Through Sunday, BP has cut 1,600 checks totaling $5 million to Floridians, mostly for lost wages. Virtually all of those checks are under $5,000.
There have been a thousand large-loss claims made to BP. About 10 of those have been paid.
Baker Clark, who owns the Best Western in Navarre, figures his claim for this month may be $110,000. Clark says his BP claims adjuster has been helpful so far. But he hasn’t gotten a dime yet, and the survival of his business will likely depend on prompt payments going forward.
“This month looks like we’re down about 50 or 60 percent,” Clark said of his 68-room hotel. “You’ve got just about 100 days a year to make it or break it, and June is 30 of those days.”
Darryl Willis, vice president of resources for BP and leading the company’s claims process, said that program is just spooling up and depends on accounting closing so businesses with large losses can document the hit they’re taking.
Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink said BP’s action so far is not good enough.
“I’m incensed that BP is devoting resources to an expensive ad campaign touting how quickly they’re writing checks, because payments of $5,000 or less amount to nothing more than a PR ploy,” said Sink, a Democratic candidate for governor. “BP needs to start putting its money where its oil is and start writing bigger checks today.”
The company responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill has said it will do what’s right by those who’ve lost money from the spill.
“That process is spooling up as we speak,” Willis said Sunday of large-loss claims. “The goal is to make it right for them. My bosses have told me to do the right thing.”
The spill is hitting at the peak of the Panhandle’s tourist season.
Clark said this year was shaping up to be a rebound season after two years of recession. Then the spill came and he says he lost $30,000 from the bad publicity, even though no oil arrived on beaches here until this weekend. Clark said most people had already made their plans and came on. Now cancellations are increasing and June’s likely going to mean a loss of half his business.
That makes it tough to stay afloat.
“The hotel business has a very high cost of operation,” Clark said. “When you have 100 percent occupancy, there’s not a lot of difference from when you have 25 or 30 percent.”
With oily goop washing up on beaches and an industrial odor in some oil-plagued areas, many local residents are wondering how dangerous the BP spill is.
People working in spill cleanup, particularly at sea, are at risk from oil exposure, but people on land with incidental exposure probably won’t face medical problems, doctors say.
Dr. Susan Turner, associate director of the Escambia County Health Department, said officials will monitor area coastlines and post signs if contamination reaches levels that pose health risks to beachgoers.
“The important thing at the moment is that there are no health impacts to Florida at this point. We don’t foresee having any health impacts as long as people pay attention to the advisories,” she said.
Dr. Dick Weaver, a family practice and occupational medicine doctor in Pensacola, said volatile compounds, the source of the most dangerous fumes and vapors, will have mostly evaporated by the time the oil slick makes it to shore.
The remaining tar and oil components, while considered toxic, pose minimal risks to residents.
“Some people could have an extreme sensitivity to the oil compounds in the tar balls … but as far as serious side effects, I wouldn’t be too concerned at this point,” Weaver said.
Weaver said the chemical dispersants used to break up oil on the surface of the Gulf could pose more significant health risks, but there isn’t much data available to determine how much, if any, of the chemicals are reaching the beach.
Despite the low risks, doctors advise against beachgoers touching tar balls or swimming in affected waters when a sheen is present.
People should avoid using gasoline, kerosene or other solvents because those chemicals can cause more skin irritation than the tar in the oil spill, he said.
It’s the cleanup workers in the Gulf who face the biggest dangers.
Long-term exposure to large amounts of oil can lead to problems in breathing, thinking and coordination and can potentially raise the risk of cancer, doctors say.
Long-lasting skin contact with crude oil can cause skin to redden, swell and burn and can get worse if the skin is exposed to the sun, officials.
Damage to beaches could be disaster for the state’s tourism industry
News that oily tar balls are washing ashore on Florida’s famed, white sandy beaches is more than just an environmental disaster — it’s also a potentially devastating economic blow to an already struggling state.
Even before the BP rig disaster began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico in April, tourism-dependent Florida was struggling to dig out from a recession that hit the state early and hard. Now the oil spill’s possible impact on everything from hotel bookings to condo sales could pull the state into a deeper and longer-lasting economic funk.
“It’s going to ripple throughout Florida’s economy and the question is, ‘How big is it going to be?’” Snaith said. The Sunshine State’s unemployment rate stood at 12 percent in April, well above the national average. Even before the oil disaster, Snaith was predicting that it could take years to get below 10 percent as Florida and the nation deal with anemic job growth.
