Oil Spill to hit Florida

For my own selfish purposes this is quite sad.  I'll be headed to Florida (Sarasota) in a couple of weeks and I was looking forward to swimming in the ocean.

***** RANT ON*****I'm not participating in either event, but do have close ties to the Alabama Gulf Coast and I'm VERY saddened at the lack of response to the pending problem.  If they can do preventative measures, they should pull out all the stops.  Seems like they could be doing more to prevent it from reaching closer to land.  But, i'm no expert.

If you have to wait and see what happens, then deal with the cleanup, then they need to communicate that effectively to the people with vested interest in these areas.

Personally, from the local, state and federal governements, i think the response to prevention of oil reaching the shores has been poor at best.  If it's a funding issue, then the funding should be made available for the prevention first, then the clean up if it happens later.

This is the first time i've posted about this topic, but am very disappointed for the handling of the situation by ALL parties so far.***RANT OFF***

I know it will potentially affect a late season Tri that I was thinking of doing again this year in Pensacola.  It has the potential to damage a lot of people who depend on the coastal tourism.

I know this might be asking for a flame.. but amazing we can make atomic weapons, but we can't stop / contain an oil spill. 

It is always easier to take something apart than put it back together. 

What is the current size of the spil - like Puerto Rico size or something?   There is no way to contain something of this size in the open ocean with currents, wind, waves and a steady flow of more oil feeding it.... 

Panhandle impact seems unavoidable and rest of West Coast of the state in panick mode. They are even preparing for it here in Southeast Florida in case it hits the loop currents and into Gulfstream. Commercial fishing is already a very tough life and now even that seems like it will go away for a while. Very sad. Let's see if the miracle bubble does it's job over the weekend.

pilotzs, Please take this is the best possible way as I totally understand your frustration, but if you are not an expert and don't know what can and can not be done, don't you think it is a little premature to be saddened by the response? I don't even know what is an appropriate response and what can be done if anything. I just think it would be best to wait and see how this is handled and find out what can and can't be done before we start jumping to conclusions.

You have to remember that oil spills of this size don't happen everyday and it's not like we have oil spill departments that deal with this on a daily basis. This is all improvised to some extent.