Exxon Valdez spill 'broke a lot of people'
Before the BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico, America's worst offshore oil leak was the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
Twenty-one years later, the BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani visited the fishing town of Cordova to see how it was recovering.
While there he went to the bar of the Alaskan Hotel and met with former fishermen Gene McBride and Leroy Gilkinson. They shared their memories of the time and their feelings about the current disaster.
Watch Rajesh Mirchandani's full report tonight on the BBC News at Ten.