WAFB Channel 9, Baton Rouge, LA |Admiral Thad Allen reflects on 100 day mark
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Admiral Thad AllenNEW ORLEANS, LA (WAFB) - The man in charge of the worst environmental disaster in American history talked exclusively in a one-on-one interview with 9NEWS on the 100th day of the Coastal Crisis.
On April 20th, Admiral Thad Allen was the top man at the U.S. Coast Guard, responding to fire calls from the doomed Deepwater Horizon oil rig. He reflected on the first 100 days, following a press briefing to the media.
"We've made a lot of progress. This event has evolved and we've adapted to it and I think we're at a point now on the verge of controlling this well," Allen said.
Though his mission is recovery, Allen says he will never forget what happened, and the 11 men who lost their lives. One of those men was Gordon Jones, of Baton Rouge.
"I was the commandant of the Coast Guard on the 20th of April and I received the call an hour and a half after the explosion and we were involved from the start with the search and rescue and evacuation of the wounded and search for those folks. It was a tragic loss of 11 people. I had the opportunity with President Obama to actually meet with the families at the White House a while back and it's kind of stunning when you talk to them. This is a very catastrophic thing to these families," he said.
Though Allen oversees the entire response across the nation, we talked about local leaders and their criticisms of him and the President. One of the most vocal critics is Governor Bobby Jindal.
"I worked with him (Jindal) when he was in Congress during Hurricane Katrina. I've worked with your local leaders before. There's a passion in this state that's probably unequal to anywhere else in the country and I understand that. I would expect them to do what they need to do for their constituents, and at the same time, I'm the National Incident Commander and we have choices to make and operations to conduct," he said.
To hear more from Incident Commander Allen, you can watch the full interview on this page.
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