# 4558
In 1993, while living aboard my 36 foot sailboat Island Time on St. Pete Beach, my (now ex) wife and I learned first hand what a serious oil spill can mean to the environment and to those living along the shore.
Just after dawn on August 10th three vessels collided at the entrance to Tampa bay, spilling 300,000 gallons of heavy crude and another 33,000 gallons of jet fuel. The fire aboard one of the barges took more than 16 hours to extinguish.
Despite the good fortune of offshore winds keeping the mess away from the beaches for the first 4 days (giving response teams some badly needed time to assemble and react), 13 miles of white sand beaches (and hundreds of boats) were befouled by a nauseating slick of tars and oil.
Those of us who lived on the water and had to breath the noxious fumes day after day, help rescue oil soaked birds, and continually worked to rid our boat’s waterlines of this staining mixture remember this event with great sadness.
But Tampa Bay was lucky.
The spill occurred just outside the entrance to the bay, and while it washed up on the white sand beaches of Pinellas County, at least it didn’t make it inside the bay, where environmentally sensitive mangroves and fertile underwater grasslands could have been destroyed.
Today, residents of the Gulf coast from Texas to the Florida Keys are watching anxiously as the drama of the blown out Deepwater Horizon Rig plays out 50 miles off the Louisiana coastline.
Thus far, the lower estimates of oil spilled are 10 times greater than the Tampa Bay incident, and growing with each passing day.
Over the weekend a risky plan to drop a `containment vessel’ over the top of one of the leaks ran into serious difficulties, and engineers are now trying to come up with better options.
The State of Florida, while not yet feeling the direct effects of this environmental disaster, has designated the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) as the lead agency to handle the response.
Their Deepwater Horizon Webpage has the latest information, and is updated daily.
Here, for example, is the latest spill trajectory forecast for 1800 hrs CDT, today.
The Florida Department of Health has released a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document on the health impact of crude oil, which you may download as a 2-Page PDF file HERE.
A hat tip to Pathfinder on FluTrackers for this link.
For more information you may wish to visit the official site of the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command.
