It’s heartbreaking to see the photos of oil-soaked pelicans whose natural habitat is being spoiled by some of the millions of gallons of oil drifting toward the Mississippi River delta.

They are only one indicator of the incalculable ecological and economic damage in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet, more than a month after an explosion that destroyed an offshore drilling rig and killed 11 people, Americans still are waiting for someone — anyone — to stem the flow of oil into the gulf.

BP owned the rig and needs to be held accountable for what happened, but a corrupt federal regulation system also shares in the blame. At this point, however, Americans are less worried about whom they should blame than in putting a stop to the growing environmental disaster in the Gulf.

Federal officials are hesitant to take over the situation from BP, perhaps because they also don’t know what to do to cap the spewing oil well, but they can’t simply wait and watch BP struggle. If they don’t know what to do, they need to assemble a team of experts from around the country or around the world that may be able to help.

There certainly are many lessons to be learned from this shameful incident, but it’s frustrating to see so much effort going into assessing the failures that led up to the disaster when it seems that 100 percent of everyone’s energies should be directed to figuring out a way to address the current emergency.

There will be time later to look at a Department of Interior report released Tuesday that detailed the sports tickets, lunches and other gifts that federal regulators accepted from the oil and gas companies they were assigned to monitor. We can focus later on the Minerals Management Service inspector who admitted using crystal methamphetamine and perhaps being under its lingering effect when he was at work the next day. There is plenty of time to look at the unethical swamp created by what Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called “the cozy relationship between some elements of the MMS and the oil and gas industry.”

What needs to happen right now is for the Interior Department, the U.S. military, university scientists and anyone else who might be of help to put their heads together and try to come up with a way to stop the devastating flow of oil.

A standard problem-solving exercise asks people what they would do if they returned home to find a broken pipe was flooding their house. Some people would pick up a mop. Some would call a plumber. Some, but not all, would recognize that the first step is to get to a master valve and turn off the darned water to keep the situation from getting any worse.

BP and its contractors certainly should be made to pay for the mess they have made, but the first job is to figure out a way to stop the flow of oil.