Abacodan

Keep you eye out for some pretty enlightening video on Spanishflytv.com. We spent four hours last Tuesday on my Maverick skiff filming the technology and processes involved in the clean up here in Pensacola. This of course, under the "unified command" based out of Mobile, Alabama. You will clearly see from the video that the tar balls are very concentrated along the tide rip, where it would seem that mother nature is gathering the material for a rather easy recovery, since most of it appeared at the time to be laying on the surface. What is extremely disturbing is that there is a rip line of tar balls out the pass, almost as far as one can see, but yet there is one crew of two small boats, using "hydrophobic" boom, which lays very high on the surface, and does not let water pass through it. The two boats encircle small patches of the tar balls and then attempt to "mop" the tar up on shredded plastic mops. When one becomes tar laden, it is changed out for a clean one. Two boats, six crew members, and basically just two guys mopping. We could not believe how ineffective this was, a total joke. But there was hope as we witnessed a shrimper slowly towing, or "skimming" with a sectional pieced of the hydrophobic boom material, joined at several points with "D" rings. The hydrophobic boom, even at dead slow speed, was simply riding over the tar balls, or they were passing through the boom at every joint. This was all captured on video. We figured the total effectiveness of these two operations, the only operations on this tideline full of tar balls, was at best less than 5% effective. If this is the best we have to through at the problem, the gulf coast is doomed. We are meeting as a community at 9 AM this morning to discuss various options of taking this into our own hands. County government is out of booms and has not received money for new booms or equipment yet from BP, so that much of the shoreline here in the inland waterways remains unprotected, and even that lined with booms, is certainly not ideally protected. It appears that the "unified command", a top down organizational structure is not dealing with feedback on effectiveness of methodology very well. This situation, already a catastrophe of epic proportions, could become far worse very quickly with a weather change. It looks like the government may have to get out of the way here very soon if efforts don't change dramatically. We have some pretty enterprising folks in this area of the world, and they are growing extremely impatient. I would hope the videos should be up in the next week or so.

Saints 17, Colts 27