A struggle ensues on the gulf coast over who gets to decide when the oil spill is over.

Transcript

Cold Open

Pilot:
Spray on.

Co-pilot:
Spray on.

Dan Leone (host): 

In the aftermath of the BP oil spill, thousands of fishermen lost their livelihoods in an instant. Fisheries were closed, shut down as the oil poisoned and killed unknown multitudes of marine life.

Pilot:
Spray on.

Co pilot:
Spray on.

So because they couldn't earn their living of choice, BP hired these fishermen to help clean up the oil. This initiative was called the Vessels of Opportunity, but everyone I talked to called it "VOO" or "the VOO program." 

Initially, their work involved driving their boats out onto the water and using manual methods to try to trap the oil. But after a while, the nature of their work in the VOO program changed.  

[Engine humming crescendos. Music and Ambi glitch to silence.]

Joey Yerkes:

We were supposed to just call it in, um, and not really touch much. Right?

This is Joey Yerkes, a commercial fisherman who joined the VOO program. Joey lived in Destin, Florida, on the Emerald Coast. That’s a hundred mile long vacation destination on the Florida panhandle.

Joey Yerkes:
We had to call it in, make sure they knew where it was, document the way points. Log it. That was it.

Joey Yerkes:

You know, they would say, “Okay, we got it.” And you know, we would drive around and find more.

So that's what Joey's work day became: go out on the water, find oil, radio the location to supervisors. Drive away, find more oil. 

But he was curious to know what was happening to the oil slicks once he called them in… and then he saw them.
 
Joey Yerkes:

They were spraying it with C-130s. We saw the planes spraying COREXIT on the oil almost every day.

When you picture a C-130 in your head, don’t think of a little biplane or a crop duster, think of something military – big and muscular – like a 737 that spends a lot of time at the gym.

Joey Yerkes:

The C-130s would come over the beach, fly out to the ocean, disappear, and then circle back.

Corexit is a chemical used to break up oil into smaller droplets so it can biodegrade more easily, disappear from the surface of the ocean, and ideally not reach coastlines. Unified Command was spraying over a million gallons of it.

Joey said Corexit appeared to be working as advertised.

Joey Yerkes:

The oil’s there one day and the next day it's all dispersed.

Looking closer, Joey said that sometimes the oil had changed. He said it would alter in color, or start showing up in these long foam lines. 

Joey Yerkes:

This is the stuff that was washing, you know, coming into Destin. 

[transition]

Pete Capelotti: 

Uh, Dr. Thiesen, uh, what were your impressions flying over the site? 

Dr. William Thiesen:
Today, it looked, uh, quite clean. Uh, seemed like the only evidence of, uh, oil was around ground zero itself. 

This is a video that the Coast Guard released on July 13th, 2010 – 86 days into the spill. It featured a Coast Guard official with an Atlantic Coast historian, and essentially, they’re taking a victory lap. 

Dr. William Thiesen:

…it seems like a lot of progress has been made over the course of the past several weeks.

Pete Capelotti:
So definitely a historic milestone in, in the, in the story of the, the long story of the Coast Guard.

Dr. William Thiesen:
It's been a tremendous response effort, uh, in all hopes this will never happen again. 

But, um, I think that a lot of lessons have been learned and those lessons will be put to use should there ever be anything like this again.

The tone of this video may have been confusing for coastal residents. Oil was still washing on shore, fisheries were still closed, and the wellhead hadn’t been shut.

Joey Yerkes:

There's dead fish, dead wildlife on my beach in front of my condo. And they're telling us that everything's great.

Joey Yerkes:
So, you know, there was a lot of people that said, “No, you're wrong. It's not great.”

What's about to happen is a struggle over who gets to decide when the Deepwater Horizon story… is over. 

From Western Sound and APM Studios, I'm Dan Leone.

This is Ripple.

[Music]

President Barack Obama:
Good morning everybody. I wanna give, uh, everyone a quick update on the situation in the Gulf. As we all know, a new cap was fitted over the BP oil well earlier this week. 

On July 16th, three days after that Coast Guard video, President Obama addressed the public about a new wellhead cap. And where all the other caps had failed: 

President Barack Obama:
This new cap and the additional equipment being placed in the Gulf will be able to contain up to 80,000 barrels a day, which should allow us to capture nearly all the oil until the well is killed.

So now, they were finally able to stop all the oil surging out of the wellhead. This almost entirely eliminated the amount of new oil spilling into the Gulf. 

You might expect that would come as a relief to the fishermen, now VOO workers. 

But soon after these announcements were made, some workers - particularly in Florida - found their situation more precarious. Not less. 

