Michael Tabb, 10, and his sister Kathleen Tabb, 8, of Meridian, Miss., play in the sand as crews clean up tar along Pensacola Beach, Fla., Friday, June 4, 2010. Waves of gooey tar blobs were washing ashore in growing numbers on the white sand of the Florida Panhandle Friday as a slick from the BP spill drifted closer to shore.…
PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. – Oil poured out of a cap that robots adjusted over the gusher in the Gulf, though some was being collected, as the slow-motion catastrophe spread deeper into the marshes and beaches of four states along the coast.
Heartbreaking: A Gulf Coast Dolphin who perished from the oil spill
The spreading slick arrived with the tide on the Florida Panhandle's white sands Friday as BP continued its desperate and untested bid to arrest what is already the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. "Progress is being made, but we need to caution against overoptimism," said Coast Guard Adm.
Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis. Early Friday, he guessed that the cap was collecting 42,000 gallons a day — less than one-tenth of the amount leaking from the well. Later, BP said in a tweet that since it was installed Thursday night, it had collected about 76,000 gallons.
The widening scope of the slow-motion disaster deepened the anger and despair just as
President Barack Obama arrived for his third visit to the stricken Gulf Coast. "This has been a disaster for this region, and people are understandably frightened and concerned about what the next few months and the next few years may hold," Obama said after a briefing with the Coast Guard's Allen and the governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama. On his trip to the Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast, his motorcade passed a building that had been adorned with his portrait reminiscent of posters of him during his presidential campaign. Instead of "hope" or "change," the words "what now?" were on his forehead.
The oil has reached the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has turned marshlands into death zones for wildlife and stained beaches rust and crimson. Some said it brought to mind the plagues and punishments of the Bible. "In Revelations it says the water will turn to blood," said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. "That's what it looks like out here — like the Gulf is bleeding. This is going to choke the life out of everything." He added: "It makes me want to cry."
Six weeks after the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers, the well has leaked somewhere between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates. The mayor of Grand Isle, La., David Camardelle, choked up as he told the president of staying up nights worrying. "We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," Camardelle said. "I'm trying to keep Grand Isle alive."
A device resembling an upside-down funnel was lowered over the blown-out well a mile beneath the sea to try to capture most of the oil and direct it to a ship on the surface. But crude continued to escape into the Gulf early Saturday through vents designed to prevent ice crystals from clogging the cap. Engineers hoped to close several vents. One unanswered question was whether the cap fit snugly. BP sheared off the well pipe before installing the cap but was unable to make a smooth cut.
As the operation went on at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the effect of the BP spill was increasingly evident.
Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures. David Lucas of Jonesville, La., and a group of friends abruptly cut their visit short after wading into oily water. "It was sticky brown globs out there," Lucas said after he and the others cleaned their feet and left.
Health officials said that people should stay away from the mess but that swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tarball is no reason for alarm. Escambia County Commission Chairman Grover Robinson said there are no plans to close the beach. "For the most part if you went and walked on the sand that was not right there on the shoreline, you were in no danger of engaging tar balls," he said Friday.
At Gulf Shores, Ala., a slick of oil hundreds of yard long washed ashore at a state park, coating the white sand with thick, reddish goo. A squad of cleanup workers bagged up the oil, but more washed in before they could remove the debris from the first run. Rebecca Thomasson of Knoxville, Tenn., watched as drops of oil turned the surf brown and collected at the waterline, smearing the beach with big, thick globs. "This makes me sick," said Thomasson, her legs and feet smeared with brown streaks of crude.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said he's frustrated with the Coast Guard's response on the state's coast and will consider closing the beaches if the oil becomes a public health threat. When Obama arrived in Louisiana, he indicated he felt the frustration locally and from the rest of the country.
"This has been a disaster for this region, and people are understandably frightened and concerned about what the next few months and the next few years may hold," Obama said after a briefing with the Coast Guard's Allen and the governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama.
Before the visit, a Grand Isle man didn't hold back. "He ain't much of a leader," Eugene Ryman Jr. said of Obama. "The beach you can clean up. The marsh you can't. Where's the leadership? I want to hear what's being done. We're going to lose everything."
Meanwhile, BP's Hayward assured investors that the company "considerable firepower" to cope with the severe costs. Hayward and other senior BP executives struck a penitent note in their first comprehensive update to shareholders since the oil rig explosion. "We will meet our obligations both as a responsible company and also as a necessary step to rebuilding trust in BP as a long-term member of the business communities in the U.S. and around the world," said BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. Frank Basson has a comfortable monopoly along the main drag in Grand Isle. He owns a restaurant, souvenir shop and daiquiri spot. Business plummeted once oil washed up on the shores, but he isn't going anywhere. He came back after Hurricane Katrina, and if he has to close his doors, he figures he'll find a new venture. But he worries about the greater community. "BP has to take care of us," he said.
