A region's new fear: An oily hurricane
GRAND ISLE, La. — Hurricanes have battered retirees Leo and Dolores Guidroz before. Katrina blew out their garage. Ike flooded their home. Each time, they rebuilt and returned to their two-story beach house, built on 8-foot stilts.
This hurricane season feels scarier, says Leo Guidroz, 77. The oil staining the nearby beach already has stolen the couple's morning routine, surf fishing for speckled trout. Thick sheets of oil bob less than 5 miles offshore.
He worries a strong storm surge would bathe their home in oil.
"You can imagine with the oil, that water will be contaminated," he says. "We might not ever be able to come back."
The threat of Tropical Storm Alex— the first significant storm of the hurricane season — has inflamed anxiety on the Gulf of Mexico's barrier islands and coastal towns. The 1,680-mile shoreline from Texas to Florida faces a volatile hurricane season with the unprecedented complication of a massive oil spill off the coast. Although the National Hurricane Center now projects Alex will hit Mexico's Gulf coast and steer south and west of the oil spill, it is predicting an unusually heavy hurricane season, with as many as 23 serious storms.
WEATHER: Alex not aiming at Gulf oil spill area for now
That is intensifying apprehension and preparations along a Gulf Coast battered first by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and now by the worst oil spill in the nation's history. Federal, state and local officials are devising plans for evacuating residents, dismantling the oil recovery operation and securing heavy equipment and ships should a storm approach. They also are considering how much compensation oil giant BP might need to pay if a storm blows oil inland.
"What we're dealing with, the oil spill, there's nothing to compare it to. We have no definitive answers right now," says Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who began rounds of coordination calls to state officials on Friday. "With all the ships at sea and all the equipment out there, key decisions have to be made early."
Although Alex is unlikely to set federal plans in motion, Fugate says the storm should remind coastal residents to review their personal hurricane preparations and stock up on supplies.
"If you haven't gotten ready, now is the time," Fugate says.
Alex became a tropical storm Sunday night as it moved into the Gulf of Mexico and may become a hurricane as it swirls toward Mexico's east coast, the hurricane center said. Maximum sustained winds Sunday night were 45 mph.
Forecasters say the storm is still unlikely to pass over the part of the Gulf of Mexico affected by the oil spill.
The threat of the storm moving over the oil spill area is "pretty minimal" AccuWeather.com meteorologist John Feerick says. "It doesn't look like it would have the opportunity to go as far east."
Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the federal response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, says his team is "in constant contact" with the National Hurricane Center.
"At this point, it does not threaten the site, but we know that these tracks can change, and we're paying very close attention to it," Allen said in a briefing Saturday. "We know the weather is unpredictable and we could have a sudden, last-minute change."
Concern about spreading oil
Meteorologists describe several scenarios if a hurricane moves into the Gulf of Mexico, an event that would trigger complex evacuation procedures and dramatically disrupt the oil spill cleanup.
If a storm strikes the Gulf, it would spin water like a washing machine, says Dan Kottlowski, expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com, in State College, Pa. Where it spins the oil will depend on its path, he says.
A storm that passes to the west of the spill would drive some of the oily water to the shore in a storm surge, says Chris Vaccaro, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A storm that passes to the east would spin the oily water out to sea.
The wind and high seas might accelerate the breakdown of the oil, he says.
If a storm approaches, Allen would stop the cleanup process about five days before forecasters predict the first gale-force wind — at least 39 miles per hour — would hit the area. The Discoverer Enterprise, one of the vessels collecting oil from the ruptured BP well, needs 114 hours to disconnect from the riser pipe and move to safe harbor, Allen says.
Nearly 3,000 barges, 430 skimmers and 2,700 other vessels — including Coast Guard command and control boats — would have to be moved to secure ports, he says, and 38,634 Coast Guard, National Guard, contractors, BP employees and volunteers would potentially have to evacuate.
"We need to be able to move our personnel where it doesn't conflict with the general public evacuation," he says.
A storm would disrupt oil cleanup and recovery in the Gulf for about two weeks, Allen says, leaving oil to gush unabated into the Gulf.