Joey Yerkes:

They removed quite a few boats from the program. And that was in, uh, late July.

VOO boats, including Joey's, were suddenly deactivated. Laid off from cleaning up the oil. From Joey's point of view, there was a mad urgency in the Florida panhandle to restore the appearance of normalcy.  

The Emerald Coast was badly hurting; this was the summer, it was supposed to be the height of tourist season – but tourists were canceling trips en masse. They weren’t interested in vacationing at the site of a colossal oil spill.

Joey Yerkes:

And they wanted to get the tourists back on the beaches as quick as possible. So our mayor and our local government had lifted the warnings from the beaches despite there still being oil tarballs, oil under the sand.

Joey Yerkes:
I mean, then they were running these videos saying, okay, we're gonna lift the bans off the beaches in the water. We're gonna let everybody come back. Yay.

When I interviewed Joey, he had a stack of CD-Roms with documents, pictures, and videos he compiled from 2010. One of the discs had these tourism videos.  

Emerald Coast Tourism Video:

Welcome to the Emerald Coast of Florida, which includes the cities of Destin, Fort Walton Beach, and our beautiful Okaloosa Island. Today is July 19th, 2010.

This weekend we had a few tarballs wash up on a small portion of Okaloosa Island, but the crews were on scene quickly, and the tarballs have been cleaned up. There are no health advisory warnings and our beaches are still open…(dip under)

The host of this video is standing by an outdoor pool at a resort hotel. Kids are jumping in, splashing around. There's a quick montage of idyllic ocean views and fishing boats out on the water.

Emerald Coast Tourism Video:

And I look forward to seeing you on our beaches.

I asked Joey for his reaction to the campaign.

Joey Yerkes:
I think it's bullshit.

Dan:
You think it's bullshit?

Joey Yerkes:
Yeah. I mean, when you, when you see little kids playing in the water and it's got oil on it and the kids are playing in it, is that normal? What's wrong with that picture? 

Dan:
What did you want the message to be, what do you think that they should have – 

Joey Yerkes:
Well, I don't, I don't think they should have opened the beaches when they were still cleaning up the oil. I don't think we should have been eating the seafood either. [laughs] I mean, come on. 

In July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA - was performing chemical testing on seafood, and if the fish passed their tests, fisheries were reopened. 

Dan:
But at that point, could you, could you fish? Could you go back to doing what you were doing?

Joey Yerkes:
So they were telling us yes, but based on what we saw, no, I wasn't about to go back to work. Not, not at least not then, right? Because it was, it was, there was way too much oil and tarballs still in the water and in the bay to even think about throwing a cast net.

The reopening of fisheries presented this ethical dilemma for fishermen. They were being told by government officials that the seafood was safe to catch, sell, and consume. But what the fishermen were seeing with their own eyes told them differently.

Joey didn't feel comfortable selling fish, and he wasn't convinced that the shorelines were safe for vacationers.

At the time, he lived in a condo in Destin, right on the beach. Deactivated from VOO, Joey would stand on his patio overlooking the return of tourists. 

Joey Yerkes:
You know, you see people in the water swimming and you wanna run up there and tell 'em, get out, please get outta the water.

Joey Yerkes:
And I can't go up to people on the beach and tell 'em to get out of the water, that spent money on a vacation to come down. You can't do that.

[Music: Moment] 

Joey Yerkes:
You know, I mean everybody that lived there was in jeopardy. The stuff was everywhere. It was in the air. You could smell it every day. You know, it's not like you had to be in the VOO program to be exposed.

Joey Yerke:
And that's when kind of the whole world blew up. Right? 

Dale Vogelsang:
Throughout this whole conversation, you keep hearing, “Unified Command, Unified Command.” What that means is that there’s an incident command that's made up of Coast Guard, EPA, and BP representatives at the very least. 

Joey Yerkes attended a meeting in early August 2010 between reps from Unified Command and the VOO workers who were being cut from the program.  

An audience is seated in front of Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Dale Vogelsang. He’s in uniform, holding a mic, pacing, speaking.

This video was captured by a member of the crowd, and it’s unclear if Vogelsang is aware he’s being recorded.

Joey kept a copy of this recording for 13 years as evidence of things that were stated in the meeting. 

Dale Vogelsang:
We haven't seen any [inaudible]. We haven't seen any impacts, in fact, for a very long time, at least two weeks.

Crowdmember:
Says who?

Dale Vogelsang:
Unified command…[crowd erupts] (dip under)

Vogelsang is saying there’s just not enough oil to clean up to justify VOO anymore. The workers are incredulous. 

VOO Worker 1:
I can take anybody out there in this group and show them oil every single freaking day in the bay.

