Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The day oil hell broke loosein paradise...
neighbours to help. You didn’t trust your neighbour. You didn’t trust your family. It was very, very sad.”
Mike, 58, should know. The spill cost him his first marriage to his childhood sweetheart while six of his friends took their own lives.
“It was brutal,” he says. “The community itself suffered because people left town they got so depressed. A decade later, 20% had gone. Schools got smaller. It was a ghost town. We didn’t get compensated for one year of commercial fishing that we missed out of the 18 years it took for the settlement to come through.
“In the end, we got maybe what we might’ve made in one season.”
Because the oil company and government agencies were illprepared, oil from the Exxon Valdez stretched for 11,000 square miles, killing fish, birds, whales, seals and otters. Deer were affected, too, as they ate oil-covered vegetation.
Environmentalist Dave Janka, of Auklet Charters, says: “You could smell the oil before you even saw it.
“From an area once teeming with life you could sit by the water and hear nothing. Everybody called it the dead zone.” Dave still takes samples from the beaches showing how much oil is present. He says: “If you had a leaking fuel tank in your yard, you’d be forced to the point of bankruptcy to clean that up. Yet one of the most profitable corporations in the universe gets to walk away from this.”
Asked why Exxon never cleared up all the beaches, he adds: “Nobody forced them to do it and clearly they haven’t felt it was right.”
Today there is still a great anger
sea otters, harbour seals, eagles and seabirds died
workers, boats and aeroplanes and helicopters were used to clean up after the disaster
The amount of oil spilt could fill Olympic-sized swimming pools bald towards the firm. It paid £2billion for the clean-up and £229million to 11,000 fishermen and others affected.
But some claim they hardly saw a cent. A joint lawsuit against Exxon wasn’t resolved until 2008 when the Supreme Court slashed an initial award of £3.8billion to £388million.
Exxon – unavailable when we contacted them for comment – fund ongoing research into why the herring have never returned. The fisherman, who continue to catch salmon, are now trained to use the latest technology within hours of any new spill.
However, they know only too well the area is never far from disaster.
Right now the Exxon Valdez’s remaining oil lies motionless in the icy water. But the area’s susceptibility to earthquakes means it can be stirred at any moment.
“We are at the mercy of Mother Nature,” says Mike. “It was she the Exxon Valdez damaged. She is the one who lost the most.”