subject: The Florida Area Oil Spill Accident Bring Up To Date [print this page] For weeks, the actual residents of Florida's northwest Panhandle got clung into a perception that the BP oil spill devastating the shorelines of Louisiana, Mississippi along with The state of alabama might avoid their popular ivory-white seashores.
So far, it had: regardless of an sporadic spitting of tar balls and also the encroachment of the thin petro-sheen on the horizon, charitable winds as well as currents held the real mess from washing ashore and threatening the Panhandle's critical summer season time - in addition to Florida's $60 billion tourism industry.
But the Sunshine State's good luck turned to muck this week when a mat of oil, weathered but still thicker than a sheen, began to blanket well-known Pensacola Beach, forcing Florida's first spill-related seaside closures.
Thursday evening, saucer-size crude patties and huge oil puddles still pockmarked the fine sand down and up the shore. The region beaches reopened Friday early morning following the filth has been sufficiently cleared, but the emotional in addition to physical damage was done.
Mere fear of the spill had cut deeply to the area's visitor bookings, 90% of which are usually made for the summer months. The bumper-to-bumper traffic which this time of year normally clogs Pensacola Beach's Via de Luna, a tourist Mecca, is uncharacteristically manageable. However the destruction of the tourism market could be worse - parking at hotels and attraction sites still look half full. Charter boat operators and commercial fishermen are seeing their livelihoods utterly idled by the oil spewing 5,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico's surface more than 100 miles away off the Louisiana coast.
The good thing is that this gunk that reached Pensacola this week seems to have gone back out to sea. But while Florida Governor Charlie Crist was again out on the beaches Friday morning, urging the National government and BP to provide Florida with additional oil-skimmer vessels than the 20 sent there to date.