Workers are saying there's oil everywhere – they're seeing oil in foam lines, they're seeing tarballs rolling under the water like quote "tumbleweeds."

Another serious point of contention is that the VOO workers say that at the same time they're being laid off, other boats - what they called “out of town” boats - were being brought in to work on the spill.

Vogelsang doesn’t contest this, he acknowledges that's the case.

So, essentially, the workers are saying, “If we’re being laid off because there’s not enough oil to clean up, then why are you hiring these other boats? What are they doing?” 

Dale Vogelsang:
They have specialized skills above and beyond Hazwoper… [crowd uproars] (dip under)

Vogelsang explains that the out of town boats are specialized. The VOO workers are saying, “We’re looking at the boats, they don’t look special. How are they specialized?” 

Dale Vogelsang:

Okay, one of the issues we've found is not enough VOO folks were trained to identify – is that a tarball? Or a [inaudible]? What is that?

Vogelsang says that the fishermen might be struggling to accurately identify tarballs in the water.

And this suggestion goes over very poorly in the room.

VOO Workers:
[laughing] Come on, man. Give me a break! Let's be realistic here. 

When Joey and I watched this video together in his living room, he told me what he believes these specialized boats were actually up to back in 2010. 

Joey Yerkes:
So they were bigger aluminum boats. They had a big plastic tank on 'em, and they would show up and spray. We actually saw them spraying at times. 

While working on the VOO program, Joey says he saw these out of town boats spraying the water with what looked like dispersant. He said the boats were basically following the VOO boats and spraying the oil. 

Joey Yerkes:

So we finally got privy to it. We said, you know, we know they're gonna go spray what we just found so it goes away. We need to catch 'em. [laughs] So we did. There were a couple times where we would, we called in the way point, left the area, turned around and shot back, and sure enough, those guys were there at those way points. So, you know, we didn't roll up close to 'em. We didn't want any confrontation, anything like that.

Joey Yerkes:
But that's when two and two hit and we said, okay.

So it is true that during the clean up, boats applied Corexit as well as airplanes. 

But it's still hard to rectify what Joey's claiming here with what a representative from BP claimed at that community meeting. 

BP Representative:

I can state there is no dispersant being used in Florida waters, and sir, any of the information about -

Joey Yerkes:
Really. Is that a fact? Is that a fact?

That's Joey Yerkes at the meeting, shouting back at the BP rep.

The rep says there’s no dispersant being sprayed quote “in Florida waters.” Maybe he’s choosing his words carefully. Maybe he’s leaving open that these boats could be spraying in federal waters. Maybe the spraying did stop right before this meeting and what he's saying is accurate. It’s hard to know.

In addition to putting the kibosh on dispersants, the BP rep directly disputes reports that there is still a lot of oil to be cleaned. 

BP Representative:
I saw the reports that, what was reported as oil, seeping up, below... (dip under) 

The BP rep claims he, the EPA, and the Coast Guard went out onto the water to investigate reports of foam lines, or dispersed oil under the surface. He says they collected samples, which were assessed by the EPA and others.

BP Representative:
What we saw that day was not recoverable oil. It was not oil that…

Joey Yerkes:
Oh, my God.

BP Representative:
…something that came from Deepwater Horizon. Now… (dip under)

He says the experts determined that it wasn't oil, and that it wasn't something that originated with the spill. In another investigation, a Fish and Wildlife Commission officer determined that what some people thought was oil… 

BP Representative:
It was found to be organic. It was found to be algae-based material.

The BP rep is saying, what you think is oil, isn’t. It’s algae.

Joey Yerkes:
May I make just one comment real quick about these foam lines that we're seeing?

BP Representative:
Okay.

Joey Yerkes:
Because on Friday, I saw it with my own two eyes. The C-130 dropped to the deck at no more than a half a mile offshore and sprayed out of the back of that plane.

Joey Yerkes: 

So don't tell me that that stuff in that foam line is not oil. It is oil from the Horizon site, whether it's dispersed or whatever it is, weathered. I don't care what you want to call it. It's here. It's in our bays. And if you made tests of it, I want to see the results and so does everybody else in this room. 

Joey Yerkes:
You're going to stand there and tell me that oil that we're cleaning up is not oil now? When I work here every day of my life for the last 12 years in these local waters and I don't see that except for after – since the Deepwater Horizon event happened!? You're telling me that that just showed up, in algae form? [applause] All of a sudden it came out of nowhere? I don't think so.

Joey Yerkes:
That's oil. If you tested it, I want to see it. 

