The Exxon Valdex Story essays

The Exxon Valdex Story essays How to assess blame in such a horrible and heinous tragedy as the Exxon Valdez crash is not an easy task. There are multiple recipients and no one will ever really agree. It isnt much of a stretch to say that there will never really be a right or wrong answer as to who is the most responsible-there are many different opinions. I think that the one thing people can agree on, though, is that blame is well beyond warranted. The margin for human error didnt seem very big when the ship set out that night-this was a run that had been done over and over again, the captain was well experienced and traffic control was watching them on radar. Yet, as the story slowly unraveled, the viewer slowly learned that all was not as it seemed. That small margin suddenly seemed huge, and the catastrophe that occurred as a result of it only proved it. The one person whom I am sure deserves top blame in this situation, is the captain of the ship. Joseph Hazelwood was well beyond the legal blood alcohol limit while piloting the tanker. He was given multiple warnings by a shipmate that the ship was coming closer to shore every minute and something should be done. Nothing was. As the viewer later found out, Mr. Hazelwood had a long history of alcohol abuse and was checked in to a rehab center several years prior to the incident. Why, then, did Exxon continue to let him work there? His drinking history was a known fact and no one tried to cover it up before the crash happened. This man should have been nowhere near a boat that day, let alone a boat carrying millions of gallons of oil in Prince William Sound. This man had plenty of chances to steer back on course and get out of the shallow area, but by the time he came out of his drunken stupor to actually look at where they were, it was too late to do any good. This brings me to the people whom I think more than fit to carry the second most amount of blame: Exxon. Why did the...