Mt. Redoubt eruption delays removal of 6 million gallons of oil which threatens to turn Cook Inlet into the latest Alaskan ecological disaster!

Redoubt volcano exploded Saturday morning with its biggest eruption yet, spewing ash 50,000 feet high and unleashing a flash flood through the Drift River to the oil terminal, where 11 workers were forced to hole up in a "safe haven."

Flood waters lapped over a power generator, forcing at least a two-day delay in plans to offload millions of gallons of oil from the terminal, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

There are a lot of "WHY"questions here.

Why did Chevron believe that building an oil tank farm at the bottom of an active volcano was a good idea?

Why did they not immediately move it when the first rumblings started coming from Mt. Redoubt months ago?

And why did nobody heed the words of AKMuckraker when she first wrote about this potential disaster back in February?

Well before ANYBODY, outside of the oil company themselves I assume, had any idea that this potential crisis was even a possibility, AKM was ringing the alarm bell. She not only wrote a comprehensive post on Mudflats, she also posted another one on the Huffington Post.

So while Mike Doogan was trying to find evidence to reveal the identity of my good friend, she was valiantly trying to head off a catastrophe that could potentially kill millions of fish, destroy the livelihood of thousands of Alaska residents, and spoil one of the most beautiful places in Alaska.

And if only the MSM could have picked this story up way back in February when AKM first raised the alarm, perhaps that would have forced the oil workers to remove this oil earlier, before it became so difficult and dangerous. But it took until just recently for the "real"media to pick up on this story. It took multiple eruptions for the "real" media to discover a problem that my friend understood existed months ago.

And what to explain such an incredible lack of concern? Did the "real" local news outlets see the same evidence that AKM saw and reach a different conclusion? Did they bother to research the story at all? Or did their reflexive dismissal of a story written by a mere "anonymous blogger" prejudice them against taking it seriously?

This also reminds me of how slow the "real" local news media were to pick up the Emmonak story, even after almost every single progressive blogger had written extensively about it.

It is time that the Alaska media and others stated to take the bloggers much more seriously. We do not call ourselves journalists but that does not mean we cannot write important newsworthy posts.

I just cannot help but worry that this tank farm situation is going to become an ecological nightmare, and it could have been avoided so easily. If only somebody would have paid attention to the words of an "anonymous blogger".