What I’m listening to in this meeting is not a case of two groups just talking past one another. These aren't misunderstandings. It’s also not a venting session. It's two fundamentally different versions of basic realities. 

These two groups agree on almost nothing about what was happening on the Emerald Coast in July 2010.  

Regardless, these clean up workers lost the fight; their role in the VOO program was over. And so was Joey Yerkes's. 

[Music transition]

Zooming out nationally, in the second half of 2010, BP, the Coast Guard, and the Obama Administration spoke with harmony. The message – was optimism. 

Thad Allan:
So the good news is, the new cap’s in place, the well is shut in for now. There’s no oil leaking. 

President Barack Obama:

Beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean. They are safe, and they're open for business. That's one of the reasons Michelle, Sasha, and I are here.

On August 14th, the White House released a photograph of President Obama swimming in the waters of Alligator Point, Florida with his daughter.  

President Barack Obama:
The governor and the mayors and others invited us down to enjoy the beach and the water, to let our fellow Americans know that they should come on down here - it is spectacular - not just to support the region, come down here because it's just a beautiful place to visit.

A clinical reading of what might have been going on here is that the loss of tourism dollars was determined to be more important than what were perceived as minimal safety risks. 

Throughout the spill, government agencies and BP are running tests on the seafood, the air, the water, and this data is analyzed by risk assessors. They evaluate danger, predict consequences, and establish risk using formulas. If the risk exceeds a certain level, conditions are unsafe, if risk is below a certain level, conditions are safe…enough.

I asked Joey what he thought about this tug of war between safety and economics. He just started shaking his head.  

Joey Yerkes:
I mean, it's just, it's not right. It's not right to sacrifice humans for tourist dollars. It's just not right. 

On September 19th, 2010, 153 days after the blowout, the wellhead was declared “effectively dead” by Admiral Thad Allan. The oil spill, in the literal sense, was over.  

But a tremendous tension remained between coastal residents and Unified Command.

BP, the Coast Guard, and the Obama Administration, began speaking in the past tense. They acknowledged that there was important work to be done in the Gulf going forward. But they were advancing towards drafting accident reports and post mortems. They spoke as though the Deepwater Horizon story was, if not ended, at least ending.

A lot of residents on the Gulf felt the Deepwater Horizon story was far from over. They wanted clarity on the oil, the dispersants, the long term effects of both. They wanted compensation for the damage done to the ecosystem. For them, the oil spill was a present tense issue, and they wanted the public to remain engaged.

But after five months of scrutiny, Unified Command may not have minded if the public’s attention moved on to something else.

And on that, they had the clear advantage over the coastal residents, because there’s always something else to move on to... 

[Music swells]  

…It was apparently pure detective work that led to last night’s news of the death of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of an American military team…

The US Ambassador to Libya and three other diplomats have been killed in protests in Benghazi. Religious extremists…

Consumer watchdogs are starting to lend their support to the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. At least a thousand people…

…last night’s shooting in Aurora, CO was identified by police as James Holmes. Throughout this morning we’ve heard eye witnesses describe a man who walked…

The BP oil spill mostly disappeared from national news for two full years. 

But then, the Obama Administration had one final story to tell. 

That’s after the break. We’ll be right back.

[Music: Thoughtful]

After the Deepwater Horizon sank, the deaths of the 11 crewmen on the rig were the focus of the story. But that was interrupted as it became clear that an unprecedented ecological disaster was just beginning. The habitats of protected species were being flooded with oil – images of pelicans, dolphins, turtles - covered in crude oil, dying - were broadcast far and wide.

[Music: cuts out]

Dan:
Before we started, you had one condition on doing this interview.

Keith Jones:
I did.

This is Keith Jones. His son, Gordon, died in the blowout. 

Dan:
What is that condition?

Keith Jones:
The condition I had was that I would get to tell your audience that BP pled guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter.

[Music ramps up]

Eric Holder:

BP has agreed to plead guilty to all 14 criminal charges, including responsibility for the deaths of 11 people, and the events that led to an unprecedented environmental catastrophe.

At the end of 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government had reached a settlement agreement with BP. Laying out a series of crimes that BP would be pleading guilty to. 

Eric Holder:
…11 counts of felony manslaughter…

Eric Holder:
…violations of the clean water and migratory bird treaty acts…

Eric Holder:
…one count of felony of obstruction of justice…

That single count of obstruction of justice stemmed from an inquiry by the US Congress - including Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey - into just how much oil was actually surging into the Gulf. 

Ed Markey:
BP has pled guilty to obstruction of Congress for lying to me about the amount of oil that was flowing out of the well… 

It turns out that when BP was telling congress only 5,000 barrels a day were spilling from the wellhead, their own internal data showed that number was upwards of 60,000.

