Once again oil has spilled onto Santa Barbara County’s beaches, triggering memories of 1969. Emotionally, I side with the environmentalists who describe the spill as a disaster. Realistically, since I spent years working in the steel industry with top-notch engineers, I understand the hard truth that nothing we build will ever be 100 percent perfect or fail-safe.
In 2010, I was working in the industry during the Gulf oil spill and researched and wrote thousands of words about the root cause of that disaster. Most industrial accidents — San Bruno, Three Mile Island, Refugio — are not really accidents. They are usually a long chain of preventable failures that demonstrate the limits of technology and the ability of engineers and operators to manage risk in sensitive and unpredictable environments
We’d like to believe that we can solve entrenched problems if enough like-minded individuals carry protest signs, or chant “Save the Snowy Plover,” or boycott, march, or write letters to elected officials or The Santa Barbara Independent. Unfortunately I don’t believe that those actions often change the world.