Curent events

The oily gulf

By Stephen Ornes

www.scienceforkids.org

June second 2010

On the night of April 20, there was a explosion on the Deep water
horizon, The deep water horizon was a huge oil Rig located In the
middle of the Mexican gulf. It was used To drill oil from deep below the
ocean floor. Luckily most of the 126 people survived bud unfortunately
11 died and others were injured.

Even though rescue workers raced to the scene to put out the fire,
deep below them was another disaster unraveling, it would later on
turn into an environmental disaster.

What happened was that oil began leaking from the riser pipe, which
connected the well to the ocean floor, and was located 5,000 feet
below the Deep water horizon. Once the rig sank to the ocean floor the
riser pipe got disconnected and oil started leaking all over the place.

By Late may, animals were swimming in oil; some of them were rare as
the brown pelican or the Louisiana state bird. They were all showing up
on the coast or swampy areas. The spill could take up months to clean
up even years.