The Death Of A Town
McClatchy reports on the impact of the oil on Grand Isle
GRAND ISLE, La. — The first wave of oil swept onto the beach. The tourists swept out.
The few people who bothered to visit Grand Isle Beach Friday came out of morbid curiosity, to see the proliferating drips and blotches and puddles and pools the color of Coca-Cola.
“My God, our beach should be crowded, the start of a big weekend,” said Lynette Anderson, surveying the ruinous mess along the surf line. “We kept hoping it was going to miss us. Should have known better.”
The gooey, adhesive stuff portended an economic disaster for Grand Isle, the only inhabited island on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Tourists keep this beach town alive. The tourists had vanished.
A town of 1500 that needs the summer tourists to survive, and their beach is covered in oil just before the season begins. It will take years to clean the beach, and the locals can’t wait years. If you get hit with a hurricane, you can come back, but not pollution.
Rick of the Independent News said that people in Destin have heard that BP and the state are talking to charter boat captains about job retraining. I think that what they heard about was the program that hires local boats for use in the operation, which does require some training. I’ll wait a few days, and if the shark-gnawed bodies of BP representatives start coming on-shore, I’ll accept that it was about job retraining.
