A Hard Day's Work Cleaning Up The Gulf Oil Spill

Los Angeles Times:

It is tedious and monotonous labor -- heaving oil-soaked sand into plastic bags. Shovelful. After shovelful. After shovelful. After shovelful.

But most of all, it's hot, horribly hot. Just ask the crews hired by BP to clean beaches fouled by the nation's worst oil spill. When the oil is thick as brownie mix, or in liquid pools subject to splashing, the workers are sealed inside protective uniforms that zip up to the neck. No exceptions, even when temperatures near 100.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[nexxtep54]

12:45 AM on 07/05/2010

Hmmm . How many visible minorities worked for BP before the spill ? Just asking.

[DanMan2012]

12:04 PM on 07/02/2010

FIND THE COMMON THREAD:

BP Oil Spill: Against Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindals-wishes-crude/story?id=10946379

"We could have sent boats earlier, but we wanted to make sure that if we sent our boats, they could be used in the U.S., because of the Jones Act," Vial said in an interview translated from French.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/red_tape_keeps_prized_oil-figh.html

It’s [A Whale] on its way there after being tied to a dock in Norfolk, Virginia, and won’t be allowed to join the cleanup effort until the Coast Guard and the EPA figure out whether it meets their standards
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/27/day-68-why-isnt-the-a-whale-in-the-gulf-yet/

The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. http://www.examiner.com/x-325-Global-Warming-Examiner~y2010m6d12-US-reconsiders-Dutch-offer-to-supply-oil-skimmers”

And Who Runs the EPA, you ask?

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility cites toxic-cleanup failures as just one of many reasons why Jackson is unfit to lead the EPA.
http://www.grist.org/article/The-Lisa-of-our-concerns/

[urnumbersix]

09:29 AM on 07/02/2010

WHERE are their Respirators?!?

This is Criminal!

[eirlymeyer]

09:28 AM on 07/02/2010

Notice how there is NO WHITE PEOPLE cleaning up?

[Mensch99]

08:25 AM on 07/02/2010

This is a tragedy in the making-

Almost Every Crew Member from the 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster is now De@d-

http://www.businessinsider.com/warning-to-gulf-cleanup-workers-almost-every-crew-member-from-the-1989-exxon-valdez-disaster-is-now-dead-2010-6

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/03/gulf.fishermans.wife/index.html

[BDAinVA]

06:50 AM on 07/02/2010

And it is still gushing.....

[Just ME in T]

06:04 AM on 07/02/2010

A Taiwanese-flagged vessel, named "A Whale," which is 3 1/2 football fields long and looms 10 stories high - outfitted with 12 vents on either side of its bow, which experts hope will be able to suck up as many as 21 million gallons of oil-tainted water each day in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster – has offered its services in the attempted clean up.

So will the President Kick Ass and get the permissions needed expediated?

http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/07/just-who-makes-decisions.html

[amaycatbaker]

05:12 AM on 07/02/2010

I hope this can be cleaned up, but in reality...

[Jose 58]

04:55 AM on 07/02/2010

Get ready for waterfront ghost towns to start emerging as people start getting sickened by the smell and the depression of what once was.

[Kevin Atlanta]

03:22 AM on 07/02/2010

The worst is yet to come and still no one is addressing the CoreXit problems or the sub-surface plumes of oil poisoning the Gulf. The greed of the BP Corporate Fascists have cost all of us an ecology that is impossible to replace.

[RitaS]

02:54 AM on 07/02/2010

This is just the BEGINNING of what the Gulf Coast communities have to look forward to curtsy of BP.....

[breakingpoint]

01:52 AM on 07/02/2010

Honestly, have you ever seen anything so degrading as the working poor cleaning up a rich man's mess and with little to any protection or just payment for his labor?

If there was any justice in this world, moral or otherwise, BP execs and those who made akilling in the oil market would be out there in orange jump suits tethered to a ball and chain trying to make amends.

But the powers that be on Wall Street know Americans don't really care, they know we live in a world that sings loud and clear, 'as long as it's not me!'

[ktremelo6]

01:45 AM on 07/02/2010

People helping with the cleanup need to know this about cleaning up the crude oil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M1J7U2GYA0

They need respirators, please share this!

[Paula Ann]

07:46 AM on 07/02/2010

as long as the muck isn't splashing up on them, these workers need the respirators more than the containment suits.

[strangegal]

01:30 AM on 07/02/2010

"Edgar Cayce's Autograph" by Playwright Larry Myers
is not jus ta peephole but a portal into this goo.....
.Dr Myers went there in person finding a lagoon of lies......his response a gallows humor surrealistic talk piece..open mike open wound
at Global Fringe Festival in Manhattan

[Matt Osborne]

12:29 AM on 07/02/2010

Didn't there used to be this thing called a Civilian Conservation Corps? It was, like, people who did this sort of thing?

Whatever happened to that thing?

[wearelegion]

12:33 AM on 07/02/2010

I'll shoot an email over to BP and ask for you.