US Features

Gulf oil spill: 'A nightmare you can't wake up from'

By Frank Brandmaier Jun 2, 2010, 12:07 GMT

Members of the British Petrolium response team extract a tar ball that washed up on Dauphin Island, Alabama USA on 1 June 2010. Experts predict that the sheen from the Gulf oil spill will finally make landfall on the Alabama USA coast on Wednesday, 02 June. EPA/DAN ANDERSON

Grand Isle, Louisiana - Dean Blanchard's knuckles burn white through his sunburnt skin and he simmers with frustration.

He's fed up with all of the hoopla about failed attempts to shut down the oil gusher in the Golf of Mexico, now entering its seventh week.

'It's all a big show for the government that it looks like they're doing something,' barks the shrimp and fish dealer on Grand Isle, at the very southern tip of Louisiana - there, where the syrup-like crude oil slathers the beach.

His eyes blaze in anger. Blanchard has given up on everything: BP, the government, even hope. In Grand Isle, a normally busy tourist town and home to many fishers, there's only been bad news since the worst oil spill in US history began April 20.

Marshland stretches as far as the eye can see. On the horizon, oil and drilling platforms loom ghost-like in the distance, pelicans fly in formation. Houses are built on high stilts because of the ubiquitous water. Oil, fishing - that's the sum and total of Grand Isle. It was enough, and everyone lived largely in harmony, side by side - until now.

The tropical heat oppresses. The vacation homes on the 10- kilometre stretch of beach should be booked full, the streets should be clogged with traffic, the fishing boats should be out working. Instead, a deadly calm blankets Grand Isle.

'BP, we want our beach back,' a protest sign declares. Someone else put an old toilet on the side of the road, and dubbed it 'BP's headquarters.'

During a normal May, as the shrimp season begins, Blanchard says he would normally have taken in 7 million dollars. This year, it was only 300,000 dollars. His world is upside down, the government in Washington is corrupt in his eyes, and BP is totally clueless. The worst of it is the idleness.

'Now I wake up and have nothing to do, nowhere to go. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be like that,' he says in a sudden whisper. Only cynicism remains.

When does he think this will all be over?

'On September 11, that's my take on it,' he says, playing on the upcoming ninth anniversary date of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. In fact, he may not be far from wrong: BP won't have what it hopes will be its permanent solution - two relief wells - in place until at least August.

'I give up, I'm out of business,' he says, noting maybe he'll go to Costa Rica.

So many expectations, so much hope, died when an effort to plug the gushing well known as top kill was declared a failure on Saturday.

Debbie Collins waits for her shrimp fisherman husband outside the town centre, where he is negotiating damage payments for his losses.

'You hope, and you hope, and then....' She lets the sentence go unfinished. 'First you hope they would fix it, you hope that the government would fix it.'

But that's over now. 'Everybody's hearts and smiles are broken,' she says wistfully.

There's not much the government or the oil company can do against the incessant crude oil pouring from the damaged wellhead in 1.6- kilometre-deep waters. 'They don't know what to do, that's why they keep on lying,' Collins says. 'It's like a nightmare you can't wake up from.'

US President Barack Obama was in Louisiana last week.

'The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,' he vowed. 'We will be on your side and we will see this through.'

People in Grand Isle aren't really angry with Obama, but they also don't have much good to say about him. There is almost empathy that even the most powerful man in the world is as helpless as they themselves are against the disaster.

The oil disaster drama will drag out painfully through the summer, at least until August. Will people give up and leave? Collins shrugs her small shoulders.

'There's nothing here - only shrimp and tourists,' Collins says.

'If they're taking that away, you have to go somewhere else to survive. But if you are a fisherman - where do you go?'

Then a stubborn streak breaks through. 'The Southerners, they're fighters. If there's a chance to come back, they are going to come back,' she says.