Automatic Alarm System Was Disabled Before Deepwater Horizon Blast

An independent (federal) safety enforcement presence should be assigned 24x7 to every rig. The testimonies from workers are apparently indicative of a rig top management laxative attitude when assuring 100% operability of critical accident prevention and control systems.

What's this "federal" crap? Many platforms are in international waters and are owned by companies from many nations. Petrobras, of Brazil. BP, of the UK. PetroChina... Get the idea? Enough of this federal overlord BS! The magnitude of your assertions are far too copious for my diminuitive comprehension, brat!

Pulqui369 is very close to right on this, except for the "Laxative" attitude part. I think he means just plain lax or the "lack of good attitude. That notwithstanding however, there are other heretofore not mentioned problems not answered as of yet. Who in our Federal Government was responsible for approving this project in the first place? Who approved the changes BP, et al, made during the drilling operation? In all ventures of this nature there is always a Federal Government agency involved for final approval and approval of field order changes. There is no exception. WHO APPROVED THIS PROJECT? The Federal EPA must be involved in some manner here. This is where you begin to look for blame. They must have all the records. If they do not have all of the records then they (the EPA) are very likely to be a major part of the cause of the failure from the standpoint of negligence of duty.

Real simple the feds are part of the problem. There is enough blame to go around here to suggest the Obama administration is incompetent and culpable - large campaign donations from BP to Obama are on record; the office of Mineral Resources not over seeing the rig correctly. There is ample evidence the feds should pay along with BP and not only to thse that lost thier lives but to the millions of people who have now lost thier lively hood or had their preoperty values destroyed.

It is time to limit government not expand its role in our lives. Yes have regulators and simple rules for all to follow...but end this inane practice of over reaching government in our lives.

Maybe a trillion dollar law suit or two would go a long way to convince the rulerwannabes to "greed" less and allow the citizens to understand self reliance and responsibility.

I could go on, however the main point is the feds are just as culpable in this tradgedy as BP and they should be held accountable...now; and at the polls when we vote for sure.

Mr Murphy said that if things can go wrong they will - usually at the worst possible moment. Accidents involving human mistakes are throughout history, some simply because of unusual chance. The Maine went because (most likely) a coal fire started in a bunker next to the ammo and the Thresher because of a single faulty valve. The Russians had a torpedo (theirs) mishap and the list is as long as memory itself.

In the case of oil rigs there have been other mishaps which should have proven to be a precursor for more stringent safety procedures - obviously, it wasn't. The need to make profit always supersedes proper maintenance and safety resulting in chance taking at an ever increasing rate. I worked in industrial maintenance for many years and I KNOW that the workers no filing suit, are also culpable. Backup generators need at minimal, a monthly run. In a proper run business there is a log and this log is reviewed by a supervisor. The same can be said for everything else out there and there is no way on this planet that even the bottom line employee did not know something was amiss. The point that I am making is that the people on the bottom usually don't care as long as they remain confident that the chance of fire and/or explosion remain low, but in this case everyone out there had to be aware that they were in the high risk area. Why no whistle blower? The reason for that is simple and it is our reliance on technology. Technology picks up for human error and most of the time it does it's job and probably would have done so here - except it runs on electricity and humans forgot the generator maintenance.

Therefore, one could put all the overseers in the world on this type of operation and the potential of the same fault would still be out there. The only real solution is for top management to convey to middle management that maintenance and safety errors are unacceptable with no exceptions. In other words, if you cannot meet your production quota you will violate the former to achieve the latter.

Fact - humans do NOT do routine maintenance, nor do they apply even commonsense safety unless it is mandated and in a controlled environment.

Text/cell phone while driving, no safety glasses/ear protection, car maintenance, tail gate, speeding etc.,etc.

Who is not guilty of one or more of the above?

BP is guilty, but they have a lot of company.

People, we are being made fools .