But while the region's ecosystem may have escaped disaster, the explosion and fire have drawn new attention to the environmental record of the terminal itself, which, according to environmentalists and court documents, has been spotty.
In a regular weekly briefing today, Admiral Gehman said that at this point in the investigation of the other shuttle disaster, the explosion of the Challenger 17 years ago, "they already knew what did it".
Next week marks the first anniversary of an environmental disaster — the explosion at BP's Macondo oil well that killed 11 workers, sank the drilling rig, sent 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and threw thousands of people out of work.
As the new movie revisits many people seen in "Levees," who are still grappling with the fallout from Katrina, they are dealt a second disaster: the explosion of a BP drilling rig that flooded the Gulf Coast with oil — and sent Mr. Lee and his team scrambling to rework what they thought was a finished film.
Three years later the Deepwater Horizon disaster, an explosion that led to the leakage of millions of gallons of oil off America's Gulf coast, suggested that there might have been more serious reasons than his private sexual preferences to question Lord Browne's tenure at BP.
The blast at Upper Big Branch comes four years after a pair of other West Virginia mine disasters — an explosion that killed 12 miners at the Sago mine and a fire that killed two at the Aracoma Alma coal mine.
Pike River, which has been operating for two years, is located not far from the site of one of New Zealand's worst underground disasters, an explosion that killed 19 people at the Strongman Mine in 1967.
During this disaster, hydrogen explosions occurred and made the situation more serious.
As anchorman and reporter, Mr. Cronkite described wars, natural disasters, nuclear explosions, social upheavals and space flights, from Alan Shepard's 15-minute ride to lunar landings.
Typhoid Mary was not the island's only connection to infamy: the General Slocum disaster, the deadly explosion of a steamer in 1904, unfolded just off the island.
