Deepwater Horizon widow asks: how do I tell my children their father is dead?

[n2doc]

Natalie Roshto's testimony in Louisiana before congressional committee brings home human cost of oil rig disaster


Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 June 2010 23.10 BST

They met when they were 15-years-old. By the age of 18, they had a baby on the way, and Shane Roshto took a job on an offshore oil rig, thinking that would provide them with a better life. At 22, he was one of the missing in the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig. His wife Natalie said: "My wonderful love story has come to an end."

Her testimony, given in Louisiana before a visiting congressional committee today, brought raw emotion and a human element to the often technical discussion of blowout preventers and well control during the extensive hearings into the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that has devastated the Gulf of Mexico.

Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, was also among the 11 missing, presumed dead, from the sunken rig. Both Kemp, whose widow Courtney also testified today, and Roshto worked for Transocean, the rig's operator and owner.

In the torrent of news since the explosion about fouled beaches and oil-coated pelicans, the families of the dead, all from southern states, have occasionally complained that their loss is overlooked. Not today, as the two women, wearing blue ribbons on their lapels, told visibly moved members of Congress of the toll on their young families.

"I never thought I'd go home to a bright-eyed three-year-old and face the fact that his dad, my husband, would never come home," said Roshto. The couple's son, Blaine is three. She said he was the mirror image of a father he is too young to remember. Kemp left two daughters: Kaylee, three, and Maddison, four months. "Our girls will only know what a wonderful father they had by the stories we tell them," his widow said.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/07/deepwater-horizon-explosion-widow-family

[Bluzmann57]

1. Glad someone is remembering the 11 dead men

Sometimes it seems that these men have become an after thought and that is sad. BP execs should be prosecuted for murder.

[Oceansaway]

2. K&R...n/t

[Mari333]

3. I had to do it. its hell. the kids are scarred for life.