US Features

Gloom descends on Gulf beaches; vacation dreams depart

By Frank Brandmaier Jun 3, 2010, 7:19 GMT

Crosses with the names of species of fish and recreational activities that have been lost or changed for the near future due to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico fill a yard in Grand Isle, Louisiana, USA, 02 June 2010. EPA/TANNEN MAURY

Grand Isle, Louisiana - Christopher Hernandez should have been very busy these days, as the Gulf coast marks the unofficial beginning of summer.

'I would be working with my team to keep the beach clean,' says the team leader of public maintenance in Grand Isle, on the southern tip of Louisiana. 'The beach would be packed with people.'

Should have, would have - but energy giant BP's oil slick has kept vacationers away. Hernandez and his colleagues use a fire hose to fill a plastic swimming pool and park it 20 metres from the ocean so that at least his children can swim a little.

The sun burns with tropical fury. This week, which started with Memorial Day on Monday, normally marks the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States. The cash registers should be ringing in the tourist meccas along this Gulf shoreline.

But in Grand Isle, the mood is one of gloom instead of the beach hurly burly of yesteryear.

Most of the beach houses are boarded up, silent. As if to emphasize the obvious - that no one should venture into the water - soldiers start unloading heavy orange oil barriers along the coast.

'Normally, it would be full - busy, busy, busy,' says Chassa Santiny, a waitress at the Starfish restaurant near the beach. On a recent afternoon, the tables were only one-quarter filled.

'A lot of people cancelled their reservations. There's not much we can do. We hope for the best, that we make some money later in the summer,' the young woman says.

Mary Rowe and her three friends are the sort of Starfish customers that everyone in Grand Isle wishes there were more of.

'We came here to spend some money,' said Rowe, who drove two hours with her friends from New Orleans out of solidarity with the suffering coastal community.

A sour shopkeeper hangs an angry sign on the street: 'BP + Obama put us out of business.'

US President Barack Obama has urged - nearly begged - Americans to visit the Gulf of Mexico's beaches. Only a few beaches are closed, and in Grand Isle, only part of the beach.

The tourist industry from Louisiana to Florida trembles with oil fear. Places that are untouched, such as Pensacola in western Florida, have mounted massive advertising campaigns showing their clean beaches. Popular sport fishing normally pumps billions of dollars into the regional economy, of which Louisiana gets about 757 million dollars, says Larry McKinney, head of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Chris, Texas.

Nonetheless, there was a little good news. At the last minute, before the long Memorial Day weekend, many people jumped at the discount prices being offered and booked lodging, helping to keep down the losses, according to a survey by the Times Picayune newspaper in New Orleans.

But the paper also noted: 'Visitors for the normally packed beach months of June, July and August are waiting to place new bookings - and fretting over whether to cancel existing reservations.'

August in fact looms with another BP deadline - the month in which engineers hope to have a relief well dug and ready to carry cement down to the crude oil reservoir that has been gushing incessantly into the Gulf since April 20.

For Grand Isle, the season is over. Louanna Guidry sits alone on the beach, staring at the waves. There was no one to disturb her. She has spent nearly every summer since her childhood at this beach, says the teacher who is now approaching retirement age. She used to catch crabs and cook them in sea water.

But now, she says 'it feels like in a war zone - with all the helicopters in the air.'

'Will they ever be able to stop this well before everything is ruined?'

Guidry recalls the dramatic let-down when BP's top kill operation, the one everyone was hoping would plug up the 6-km-deep well, was declared a failure over the Memorial Day weekend.

'It was like a funeral for everyone,' she says.

A 30-minute drive further west from Grand Isle, things are even worse. Fourchon Beach has been shut down for weeks. Police stop the curious from approaching the town. On the oil-fouled beach, more than 300 workers in the pay of BP move in pristine white overalls to shovel the dirty sand into bags. They've filled more than 14,000 transparent bags since mid-May, according to Lieutenant Patrick Hanley of the US Coast Guard.

A cement retaining wall is still smeared in the thick oil that came ashore on Fourchon Beach on May 19. But Fourchon Beach has been spared new waves of oil in recent days, according to Brennan Matherne, spokesman for the town of Lafourche.

When will the beach, a favourite with locals, be open again?

'We don't have a timeline to reopen the beach,' Matherne says. 'We expect to be here a long period.'