US News

New look at Gulf oil spill as cleanup continues

The flames were so hot they melted paint off nearby rescue ships.

There was nothing the fleet of firefighting Coast Guard cutters could do as the blaze — fueled by some 700,000 tons of diesel stored onboard — consumed the mammoth Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana.

These recently released photos — taken the morning after a methane gas bubble ripped through 5,000 feet of piping and exploded on the rig — shows the platform on the verge of capsizing.

Columns of black smoke were visible for miles.

PHOTOS: GULF OF MEXICO OIL SPILL

A day later, on April 22, the $365 million rig sank 5,000 feet and came to rest on the seabed next to the Mississippi Canyon 252 oil well that has been spewing at least 210,000 gallons of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

Amazingly, 115 of the 126-crew members were able to flee the 450-by-200-foot rig.

The 11 who didn’t make it never had a chance, survivors said, recalling that the inferno engulfed the rig in five minutes.

BP, which was renting the platform for $450,000 a day from Transocean, is now responsible for cleaning up the mess that threatens to become the worst environmental disaster in the United States.

President Obama yesterday blasted oil-industry executives over their “ridiculous spectacle” of finger-pointing.

Obama said his tough tone reflected the “anger and frustration” he shared with many Americans.

“You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else,” he said. “The American people cannot have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn’t.”

“There’s enough blame to go around, and all parties should be willing to accept it,” he said, including the “cozy relationship” federal regulators have with the industry.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf, BP engineers were waiting to see whether their latest plan to stop the flow — essentially a long straw to siphon the gushing oil into a tanker — had worked.

Close to 5 million gallons of crude is estimated to have flowed into the Gulf, and there have been reports of sheens and tar balls washing ashore in Louisiana and Mississippi.

In encouraging news, the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen, said the slick had broken up, which could mean it will be less catastrophic that originally thought.

“The character of the slick has changed somewhat, it disaggregated into smaller patches of oil,” he said. “It’s not a monolithic spill.”

chuck.bennett@nypost.com