Attorney General Eric Holder also made clear to the American people: the administration made good on holding BP financially accountable. 

Eric Holder:
The company has also agreed to pay four billion dollars in fines and in penalties. This marks both the largest single criminal fine, more than 1.25 billion dollars, and the largest total criminal resolution - four billion dollars - in the history of the United States.

[Music rings out]

Keith Jones:
I was in federal court when they did it. I objected to the sentence. I didn't think it was severe enough. 

In addition to pleading guilty to 14 criminal charges, thousands of other civil claims cost BP even more money. The spill ultimately cost the company somewhere in the ballpark of 70 billion dollars. If not more.

But BP pleading guilty to manslaughter didn’t quite make the impact Keith Jones expected. He’s on something of a personal mission to correct that.

Keith Jones:
BP has successfully suppressed that information. It was a news item not on the front page one day. And, and I, and I don't know how they do it. They're good at their job, I'll say that, because it was not in the public eye. So every chance I get to say it, I do. And the more people I get to say it to, then the more people know that BP pled guilty to eleven counts of manslaughter.

Dan:
What does that mean to you? What did they admit? 

Keith Jones:
It means that they were criminals. That, that it was, um, a very expensive series of mistakes that they made. All the mistakes were driven by wanting to save money. You know, it cost them billions of dollars, I get that. Nobody, however, paid the consequences quite as much as my son Gordon and the other 10 men who died because BP wanted to save a few bucks.

I wondered what life was like for Keith during this months-long ordeal to stop the leaking oil. Turns out, he was hard at work.  

Keith Jones:
What I was doing during that time was everything I could to try to get Congress to pass laws to amend the Death on the High Seas Act.

In some circumstances, if a death occurs on a vessel offshore, the Death on the High Seas Act limits the damages a victim's family is entitled to.

When Gordon Jones died on the Deepwater Horizon, his wife, Michelle, was pregnant. Their son, Maximilian, was born a few weeks later. After his grandson's birth, Keith was concerned that under the Death on the High Seas Act, Maximillian wouldn't be entitled to compensation for his father's death.

Keith thought this was unfair. So he went to Washington, D.C. and lobbied congress. He just kinda showed up.  

Keith Jones:
Usually you make an appointment, but it was the biggest issue in the United States of America for a pretty prolonged period, and they didn't want to be the guy, man or woman, who said they didn't have time for me. [laughs] They didn't want to be that person.

On May 27th, 2010, Keith gave a statement before Congress and pled his case.

Keith Jones (Testimony):
Please believe me, no amount of money will ever compensate us for Gordon's loss. We know that, but payment of damages by wrongdoers is the only means we have in this country to make things right. You must make certain they're exposed to pain in the only place they can feel it: their bank accounts. As a friend recently said, make them hurt where their heart would be if they had a heart.

His statement might have had an impact.

Because a bill to amend the Death on the High Seas Act passed the House of Representatives… but it would have to get through the Senate in order to become law. 

Keith Jones:
It's worth it to visit Washington and just walk down the halls of one of the house office buildings where all the congressmen have their offices and where their staffs have their offices and so forth. Better that you do that one first. Then go to a Senate office building where things are much quieter… 

In the Senate, Keith and his bill were suddenly up against a powerful force: logistics.

Keith Jones:
Senator Harry Reid was the leader of the Senate at the time, and our bill was ready to be put on the calendar, but there was no room for it. Senator Reid would've had to take a bill down that would affect millions of people.

The bill had been whittled down to a piece of legislation that only would have affected the families of those who died on Deepwater. No one else.  

Keith Jones:
I wasn't about to ask him to take one of those bills down so that this bill affecting 11 families, because in the end, it was limited strictly to the victims of the Deepwater Horizon. Congress does stuff like that.  

When I made the drive to Louisiana I had in the back of my head, “I’ve got to be sure to go to the spot that commemorates the men who died.” Pay respects.

I just assumed there would be some sort of memorial.

Dan:

[testing mic] Check one, check two. 

But when I got there, I realized there wasn’t a public memorial. At least there wasn’t anymore.

For two years, on a busy thoroughfare in New Orleans, a Deepwater Horizon memorial was installed. It was called “Eleven.” 11 life-sized figures, identical, standing together in a circle, all representing the rig workers who were killed.

The installation was never meant to be permanent. When they were taken down, the statues were purchased by a private collector. I really wanted to see them. And I managed to get myself access to the collection.

Dan:
Nice to meet you. 

Jennifer Odom:
Um, you want to hop in?

Dan:
Yeah, absolutely. 

