The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the biggest marine oil spill in history. The incident started on April 20, 2010 after a British Petroleum oil rig exploded and sank. An estimated 780 million litres of oil gushed from the seafloor before the spill was contained in September 2010. WCMRC sent 13 staff and many more contractors to help.
The Americans had the equipment, but they needed trained experts to plan and execute the response. The WCMRC team was spread across 18 staging areas in four states on the Gulf of Mexico. Each staging area served as a hub for about 1,000 people working on the spill response effort. WCMRC’s team was quickly identified by the Incident Command as being experienced, well-trained and highly-skilled in response, and team members were elevated to management roles, including supervisors, auditors, instructors and other roles.