The morning of March 19th 1849, the news of an oil spill in the coast of Alaska spread through the United States like a wild fire. The damage caused by this horrific accident has said to be unfixable. This resulted in the spill of 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil. The vessel was going a route that was outside of the normal lanes in order to avoid ice. In the six hours of grounding, the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.9 million gallons of its 53 million gallon cargo of Prudhoe Bay Crude, 8 out of the 11 tanks on board were damaged. As a result, the event affected more than 1,100 miles of non-continuous coastline was damaged.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill had a lot of negative effects. The oil spill was a kind of domino affect, it had a terrible impact o the environment, which led to a economic downfall, which consequently affected social norms. The goal of this paper is to look at the
…show more content…
This is also an organizational problem which highly escalated the spill because if exxon had thought ahead and had a good plan, in the case of an oil spill, they would have been able to maintain the spill better no resulting in so much damage.
The oil spill effected the whole nation, but mostly the people in Alaska. All aspects of Alaskan life were shaken, including economic, cultural and social. Alaska is known for its great quality and quantity of fish. The oil spill took a huge tool on alaskas fishing industry, forcing many Alaskan citizens which depended on the fish for their income to be pressured into some kind of a depression.
In particular, the oil spill had affected trade of Alaska, particularly the industry of fishing in the region. According to surverys taken fishermen of Alaska have lost over three quarters of a billion. This is due to the oil spill because it ruined the Alaskan salmon in the region. The total damage done to the ecosystem and fish lost weighed in around six hundred million dollars (Fernando,