Jennifer Odom:

Okay.

In St. Rose, about twenty miles outside of New Orleans, I met my guide for the day - Jennifer Odom. She works to curate and maintain the collection, and she’s an artist in her own right. 

Jennifer drove me through the outdoor collection. It was maybe four acres, full of sculptures. 

Dan:
I love this.

Jennifer Odom:
Um, that rhino?

Dan:
Yeah. It's like a rhino made out of a propane tank.

Jennifer Odom:
Yeah, but I wanted to show you. This is -

Dan:
Oh, there they are. Wow.

At the very end of the road were the 11 figures, 500 pounds each, and each constructed of about 2,000 steel discs. Welded together.    

Dan:
This is really striking.

As we approached the sculptures, Jennifer recalled the day they were taken down. 

Jennifer Odom:
And the neighbors, uh, just were, you know, and some of them were just so upset, asked “What, what do you think you're doing? You can't take that.” Or everyone came and had something to say about their experience with the sculpture and about what the sculpture was about. And one, one woman was even crying, and just taking it out of that site created so much tension, emotional tension.

In the private collection, they added plaques with the names of each of the men who died and placed them at the feet of the figures.  

Jennifer Odom:
Some of them are missing.

Dan:
Some of the plaques are missing? Was that from the hurricane? 

Jennifer Odom:
Yeah. The entire place was seriously damaged.

Jennifer mentioned that a storm had recently torn through the collection.

Dan:
I've spoken to, uh, Keith Jones. I wonder if his… Gordon was his son.

Jennifer Odom:
Where is Gordon's plaque? Maybe it's… 

Dan:
Yeah, it looks like Gordon's is one of the ones that's missing.

[Scene: fighter jet screams by, transitioning] 

[Music: swells and transitions] 

Dan:
Um, do you think that, uh, folks like your son are undervalued by society?

Keith Jones:
Sure. But that's easy to say. He was my son. Of course he was undervalued.

Dan:
Do you think rig workers are undervalued?

Keith Jones:
I think they're, ah, unappreciated, in that people go to the pump and never think about that. And I'm as guilty as, as anybody. I buy produce, and I never give a second thought to farm workers. I should I guess. We all should. I, I don't know of a, of a profession that we, or a field of employment that people get appreciated as much as they should. Maybe the people that do podcasts. [laughter]

Keith Jones is pragmatic. He doesn't condemn anyone for moving on from the Deepwater Horizon story. He gets it. People have their own lives, their own responsibilities, they have to move on. 

Moving on from major events is no one’s fault – it’s a human thing. We do our best, but it's inevitable. 

And I think those that fought to control the narrative of the Deepwater Horizon story benefited from that eventuality. The national public, myself included, moved on because we had to, and we only remembered the curated version of events we were meant to. 

Attention was diverted away from a different version of the Deepwater Horizon story. One that began, in plain sight, in parallel with everything you’ve heard so far. 

Decisions were made in the aftermath of the spill. These decisions had ramifications which didn’t become clear for years. And unlike the spilled oil, and the deaths of the 11 crewmen, no one has ever taken responsibility for the consequences of these decisions. Despite the fact that the victims of these consequences have been screaming for 13 years.

We'll be right back.

[Break]

Dan:
Um, so if you could just start by introducing yourself. I'm gonna re-situate this…

[Mic noise] 

Sheree Kerner:
Oh.

Dan:
Um, gimme one more level. Just gimme your name. 

Sheree Kerner:
Sheree Kerner. Sitting here with Dan Rather again. [laughs]

Sheree Kerner lived in Louisiana at the time of the spill. Still does.

Sheree Kerner:

I, um, started a technology company and pioneered all the e-services for, uh, most of the municipalities here in the state of Louisiana, sales tax and, um, state of Alabama sales tax as well.

Her husband, Frank Stuart, owned a civil engineering firm. He worked on the clean up, out on the water, and helped coordinate the VOO program.

Sheree Kerner:

Frank just jumped in there and from, almost from the get go, he was, um, up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week working down there. And he would come home and the kids and I would, um, would giggle because - this was really odd - he looked like an Oompa Loompa when he came home because he had this, uh, orange color to his skin. You know, it was an unusual, it wasn’t like he was like a regular suntan or a sunburn. There was just this orange color to him. 

Frank was surprised by how much he enjoyed working on the clean up. It was completely different from his desk job. 

Sheree Kerner: 

He said, “Sheree, we loved it.” He said, “We really had fun doing that. I know it was a horrible situation, but, you know, we, we made the best of it,” and it was just a different job experience and it was very rewarding. They really felt like they were doing something.

