book l’arnin’ didn’t cover the task at hand defeats the purpose of the safety officer.
I recall getting concentrated acid on my face. I got to a sink and washed it off. I was forced to explain why I didn’t use the emergency shower. Had my eyes closed and went to water. Screw feeling around for the shower. I came out sans even a blister. I think they were disappointed. Every time I encountered an incident that did not follow protocol we went through why the protocol was determined to fail. Common sense usually prevailed but would then involve re-writing SOP’s. Sometimes it was expected to use common sense instead of the SOP. If I am going to be blamed anyway I may as well do it my way.
“The attempt at total control by bureaucrats is not typical of government in all its generality.
It is typical of the Soviet government,and in particular the Soviet government in WWII.
Russian soldiers and airmen were strictly controlled by their superiors.
No initiative was tolerated. Consequently they died like flies; but there were always more of them.”
Great point John Lewis. I’m sure you are also no doubt aware of the Soviet postwar tactic of ground controlled intercept. Soviet pilots (and those of other countries influenced by Soviet doctrine) had almost no latitude to act upon personal initiative. Perhaps the more general observation is that this is typical of regimes that do not trust their underlings, and are fearful of defection or insurrection to the point that mission profiles are kept under direct supervision at all times.
Gideon7, you correctly identified the difference.
The Soviet method of controlling agricultural production was similar to their style of conducting military operations.
The Russian Soviet collective farmers were told what to seed and when to seed by the bureaucrats. No personal or even local initiative was allowed. The collective farmers also stole much of the fertilizer meant for the fields and used it on their small yard plots during the night. So for seventy years the Soviets produced poor crops and had piles of moldy grain.
Now they consistently produce better crops with less fertilizer and want even less bureaucratic interference.
Naturally!
Soviet agriculture also did a nice job of nearly drying up the Aral Sea and increasing the salinity of the Caspian to the point that its fisheries were nearly destroyed. When it comes to non-existent environmental stewardship, nobody can hold a candle to the ComBloc. Strange that the greenies hold them in such high regard.
Ever since the Exxon Valdez the oil and gas industry has become obsessed with safety procedures not safety necessarily but safety procedures. Function has become more important then form. Everyone is crying they had no procedure but they did and that is the problem instead of having a system that was simple and to the point. If mud starts shooting out of the well the person closes to the button shuts the B.O.P.s. Emergency shutting of B.O.Ps is almost with out fail due to well fluid shooting out. It is nice for someone to finally get to the humane element, because over time the little shrimp will come back but these people are gone forever.
Ford prefect
[…”obsessed with safety procedures not safety necessarily but safety procedures.]
US submariners are perhaps the most highly trained people anywhere…the best of the best. This involves a high priority on swift individual action re emergencies.
This explains the rarety of US sub accidents versus the crash and burn Soviet boats…..despite the fact that Soviet submariners were perhaps the most flexible of any in that society.
Re the Soviet collective farms. During WW2, the soviets looked the other way because the individual plots out-produced the farms proper. Eg nothing carried about kids running through the grain fields but “get out of Ivan ******’s garden”.
This counter-revolutionary situation was brutally suppressed after VE day….and shortages resulted. Back to the tractor drivers not tightening a bolt or checking oil….mechanics’ job ya know.