Foreclosure activity in Florida, a troubling aftershock of the state’s busted housing boom, remains among the highest in the nation, according to RealtyTrac. Recent signs that the real estate market is stabilizing could be undone if oil contamination has an effect on beachfront condo sales or other real estate activity, Snaith said.
‘Tourism is what put Florida on the map’ Tourism is Florida’s most prominent industry, accounting for about 6 percent of the state’s economic output, or $42.3 billion in annual business, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It’s even more important to employment, with leisure and hospitality jobs accounting for about 900,000 of the state’s 7.3 million workers, according to Snaith’s estimates.
“Tourism is what put Florida on the map, absolutely, and it will always be a major economic driver,” said Deborah Breiter, chair of the department of tourism events and attractions at the University of Central Florida.
Tourism’s impact goes beyond its direct contribution to the economy, affecting everyone from gas station attendants who fill up rental cars to dry cleaners who clean hotel workers’ uniforms.
Tourists visiting Florida spent about $60 billion last year and generated 21 percent of the state’s sales tax revenues, said Kathy Torian of Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing corporation.
The state’s particularly strong reliance on tourism, combined with its sheer size and hundreds of miles of beaches, means that the oil spill itself is likely to have an outsized impact when compared to other states that have been contaminated with oil, such as Alabama or Mississippi.
Key part of state’s identity Beyond just economics, tourism has always had a particular historical and cultural significance for the state of 18.5 million. Breiter jokes that the state’s tourism industry dates to the 1500s, when legend has it that explorer Juan Ponce de Leon discovered Florida while searching for the fountain of youth.
Even before the oil disaster hit, Florida had been suffering from a drop in tourism as a result of the recession and other factors. The number of visitors to Florida last year fell by less than 1 percent, to 80.3 million, after a 2.3 percent decrease in 2008, according to Visit Florida.
“Leisure and tourism were already on pretty wobbly legs, and we were forecasting that the recovery there was to be somewhat weak, even before the oil spill,” Snaith said.
GULF SHORES, Ala. — A wellhead cap at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is slowly pinching off a geyser of oil spewing from the earth, but there’s no containing much of the crude that’s already escaped, a reality becoming increasingly evident on the region’s beaches.
The battle to contain the oil is likely to stretch into the fall, the government’s point man on the spill warned. The cap will trap only so much of the oil, and relief wells being drilled won’t be completed until August. Meanwhile, oil will continue to shoot out.
“Oil just doesn’t go away. Oil doesn’t disappear,” said Forrestier, of New Orleans. “It has to go somewhere and it’s going to come to the Gulf beaches.”
The spill’s harmful environmental effects also appear to have spread to Texas, with the government saying Sunday that dead, oiled birds were reported for the first time in that state. A wildlife report issued Sunday by the government command center in Robert, La., says two dead birds with oil on them were found in Texas, but didn’t elaborate on the circumstances. Dozens of dead, oiled birds have been found in other Gulf states, the majority of them in Louisiana.
Officials reported Sunday afternoon that a sheen of oil was spotted about 150 miles west of Tampa, though they did not expect the slick to reach the western Florida peninsula in the near future.
BP said today that the cost of the response has reached about $1.25 billion. The company said the figure does not include $360 million for a project to build six sand berms meant to protect Louisiana’s wetlands from spreading oil.
Healthcare providers have debated whether there is an increase in the risks in teaching hospitals due to the turnover of Interns and Residents in July. New medical school graduates become Interns just weeks after completing medical school.
Much of medical education after the science, physiology and pathophysiology is taught, is accomplished by the method of “See One, Do One, Teach One”. Most new doctors are somewhere between the See and Do when they are fist given responsibilities as an Intern.
There is a huge gap between the textbook knowledge and basic skills acquired in school and the practical knowledge needed to provide care to hospitalized patients. This gag is greater in higher acuity patients, the only type now that seem to merit a bed in a hospital today.
A recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, A July Spike in Fatal Medication Errors: A Possible Effect of New Medical Residents, concluded that the increased mortality in July is at least partly due to changes associated with new medical residents.
The study was conducted over 7 years and looked at almost a quarter of a million deaths. The University of California, San Diego research team found a 10% higher than expected number of deaths due to medication errors in July. No similar link was found for deaths outside of hospitals.
