Their lives are lost and the well they tended cannot soon be fixed. More lives will be lost, suddenly or slowly, as this disaster unfolds. This disaster, like all disasters, has a story, and this story has a villain, as they often do. When this rig was built, and the sections of pipe sent down into the waters that dwarfed them, the builders knew the waters at the bottom were cold and under enormous pressure and the pipe could break, indeed would break, sooner or later. Just like the mortgage pools on Wall Street, this was a bet on the waters of the Gulf and the pipe they drove into the sea's floor. And just like on Wall Street, they didn't hedge their bet, because they saved the money on a remote shut-off switch that is required by nearly every other nation with off-shore drilling, which would have shut off the oil. Even, Brazil, that has cut-down the rain forest apace, requires this switch.

            The builders lost the bet, and the oil riggers' lives were lost. Their lives were lost when natural gas, that resides in pockets held in place by the crude oil beneath the sea floor, found its way to that tiny pipe, and, speeding its way to the surface as only such gas can, and expanding so fast it became colder than ice, and meeting an open flame, or a tiny spark, burst into flame. That flame became a fireball that consumed the men whose lives were lost. The helmsman, in the midst of this fireball, gave way to reflex and the reflex moved the platform. The pipe, strained and weakened, finally snapped beneath it. Then the oil followed, but there was no valve to check its flow, and it is still flowing out, toward our beaches, our wetlands, our rivers and our homes. All of this destruction for lack of a switch, and the builders left off the switch to save  . . . money. Money that had to save at the insistence of their investors and their lenders that lent the money that kept them in business, without which they would fold because they have borrowed so much more money than they can ever pay back, loans that make the lenders a fortune.  

           The villain in the story is, once again, greed, that made the builders of the rig scrimp on a remote control switch required almost everywhere else so that they bet three metal pipes would hold up against the entire Gulf. To save money, they bet our oceans, our fisheries, and our homes. The bet was lost. And, once again, we pay for it.