Dan:
Did you have a, uh, any sense of like, pride that he was doing this?

Sheree Kerner:
Mhm. 

Dan:

Yeah?

Sheree Kerner: 

Yeah, I did.

Dan:
Why is that?

Sheree Kerner:
Yeah, it was kind, it's like, you know, he's Superman, so, you know, he's got his cape on with his big “S” right there, you know, so he's gonna go save the, um, you know, the bayou. So, um, it was just a surprise when all of a sudden the plug was pulled, cuz it was like, “Wait, where’d the oil go?” [laughs] You know? And everybody, I mean, what can you do, you know?

Dan:
So many, many years passed then without you really paying this much mind?

Sheree Kerner:
We never thought about it again. 

Dan:
Never thought about it again. 

Sheree Kerner:
There wasn't any more, um, concern about the oil. 

Eight years passed. It was 2018. 

Sheree Kerner:
We took a little trip to Houston and, um, came back and he had a colonoscopy scheduled, so we went and did the colonoscopy, and after - it was uneventful - and then a couple hours later he started developing a fever. And, um, we just, you know, we figured, oh, obviously you're having a fever from the colonoscopy, which could be a consequence. Sometimes you get a little fever. And, um, I gave him Tylenol and then it kept coming back and I, I, I got a thermometer and the thermometer said something like 104.2 and I didn't believe it. So then I got the other thermometer that we had, and it 103.9 or whatever. And I, I thought something was wrong with both of them. 

Sheree Kerner:
And then he got up and went to work the next morning. So I figured, oh, okay. He's past that. Um, but he comes back for, uh, around lunchtime, and he's sick. So he calls the, um, the doctor. And unfortunately I let Frank talk to the doctor instead of me. I don't know what the hell is wrong with men, you know, men just don't, you know, they, they just don't, um, do the right thing when it comes to their health, you know, just dismiss it. They're tough or whatever. But, um, I’m looking at 'em and I say, “Frank, you gotta go to the hospital.” And he's like, “I'm not going to the hospital.” So then Sunday comes and um, you know, we've got the same situation, and I was so exasperated with him cuz I really felt like he really needed to deal with this and go to the hospital.

Sheree Kerner:
So I mentioned to him, you know, “You really need to go to the hospital, Frank.” And he said, um, he says, “You're not my doctor. I'm not going to the hospital.” I said, “Well, fine, get sepsis and die.” And I went down the stairs complaining to my mother-in-law, my, uh, my daughters. And they're like, “Why don't you just call the ambulance?” I said, “Yeah, if I call the ambulance, he's gonna chase 'em away cuz I called 'em, you know. But lo and behold, I don't know if I can say this, but lo and behold, I go upstairs and he called somebody with a penis. And that friend told him he needed to go to the hospital. So all of a sudden, he needs to go to the hospital now. Oh, okay. Well there we go. There's the thermometer there, you know? So I take him, they admit him because they said he's got some kind of rare infection. 

Dan:

Okay.

Sheree Kerner:

And at this point he stops eating. He hadn't even eaten, okay?

Dan:
Just too nauseous? Just didn't feel like it?

Sheree Kerner:
Yeah. And, um, over the next two weeks, they're testing him for all kinds of things. They, you know, constantly ruling this out and coming, you know, talking to me. And it's really, um, tough, you know, for a family member to have to be the one that actually processes all these doctors to kind of corral in the opinions. Cuz they all have, this one says it's this, this one says it's that, this one thinks it's that, you know. And you have to actually sit here and decide, “Which direction are we gonna go in?” 

The first hospital couldn't figure out what was wrong with Frank, so he was moved to a different hospital. 

Sheree Kerner:
He hadn't eaten since we went, since the day before he went in for his colonoscopy. He hadn't eaten. And they never, nobody seems to care about that. It's like, isn't somebody gonna think that he needs to eat at some point? So they end up putting a tube in his stomach. Then the doctor comes in and says that she figured out that he had, um, acute myeloid leukemia. 

[Music: Subtle]

Acute myeloid leukemia is a rare cancer that grows in bone marrow before spreading into the bloodstream.

Frank was moved again – to Tulane University, where he could be given more specialized care.   

Sheree Kerner:
And so, you know, we go to sleep and about seven o'clock, six o'clock in the morning, um, one of the doctors from this lead doctor's group comes in and wakes us both up - it's in the dark - and says, uh, “Mr. Stuart, I wanna verify you do have acute myeloid leukemia and the only path, um, to a cure with this is chemo, and you're too weak to take it. Okay?” And leaves [laughs], you know, and so we’re like dumbfounded. And, uh, it was a motivator for him, you know, because, uh, he had no intentions on dying. And, um, he started, um, you know, perking up and it's like, no, we, we need to make a good presentation to the, the doctor that's gonna make this call. You know? So, um, so I'm sitting him up and, um, you know, bathing him down and, you know, fixing his hair.

