Woodward, Okla. — I can’t wait to hear what kind of conspiracy theories emerge out of the gulf oil tragedy.

You know those stories are coming, just as they have with many other major tragedies in American history.

With the way most people (at least those interviewed on television news media) seem to look at it, BP has the solution but for some reason isn’t using it.

Over and over again I’ve heard interviews with “the man on the street,” who whines “Why aren’t they doing any thing to fix it? ” as if it was a leak in the kitchen sink rather than a leak in the ocean floor a mile below sea level.  They ask “Why isn’t it fixed yet?” as if all it would take is a few hundred rolls of duct tape.  (Wait, has anyone tried that yet?)

So it only follows that somebody’s going to take it one step further and answer those questions with “I’ll tell you why it isn’t fixed yet, because it’s a government conspiracy.  The American government is allowing the oil to continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico to distract American citizens from some cover-up.”

My guess is that scientists have found a colony of mermaids, which they wanted to remove from the ocean for study, so they allowed millions of gallons of oil to spew into the gulf so that they could then “rescue” the mermaids alongside all the oil-slicked animals.

I know you’re probably thinking this sounds ridiculous.  You would be right.  But, to me, this doesn’t sound any more ridiculous than all the people who seem to think that BP is somehow hiding the answer to fixing the leak.

Nothing like this has ever occurred before, yet for some reason people seem to think there should be some immediate answer.

I hate to say it, but things don’t work that way.

Take the Apollo 1 mission, in which 3 astronauts were killed in a fire during a pre-launch test.  A number of problems were eventually determined to have led to the fatal outcome, including the original design of an inward-opening hatch that for various reasons took too long to open.  According to information on NASA’s website about the Apollo 1 tragedy, it took around a year and a half to make changes to the command module design, including a new outward-opening hatch, to see that another such tragedy would never occur.

It took 18 months for NASA to find a solution.  In comparison, it has only been a little more than 2 months since the gulf oil spill began.

While there is no doubt that this is a terrible tragedy, and perhaps a preventable one, the time for preventative measures in this case is long gone.  BP officials are faced with a whole new problem and unfortunately, sadly and tragically, it is going to take time to find a solution.

I’m not defending BP or anyone, but think American citizens need to be more realistic.  I know we would all like to find an easy answer, but another lesson we all should have learned is that an easy answer is often the wrong answer.

Rowynn Ricks is the Assistant Editor for The News.  She can be reached for comment at reporter1@woodwardnews.net.