Who's Really Helping

But first, the news.

There are two story lines of interest to me now that the big gusher has been apparently quashed. One occurred to me even before I got here two weeks ago, and that is all about the aftermath. How long will it be before things get back to normal, if ever. Before I get to that, CNN reported this morning that something’s still leaking. This was confirmed by Fox News this afternoon. CNN’s report said,

The federal government's oil spill response director says testing has revealed that there is a "detected seep a distance from the well" and has ordered BP to quickly notify the government if other leaks are found.

"When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours," retired Adm. Thad Allen said in a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley. "I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed."

That’s the key, isn’t it The other leaks. The question is how to know which of these potential seeps are related to Deepwater Horizon and which ones aren’t. How’s anyone to know. As a completely uncredentialed outsider, my guess is that BP will be blamed because they used the process called “fracing”. The technical term is “hydraulic fracturing” and you can look it up here. According to what I’ve learned, fracing can cause leaks because of the great pressure it uses.

I don’t care about the blame. I just want the oil leaks stopped. I’m probably not alone.

To the “Life After the Oil Spill” story. Best I can figure, there are three major components to bring things back for the human residents of the Gulf. Fishing, tourism and oil. The following is from the Associated Press.

After three long months, the bleeding from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been finally, mercifully stanched. But in so many ways, the prognosis remains uncertain.

Which species will rebound, and which have been pushed beyond the brink? Has the oil accelerated the die-off of marshlands that protect one of America’s great cities and make this the nation’s second most-productive fishing region? What effect will the BP spill have on the future of deep-sea drilling — at once boon and bane — in the Gulf?

And, of more immediate concern to people along the nation’s southern coast, where will the millions of as-yet uncollected, unburned, unseen gallons of oil from the blown-out Deepwater Horizon well end up?

Fishing, tourism and oil are all linked to the questions in that report. No one knows those answers now and it’s unlikely that they will any time soon, so everybody waits.

Where’s the real help?

I was shooting video in Gautier, MS this afternoon on private but apparently abandoned land when I was approached by a woman asking me if I was from the press. Her name is Miz Arnold and she’d lived there over fifty years. I told her I was freelance and covering the spill. This started a conversation that lasted nearly two hours and travelled to three different places. She pointed out the boats working for BP in the bay between Gautier and Pascagoula. When I got there, about six runabouts were running at slow and fast speeds in the bay going no place that I could discern. Miz Arnold pointed out two skimming vessels tied to pilings in the shade of a railway bridge. As I photographed the bay, the runabouts all slowed down and slowly moved away nearly out of view on the far side of another bridge and didn’t return while we were there. The people on the skimming boats never moved, but kept their eyes on us.

Everyone knows that boats that go fast make wakes. What’s not so obvious is that those wakes, or waves of significant size will push floating oil being held back by booms over those booms, free to invade the water those booms are meant to protect. Also, there was brown foam up against some of the boom where the runabouts were cavorting. Miz Arnold said that was oil. While there was no way I could know that for certain, anyone who’s pulled out a dipstick from an engine with a blown head gasket knows what an emulsion of oil and water looks like. It looked like what was next to the boom.

And the skimmers were just tied up in the shade.

Miz Arnold said she was on the phone with the Coast Guard over the weekend because some of the workers had moved a boom away from one opening in a small semi-circular canal leaving it open to the oil in the currents. The Coast Guard arrived and she showed them what was going on and explained the problem. At least one day later there was still no boom.

Miz Arnold told that her friends and neighbors were watching, taking pictures, talking with each other and keeping on the authorities. They’re doing everything they can do because they care very deeply for their beautiful stretch of the Gulf Coast. It’s like a neighborhood watch. Maybe that’s what’s needed.

I spoke earlier with a marine sciences student from Southern Mississippi State who’d just returned from five hours on a boat in the Gulf doing research on his very technical marine life study that I couldn’t begin to comprehend, but he seemed to know his stuff. His thought was similar to Miz Arnold’s. That was the nature groups, bird watchers and fishermen and women could do more and be more effective than government folks from Jackson, or Washington DC.

Coastal Mississippi recovered so much faster from Katrina than New Orleans because when the wind stopped and the water receded, they got to work and started cleaning things up and rebuilding. They did it themselves and didn’t wait for the government to do it for them.

The current crisis isn’t like Katrina. It can’t be fixed with a backhoe, saw and a hammer. But no one knows the marshes, inlets, coast and canals like Miz Arnold and her neighbors. Can’t they be trained on how to lay and secure boom? You know that they’ll use it to protect the nests of ducks, pelicans and gators (or crocks… I never know the difference). They’ll make sure it stays where it’s supposed to be because it’s their marshes, canals, pelicans and gators. They love them like they love their home. Their community.

What you can do is everything you can do. Absolutely everything. Anyone want to start a new kind of neighborhood watch?

(Aside to Miz Arnold: Many thanks for spending your time with me and teaching me so much. You're a great lady of the South.)

Next time…

The scariest words in the world.