By MELISSA NELSON and HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writers Melissa Nelson And Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AgTV1O7tm9yhCmZoFkiB_Mis0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNpbHQxOGZjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNjA0L3VzX29iYW1hX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMQRwb3MDNgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDcmVsYXRlZA--
Turned into unrecognisable monsters by the oil: Sickening new images of the helpless wildlife dying in the muck of the BP spill
By Mail Foreign Service
The bird struggles out of the sludge, fighting for air, oil dripping from its wings. It could be an image from a grisly sci-fi movie. But it is not. This bird is a shocking illustration of the catastrophic impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on local wildlife.
The pelican - the official bird of Louisiana - was one of a number that were saved off the coast of the state. A brown pelican is seen on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast
Horror: A sea bird is unrecognisable as it fights to free itself from oil at East Grand Terre Island beach, Louisiana
They were barely able to walk or get out of the sea near East Grand Terre island, where officials found around 35 of the birds. They were treated with detergents to wash off the oil. Many more animals have not been so lucky. More than 400 dead birds have so far been recovered. Images such as this will only fuel anger towards BP as the spill enters its 46th day and the company struggles to stem the flow of oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well.
Victim: A dead bird lies on its back as a torrent of sludge amid the tide carries it to shore. Suffering: The treacle-like sludge is hard to clean off and many birds are choking to death on it
Previously, photographs of wildlife coated in an oily sheen were as bad as it got. But now the animals are drowning in the muck, as thick and sticky as treacle, and much, much harder to clean up.
Crude oil has been pouring unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico at up to 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons) a day since an explosion on April 20 that demolished a BP-contracted drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 crewmen. It unleashed an environmental disaster of epic proportions. The spill is now the worst in U.S. history - worse than the Exxon Valdez spill - and there is no end in sight.
U.S. President Barack Obama has now gone to Louisiana for a third time in an attempt to deal with the oil spill. He had previously been criticised for not prioritising the situation in Louisiana, with Kirby Goidel, a political scientist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, saying: 'There's a feeling down here that this is not a top priority for him, that he's reacting to events rather than trying to control events.'
The Blame Game:
'Furious' Obama blasts BP again as Tony Hayward gets set to shell out billions to investors
'Those morons don't know what they're doing': James Cameron's view after BP rejected his help on oil spill
Sarah Palin: BP oil spill is the fault of environmentalists who wouldn't let companies drill on land
After landing at the New Orleans airport Obama headed into a briefing at an airport hangar with Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the federal official leading the response to the spill, and other officials. He then planned to make a speech and drive to Grand Isle, a barrier town affected by the spill, to meet with residents.
Death zone: An eagle flies over a vast brown area of the oil spill where so many other birds have perished
Vast: A ship deploying an oil float shows the scale of the disaster as the spillage spreads for miles around
BP has failed in repeated attempts to stop the leak, and it has now spread from Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi to lap at the shores of Florida's white beaches. Government forecasters said part of the far-flung oil sheen had crept within six miles of Florida's Gulf Coast and could reach the white, sandy shores in days.
Experts also fear it could hit the U.S. coast in just weeks. Underwater slicks are caught up in a Gulf current called the Loop Current, set to carry the oil around the Florida Panhandle and out into the open Atlantic.
Sign of anger: A placard beside a road in Venice, Louisiana reveals the locals fury over the disaster
Symbolic: Crosses with the names of fish and activities that have been lost fill a yard in Grand Isle, Louisiana
The moving danger: A computer-generated model of how the oil could spread into the Atlantic Ocean
The U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research projected that the oil slick would be driven by wind and currents around the Florida peninsula by early summer and up the East Coast, possibly as far as North Carolina.
The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and will last until October. The prospect of a massive storm spreading the oil, hampering efforts to cap the leak, is chilling.
Back in the Gulf, wildlife officials said 60 birds at the Queen Bess Island Pelican Rookery in Louisiana, including 41 pelicans, were found coated in oil before being caught and taken to a rehabilitation centre.
The brown pelican, Louisiana's state bird, was removed from the federal endangered species list last year. A bird that feeds by plunge-diving for fish in the open surf, the brown pelican has been among the hardest hit birds by the spill.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1284003/Turned-unrecognisable-monsters-oil-Sickening-new-images-helpless-wildlife-dying-muck-BP-spill.html
