Lessons From A Crisis
Feature Story
By Molly Galvin
Last update April, 20 2020
On the 10th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, NAS President Marcia McNutt reflects on how science helped solve the crisis, and its lessons for the COVID-19 pandemic
By Molly Galvin
One of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history was set in motion 10 years ago with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion was triggered a mile below the ocean's surface, when BP's exploratory Macondo well had blown. By the time the well was capped 87 days later, an estimated 4 million barrels of oil had gushed into the Gulf.
On the 10th anniversary of that disaster, which killed 11 workers and wreaked environmental havoc, the nation and the world are now wholly consumed by another emergency – the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the two crises are very different in size, scope, and scale, there are some important parallels, says National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt.
As the director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 2010, McNutt played a pivotal role in leading the federal response to Deepwater Horizon. She temporarily relocated to Houston for three months, leading a team of government scientists who worked under intense pressure alongside industry researchers -- often around the clock, and under near constant scrutiny from the national media -- to develop science-based solutions to an unprecedented disaster.
“What’s common to almost every disaster is that it starts out with you not really grasping the true magnitude,” she says. “With COVID-19 it started out as ‘[people are getting a mysterious illness] in China.’ With Deepwater Horizon it started out as ‘an oil rig is on fire.’ And then it just expands and explodes into these all-encompassing crises. In both cases – the Deepwater Horizon disaster and this current pandemic, you’re dealing with never-before-seen problems.”
Building Trust and Balancing Interests
For policymakers and experts on the front lines of any crisis, one of the most difficult issues they encounter is trying to make decisions when there are so many unknowns, and there is little information or data available. What’s more, disasters don’t recognize boundaries – whether they are geographic, political, or disciplinary.
“In the case of Deepwater Horizon, it was a regional disaster rather than a global disaster. And not as many lives were on the line, but the consequences for the environment and for the long-term recovery of the fishing industry, tourism industry, and the oil industry were significant.”
Although there were competing interests to balance, all of the entities involved – including federal and state officials, industry executives, environmental advocates, and researchers were united by a common goal. “Everybody wanted this to go away as quickly as possible. And everyone understood it was also a very complex problem.” Keeping all of the stakeholders regularly informed is key to building trust and moving forward, says McNutt. “We’ve already seen some of the breakdowns in [the COVID-19 response] when communication hasn’t been clear and hasn’t been consistent, and the problems that causes.”
Also essential to finding solutions is bringing together diverse perspectives and multidimensional talent and expertise. Before government scientists got more involved, for instance, BP had tried a number of failed solutions, such as employing a containment dome to cap the well, and “top kill,” a technique that involves forcing heavy mud into the well to shut down the oil flow.
“I think that was the most difficult juncture,” says McNutt. “There was this call from many in the federal government that BP should move aside, and that the government should take over attempts to control the well. But the government scientists argued that without BP’s expertise in well intervention, there really was no hope to try to control this. That viewpoint then won the day, and we started working as a team with BP. That led to the successful containment and finally the capping stack that stopped the oil release.”
Science in Real Time
As the response to the Deepwater Horizon crisis unfolded, McNutt recognized that three fundamentally different kinds of science were at work – all of which could and should factor into responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the immediate, day-to-day issues involved in dealing with the disaster, decision-makers need “actionable science” that provides a clear path forward. “We developed a method of calling in experts, having them deliver an answer in 24 hours, and peer reviewing it overnight so we could deliver it to decision leaders,” says McNutt.
Indeed, this model has informed the work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s standing committee on infectious diseases, which is helping to inform the government’s response to COVID-19. The standing committee has delivered Rapid Expert Consultations on a number of issues central to the pandemic, such as crisis standards of care, the seasonality of the virus, and the possibility of bioaerosol spread.
“Opportunistic science” isn’t going to necessarily help stop the crisis, but the data and information gathered is critical to informing future disaster response efforts. During the pandemic, this would involve capturing and learning from the results of the unintended, real-time experiments that are playing out around the country and around the world – for instance, as policymakers employ varying degrees of social distancing, business and school closings, and other measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Then there is scenario-based “strategic science,” which was perhaps the biggest innovation during the Deepwater Horizon crisis, according to McNutt. “If we see a certain chain of consequences happening – such as the poisoning of seafood – [these researchers were looking at] what kind of interventions would limit the damages to people and the economy. What are the cascading effects?” In the current pandemic, long-term strategic science could examine such issues as how to make supply chains more robust, or the best opportunities to “build back better” once the nation emerges from the pandemic.
Protecting Lives and the Economy
Human impact should always be front and center in developing solutions to any crisis, says McNutt. “One of the big challenges in the Gulf spill was understanding that, from a human standpoint, people were going to suffer if you didn’t prioritize the environmental impacts. But if you look at where all the power was, it was on the side of reopening the Gulf to the oil industry as quickly as possible,” McNutt says.
“So if you look at what is happening today, [we must ask] ‘What interventions do we propose to save human lives, especially when the most vulnerable in our society are the ones who are likely to have the least power and the least voice in our economy? Those who are the most vulnerable to disaster are not the ones who are going to have the most say in what is done.”
[The National Academies Gulf Research Program, formed in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, will be commemorating the anniversary during a webinar on Tuesday, April 28. Click here for more information.]