In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist on Sunday met with emergency management and environmental officials at the pier on Pensacola Beach. A forecaster said this storm was not likely to hit the state or the area of the oil spill, but waves from the storm could push more oil and tar onto Panhandle beaches, the Associated Press reported.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in a letter to Allen, asked whether the Coast Guard and Navy could pre-position ships to respond in the aftermath of a storm to skim the extra oil.
"Figure several days downtime as the storm approaches, a few more days as the storm passes, and a couple more days to get things back in place — and, you're facing up to 10 days or more of the well gushing some 60,000 barrels a day unchecked," Nelson said. "That's 600,000 barrels we'd then have to collect quickly after a storm passed, and before it could hit parts of the Gulf Coast. Right now, there just isn't enough capacity or bigger ships to collect and skim that much oil on the surface."
Long-established evacuation plans for residents along Louisiana's Gulf Coast remain the same, but state officials must coordinate with BP and the Coast Guard to protect thousands of contractors, workers and employees who are cleaning up the oil, says Louisiana's homeland security chief, Mark Cooper.
The state will require BP to move its workers and equipment three days before 40-mph wind reaches the Louisiana coast, Cooper says.
"We don't want BP having all their equipment on the road blocking the highways, breaking down," Cooper says. "It's very important their timeline is based on our timeline."
Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, a coastal community southeast of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina five years ago, has separate plans to evacuate residents and oil spill contractors. The parish will order evacuations for oil spill work sites 72 hours before gale-force winds are predicted to hit the Louisiana coast.
"Evacuation plans for oil spill operations have been tailored so as to not interfere with the St. Bernard Parish's overall evacuation plan," parish officials said in a statement.
If a storm pushes oil into the parish, officials will close the area to residents until fire, police and federal environmental experts determine the areas are safe.
At Port Fourchon, Louisiana's southernmost port, Harbor Police Chief Jon Callais met Friday with BP and Coast Guard officials to discuss how best to move 1,000 oil cleanup workers and their tons of equipment, including a tent city where many live. Workers also are living in trailers stacked on a barge and floating in a port. Those "boatels" will have to be sailed 27 miles up waterways to keep them out of a storm's path, Callais says.
During Katrina, unmanned barges in New Orleans tore from their moorings and slammed into levees, causing more damage.
"Those are cause for concern," Callais says. "They're like floating missiles."
In Grand Isle, a 7-mile stretch of beach in southern Louisiana, trucks and bulldozers rumble down state Highway 1, and 1,800 oil-response workers live in rows of aluminum trailers.
Evacuating the workers and their equipment will clog the one road out of Grand Isle, says Deano Bonano, Jefferson Parish's homeland security chief.
BP is still finalizing plans, he says.
"It took months to bring that equipment down there. It isn't all going to leave in 120 hours," Bonano says.
A strong storm could deposit oil into southern Louisiana's delicate marshes — something cleanup crews have been fighting to prevent since the BP well exploded April 20, says Garret Graves, head of the state's office of coastal activities.
Cooper, the state's homeland security chief, says he's still unsure who would bear the costs of cleaning up inland oil after the storm. FEMA usually reimburses states for hurricane cleanup, but BP is responsible for costs tied to the oil spill. It's less clear, he says, who is responsible for cleaning up oil spread by a hurricane.
Fugate says the federal government is still researching legal aspects of the cleanup.
"If there is oil inland that needs to be cleaned up, we don't want to argue if it's BP's oil or some other party," Cooper says. "We just want it cleaned up."
Praying for help
As the government hashes out logistics, nervous residents of Grand Isle are seeking spiritual solace.
Since Alex formed in the Caribbean Sea last week, the offices at Our Lady of the Isle Catholic Church in Grand Isle have been jammed with phone calls from worried residents.
And lots of requests.
Parishioners have called asking the pastor, Mike Tran, to bless their rosaries and crucifixes, to bless bottles of water so they can sprinkle it on their homes, to hold Holy Communion on the beach and to throw scapulars into the surf to fend off hurricanes, Tran says.
The requests piled up so high that Tran had to call his bishop for guidance. The threat of a hurricane has amplified the island's anxiety.
"It's doubling the fear and the threat level amid the oil crisis," Tran says.
At Sunday's Mass, Tran led parishioners in three Hail Mary prayers to deter hurricanes from reaching Louisiana's coast.
"We need to pray for God's intervention," he told them.
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