The results of this study and the July Effect should be a concern to those receiving treatment in “teaching hospitals”, those hospitals that have Interns and Residents in training. If you or family members are in a teaching hospital in the early part of the 3rd quarter, ask the doctors you see what their level of training is and, if they are Interns or Residents, ask them who their supervising physician is and when will you see them. Do not be intimidated by the white coat. You are entitled to know who is providing your care.
Pushed along by winds from the south and west, oil from the massive Deepwater Horizon slick could reach Pensacola beaches this week.
Several areas of sheen were spotted as close as 7½ miles from Pensacola Pass Tuesday, sending local oil spill response crews scrambling to enact protection measures.
“It’s inevitable that we will see it on the beaches,” said Keith Wilkins, Escambia County’s deputy chief of neighborhood and community services.
Wilkins said emergency crews are prepared for a long summer of oil cleanup on Pensacola Beach.
The crews plan to remove oil after it is pushed onshore and the winds shift. Removing oil while it’s moving onshore doesn’t make sense, he said.
“It would be like trying to go out and clean up in the middle of a hurricane,” he said. “We will wait until after the bands make their way onshore and the weather shifts and then we will clean up before the next band hits.”
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Almost one-third of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico is closing to commercial and recreational fishing because of the oil spill.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration expanded the area by 5 percent today. NOAA says as of 5 p.m. today that nearly 76,000 square miles would be off-limits because of oil spreading from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. That’s more than 31 percent of federal Gulf waters.
The irregular shape ban extends from Atchafalaya Bay, La., east to a point about 200 miles west of Naples, Fla., and then bending south.
Memorial Day was first widely observed on May 30, 1868. Today Memorial Day, which falls on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while serving in the American military. Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings and participating in parades. Keep the spirit of Memorial Day, have a good weekend and remember Freedom isn’t Free.
BUDDY POPPY
Among all the flowers that evoke the memories and emotions of war is the red poppy, which became associated with war after the publication of a poem written by Col. John McCrae of Canada. The poem, “In Flander’s Field,” describes blowing red fields among the battleground of the fallen.
For more than 75 years, the VFW’s Buddy Poppy program has raised millions of dollars in support of veterans’ welfare and the well being of their dependents.
The VFW conducted its first poppy distribution before Memorial Day in 1922, becoming the first veterans’ organization to organize a nationwide distribution. The poppy soon was adopted as the official memorial flower of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.
It was during the 1923 encampment that the VFW decided that VFW Buddy Poppies be assembled by disabled and needy veterans who would be paid for their work to provide them with some form of financial assistance. The plan was formally adopted during the VFW’s 1923 encampment. The next year, disabled veterans at the Buddy Poppy factory in Pittsburgh assembled VFW Buddy Poppies. The designation “Buddy Poppy” was adopted at that time.
In February 1924, the VFW registered the name “Buddy Poppy” with the U.S. Patent Office. A certificate was issued on May 20, 1924, granting the VFW all trademark rights in the name of Buddy under the classification of artificial flowers. The VFW has made that trademark a guarantee that all poppies bearing that name and the VFW label are genuine products of the work of disabled and needy veterans. No other organization, firm or individual can legally use the name “Buddy” Poppy.
Today, VFW Buddy Poppies are still assembled by disabled and needy veterans in VA Hospitals.
The minimal assessment (cost of Buddy Poppies) to VFW units provides compensation to the veterans who assemble the poppies, provides financial assistance in maintaining state and national veterans’ rehabilitation and service programs and partially supports the VFW National Home for orphans and widows of our nation’s veterans.
In Flander’s Field by John McCrae
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved and now we lie,
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw,
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us, who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
In Flanders Fields.
Leak worst in nation’s history; new giant sea oil plume seen in Gulf
COVINGTON, La. – An untested procedure to plug the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico seemed to be working, officials said Thursday, but new estimates showed the spill has already surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst in U.S. history.
A team of scientists trying to determine how much oil has been flowing since the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and sank two days later found the rate was more than twice and possibly up to five times as high as previously thought.
The fallout from the spill has stretched all the way to Washington, where the head of the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned Thursday and President Barack Obama sought to counter criticism by announcing a series of new steps to deal with the spill’s aftermath.
“The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort,” Obama told a news conference. He was responding to criticism that his administration had been slow to act and had left BP in charge of plugging the leak.
Obama said many critics failed to realize “this has been our highest priority.”
