It’s not as if the monstrous oil spill hovering off the Gulf Coast isn’t tragic enough. Eleven lives were lost in the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig. The ensuing spill has threatened thousands of miles of coastline and wetlands. The fishing and tourism industries stand to take quite a blow. Marine life has been barraged with crude and the toxic chemicals meant to disperse it.

But recently, in addition to all this injury, there’s been some hint of insult, as well. From the initial underestimations of the oil leak to the slow and ineffectual response to the outdated cleanup methods, there’s a sense that we should be able to expect more competency when disasters like this strike.

While that might seem like a logical expectation—especially in light of the continuing impacts of oil spills like the Exxon Valdez, the Selendang Ayu, and others—it’s rarely the case with low-probability, high-consequence hazards, experts say.

“We deal with them by ignoring them until they happen, and then overreacting,” John Harrald, a professor at George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, told Slate. “We tend to regulate for that very specific event.”

Indeed, if you look at the “vanishingly small” possibility of a situation like the Deepwater spill occurring from an actuarial viewpoint, elaborate response plans and preventative equipment seem “draconian,” according to Slate. And that’s the stance that’s been taken by those charged with addressing the spill, as well.

“We're breaking new ground here. It's hard to write a plan for a catastrophic event that has no precedent, which is what this was,” Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen is quoted as saying in a Portland Press Herald defending the company against not writing a response plan for “what could never be in a plan, what you couldn't anticipate.”

But, in fact, BP, the company that leased the Deepwater Horizon, did anticipate just such a disaster and thought they could handle it, according to the Herald. BP submitted exploration plans expressing confidence that it could respond to the “’worst-case spill scenario,’ which it defines in a chart as a ‘volume uncontrolled blowout’ of 300,000 gallons a day,” the paper stated.

The well is now estimated to leak 5,000 barrels, or more than 200,000 gallons, per day. Although responders have attempted to quell the flow of oil with dispersants, burn the surface oil, and block it with miles of absorbent boom, weather and other factors have thwarted any efforts to mitigate the damage.

Perhaps more troubling than BP’s misplaced hubris, though, are similar misguided assessments by the Minerals Management Service—the U.S. Department of the Interior arm that regulates drilling.

According to a Washington Post article, the service estimated that the Deepwater Horizon was unlikely to generate a spill of more than 5,000 barrels and that oil would likely never reach shore. On the basis of the MMS assessments for the platfrom and the Gulf in general, BP was given a waiver—one of 250 to 400 issued each year—that exempted it from completing a detailed environmental impact study. Without it, BP could operate the drilling operation on its own terms, according to the article.

Although comments by survivors of the Exxon Valdez spill—the most recent spill of this magnitude—indicate they expect much of the same treatment they endured to continue in the Gulf, there is a chance the immensity of the disaster will spur change if its handled right, Harrald said.

The best responses to unlikely events take a holistic look at the problem, he told Slate. “[Rare events] raise opportunities to look at whole systems and get the political will and public support to do something about it.”