Sheree Kerner:
And, you know, he started, he shaved, he shaved where it was clean and I took a picture of that and, um, he’s smiling. And it had been a long time since he smiled, but it was that important to him to make a difference. And, um, and so the doctor comes in with her, uh, all the doctors, she comes in with the group and, uh, she asks me to leave. And, uh, so she talks to him and then comes out and, uh, I'm asking her, I'm [unintelligible], well, you know, she's like, “I can't talk to you. You're not the patient.” And I said, “Well, I have kids, all in different countries, and what do I do?” She said, “Well get 'em in now.” So I went in and, um, she had told me that Frank didn't want me to know what they had talked about, but then when I went in there, he’s totally deflated, you know, just, um, and he, and he tells me that, you know, that, “She said that I'm gonna die.” And, um, he was so depressed, you know, it's like he was just ready to just give up at that point. So I went looking for her down the hallway, waiting for her. Um, you know, she eventually surfaced and I, I was just so mad, you know, I was like, “Unless you know the day and the time my husband's going to die, don't you dare tell him something like that again. You took all of his motivation to live away, so you need to fix this and go in and tell him that you actually don't know so he can have a thread of hope.”

Sheree Kerner:
So she does. She goes back in there and it's just amazing how, what the mind does, you know, when you hear news. So when I went in, he goes, “Sheree, Sheree, I'm not gonna die right now. I mean, I could live for another year, or, you know, I–” and, and so he, you know, he was happy. He was a skeleton, but he was happy, you know. In his mind, you know, he's, he's gonna beat this. And, um, she kinda let that go on for a couple of days. And, um, I think we had asked to go on hospice.

Dan:
Can you explain to people what hospice is if they don’t know? 

Sheree Kerner:
Well, hospice is, um, is probably the kindest way somebody can die without having tubes in 'em. And they die in their house with their loved ones around 'em. But they give you all the drugs that you need to help 'em keep 'em comfortable, you know, chiefly, uh, morphine. But the first time we heard about it, we thought that, um, that, uh, we would still be able to try to continue to live.

Sheree Kerner:
But that's you, you don't qualify for hospice if that's your goal. Hospice is there for end-of-life care. But when we found that out, um, we tried to back, you know, pedal backwards on it, but she pushed back on us and she's, um, saying, “Well, you're going to die. That's what's gonna happen here. You can either die here or you can die at home.” And, um, you know, me and my, the three kids were, you know, fighting to just, “Well, we're staying. We’re gonna– ,” and then he just said, “Enough, enough,” you know. [stops, long pause]

Sheree Kerner:
So we wanted to come home.

[Sheree cries]

Sheree Kerner:
It's hard to relive the moments. [pause]

So the next day they sent us home and, um, we set the hospital bed up right here and put a projector TV together. And, you know, we were hoping we would have some time with him. But, um, every day he got a little worse to the point where, um, he could on, the only way he could communicate was with his eyebrow, his eyes would just stay open. And, um, he died five days later.

Dan:
Sorry.

Sheree Kerner:
Yeah. It just brings you back, you know, when you start, when you start seeing it in your head and recalling everything, you know, it feels like you're there.

In the weeks leading up to Frank Stuart's death, doctors asked questions of Sheree and Frank.

Sheree now believes they answered one of those questions incorrectly. 

Sheree Kerner:
When Frank fell ill and we rushed him to the hospital, he ends up having, I mean, I'm not kidding, it must be 50 different doctors. You know, every time a new doctor comes in the room, they start talking to you and they're asking you all the questions about your health. They all asked us, did you work around chemicals?

Both of us said no, never thinking that the BP oil spill counted as working around chemicals.

It could have been lifesaving to know that information because from the time he got abruptly ill to the time that he, um, died was about six weeks, and then he was too weak to do the chemo. But had we known in the early stage to tell them that, “Yeah, oh yeah, I worked on the BP oil spill.” Maybe, you know?

They obviously were asking us that question for a reason.

And we were telling all these doctors, “No, he didn't work around chemicals.”

In the BP oil spill story that was cemented in the public consciousness - the one I remembered, the one my father remembered, the one everyone I asked remembered - the loss of human life is limited to those who died on the rig the night of the blowout. They are the human casualties of the disaster.

But there are people on the Gulf who believe that the true human toll of the BP oil spill is much much larger.

[Credits]