Jackson Free Press

I have not been myself since I learned of the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Always, no matter what I'm doing, it seems to be hanging out with me, sometimes on the periphery of my thoughts and more often in the foreground as the days get marked off the calendar like fallen soldiers on the battlefront.

I cannot help but be thrown back in time to 2005, when Katrina ripped through the Gulf and wreaked enough havoc to make Hurricane Camille look like a mild thunderstorm in comparison. I was on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the aftermath of the disaster.

We would watch helplessly as out-of-state contractors circled like vultures swirling around the near-dead. We would see so many come to cash in on the "opportunities" this disaster would bring for people who had money in their pockets and the resources to tap into a system rigged in their favor.

Being one of the lucky ones with a standing structure, I would make coffee every morning. We'd all sit around and talk about what restaurants were still open, where the good tent stores were, if an SBA loan was in process, yet. During one conversation, someone said: "The real disaster is now. The storm is over. This is the disaster!"

She was referring to the difficulty people were having just getting a place to live.

I felt guilt over not having lost everything, while so many of my friends did. My guilt was compounded when I thought about retired friends and acquaintances taking out loans on paid-for homes to get them habitable again. I would get spacey at times. We would all become accustomed to driving past towering piles of crumbled debris that used to be buildings dotting the coastline of Highway 90. We would become overly enthusiastic when describing how "great" we were doing. Then we would fall apart on the phone to our close friends. We watched friends leave the area. I felt unexplainable rage at the most inopportune times. People got sick from the formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers.

I've seen the Coast rebuild after the greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States. There is so much still to do, but it's come so far! And now, this: a man-made disaster with far greater potential to cause lasting damage than Katrina ever did.

Those old feelings are back. I feel terrible guilt for not being there. I feel rage at an industry that put its shareholders' interests ahead of the needs of those who live around that water. I feel sadness for the innocent wildlife that will perish in that water, for the eleven who died in the explosion. I feel exhausted from thinking about it. As I read through a copy of the letter sent by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to Tony Hayward from Bart Stupak, words just pop off the page at me:

"On April 15, five days before the explosion, BP's drilling engineer called Macondo (the well where the Deepwater Horizon was drilling) a ‘nightmare well.' In spite of the well's difficulties, BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure."

This latest oil spill is the culmination of decades of deregulation of major multinational corporations. Reading this letter, it is painfully obvious that oversight was almost nonexistent, except at the discretion of BP, which chose to take shortcuts to speed along the well's assembly. No thought was given to overseeing operations until after disaster struck; too late.

What did we learn from Katrina about mitigating risks? Nothing, apparently. Or maybe we learned that a lot of money is to be made from both natural and man-made disasters.

Collateral damage will happen, of course. The poor and middle class will suffer devastating economic losses. Divorce and suicide rates may go up, and plant and animal life may be decimated. But these things don't really matter to the people who really matter. The very wealthy can afford the privilege of being the last to starve in the ruthless world of the de-regulated market.

So pray for our Coast. Just be advised that God does not live on Wall Street.