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Tourists are playing hit or miss with spill on Panhandle beaches
The St. Louis couple were married at the beach on Tuesday — the day before BP’s Gulf oil spill blackened the local shoreline. During the ceremony, she cried. He cried. Everybody cried.
“It’s just a hit-or-miss thing,” Lindsey said. “If I had picked Wednesday instead of Tuesday, I’d have been pretty upset.”
Audrey and Philippe Cornu were not so lucky.
They arrived in Pensacola for a class reunion on Thursday — the day after local beaches were closed for swimming.
“What a disaster,” Audrey said. “What a welcome home. I’m 48 years old and I’ve never seen double red flags at the beach.”
Health advisories suggesting people shouldn’t swim or fish are posted for 33 miles of Florida Panhandle beaches stretching from the Florida/Alabama border through Pensacola Beach and a six-mile stretch of beaches in the Walton County area near the popular tourist spot of Destin.
Pensacola Beach is the farthest east that a Florida beach has been closed because of oil. Escambia County posted the state’s first beach closure on Perdido Key earlier this month.
The federal government estimates between 68.5 million gallons and 130 million gallons of oil have gushed into the Gulf since an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the Louisiana coast.
Gov. Charlie Crist asked the Obama administration on Thursday for a more rapid cleanup of oiled beaches and for more skimmers and boom.
Crist has also asked BP for itemized claims data amid complaints that the oil giant is processing them too slowly.
“We’re going to do everything we can to push BP further,” he said.
‘Ever-swirling thing’
Cornu quickly vowed to make the best of her 30th class reunion. She was stunned at how quickly BP work crews had cleared a swath of black splotches from Pensacola’s famous white sand beaches.
In many spots, the shore looked postcard-perfect.
“Whoever’s cleaning this is getting out there and containing this mess,” Cornu said. “That’s pretty impressive.”
On Wednesday afternoon, wide puddles of oily sludge washed across more than three miles of Pensacola beach. Crist called it “unbelievable.” Locals said it was worse than they ever expected.
“It was so hot, it was bubbling,” said Marilee Gilmore, a Pensacola retiree. “It was nasty. It came ashore in mats.”
Gilmore, a former tennis instructor in New Orleans, fled to the Panhandle after Hurricane Katrina. Now she’s going through another disaster and recovery.
Thursday’s beach clean-up gave her a psychological lift, but she did not expect it to last.
“The only thing is, the winds are going to shift again, and it’ll repeat itself,” Gilmore predicted. “For four to six months, it’ll be an ever-swirling thing.”
Untouched beaches
From Pensacola to Panama City, Panhandle beach towns are bracing themselves for noxious fumes and sickening sludge from the Gulf of Mexico.
Many beaches, though, have yet to be affected by the oil spill. For miles and miles of Gulf Coast, blue-green waves continue to wash up on pristine white beaches.
Just a few miles east of Pensacola is Navarre Beach, which bills itself as “Florida’s Best-Kept Secret.”
Sue Peluso, a Michigan retiree, walks along the beach almost every day. She finds the oil spill unbelievable, too, especially from her stretch of sand.
Her son is supposed to visit Florida for the Fourth of July.
“He keeps calling: “Mom, mom, what’s going on?” Peluso said. “And I say it’s kind of like waiting for a hurricane. For now, we’re beautiful.”
This report includes material from The Associated Press.
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