VENICE, La. — Federal officials shut down fishing from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle on Sunday because of the uncontrolled gusher spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and the environmental disaster is still expected to take at least a week to cut off.
President Barack Obama toured the region Sunday, deflecting criticism that his administration was too slow to respond and did too little to stave off the catastrophe.
Satellite images indicate the rust-hued slick tripled in size in two days, suggesting the oil could be pouring out faster than before. Wildlife including sea turtles have been found dead on the shore, but it is too soon to determine whether the spill, caused by an April 20 oil-rig explosion, was to blame.
Even if the well is shut off in a week, fishermen and wildlife officials wonder how long it will take for the gulf to recover.
Some compare it to the hurricane Louisiana is still recovering from after nearly five years.
“It’s like a slow version of Katrina,” Venice charter-boat captain Bob Kenney said. “My kids will be talking about the effect of this when they’re my age.”
More than 6,800 square miles of federal fishing areas, from the mouth of the Mississippi to Florida’s Pensacola Bay, were closed for at least 10 days Sunday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Fishermen still were out working, however. They have been dropping miles of inflatable, oil-capturing booms around the region’s fragile wetlands and prime fishing areas. Bad weather, however, was thwarting much of the work. Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama said 80 percent of the booms laid down off his state over the previous three days had broken down.
The Coast Guard and oil company BP have said it’s nearly impossible to know exactly how much oil has gushed since the blast, though it has been roughly estimated to be at least 200,000 gallons a day.
At that rate, it would eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which dumped 11 million gallons off the Alaska coast — as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks.
The situation could become even more grave if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and flows to the beaches of Florida — and potentially whips around the state’s southern tip and up the Eastern Seaboard. Tourist-magnet beaches and countless wildlife could be ruined.
Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster. On Sunday, he called the spill a “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster” and made clear that he was not accepting blame.
“BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill,” he said, rain dripping from his face in Venice, a Gulf Coast community serving as a staging area for the response.
Five options to halt damage
Teams are working on five possible solutions to stop or at least minimize the flow at the well in the Gulf of Mexico:
• Injecting dispersants at the sea floor to break up the oil.
• Attempting to close the blowout preventer that failed.
• Deploying steel boxes atop the flows to contain oil and redirect it through pipes to a ship on the sea surface.
• Installing new pressure-control equipment at the well.
• Drilling of two relief wells.
