Posted on 06/06/2010 6:55:17 AM PDT by Crimson Elephant
ORANGE BEACH, Ala. -- When tourists and owners at Sugar Beach condominiums started tracking oil and tar from the sand onto a boardwalk Saturday morning, property manager Patrick McIntosh called BP PLC and asked for a cleanup crew.
He expected that help would be there in minutes, as that's what he said he was told during meetings with city officials earlier in the week.
Instead, he said he was asked if the property was public or private.
After answering private, McIntosh said, he was told that he would have to file a claim and clean the boardwalk himself. The operator asked for his e-mail address and phone number.
"It's BP's problem," he said midday Saturday. "I don't understand why they can't."
He got a slightly different response an hour or so later when he called again, he said. This time, the operator told him she was unsure whether BP would clean the boardwalk.
Just afterward, McIntosh said, he spotted about 50 to 75 workers about a mile away at a state park, and figured they were headed east toward his Orange Beach condominium. By 2 p.m., however, the workers disappeared. Heavy rains began to fall, and oil still stained the beach in front of the condominium units.
"They never got within an eighth of a mile, and there was plenty of (oil-stained) beach to the east of us," McIntosh said.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.al.com ...
There are always a number of what I call knee-jerk ignorant responses like those. Like a couple weeks ago, when a Louisiana parish commandeered 40 boom boats that were sitting idle while oil washed ashore, all the posters came out hollering about commandeering private property. Or those who automatically assume that no lawsuit is ever warranted.
Conservatism should always incorporate common sense, and in this case if I were the complex owner I'd definitely be asking BP for help since that's what he was instructed to do by city officials.
Gee I have tar on my feet, I guess I should track it into the condos.
These people are just Idiots.
If you have tar om your feet you can scrape it off.
I have done that for fifty years here in Calif where the natural seepage is always leaving tarballs on the beach.
Almost all of Orange Beach consists of vacation properties with absentee owners.
I won’t say how much I made doing it but my involvement in Orange Beach was one of the reasons I was able to retire before my 47th birthday.
Imagine what you see on a beach in South Florida and thats what you get in Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Pensacola Beach, etc, huge towers of condos dotted all across the beach so of course everything is super crowded.
People also don’t realize that Orange Beach and Gulf Shores were largely flattened in Hurricane Ivan. They had to rebuild once this decade already. This oil if its not taken care of quickly probably kills off Orange Beach and there will be all of this essentially residential occupancy towers with absolutely nothing to do with.
If the tourism economy that supported these things goes down because the oil stays out there too long Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Pensacola Beach, San Destin and all the rest will quickly become some of the most preminent slums in the United States.
Sometimes scraping ain’t enough. But usually suntan lotion will loosen up the crud residue and get it off.
We Have A Winner!!!
“The condo owner should get off the couch and clean his own boardwalk if he were so concerned.”
HEAR! HEAR!
Clean up your own property and then send a bill for the costs to BP.
Act like a businessman, instead of grandstanding for the Democrapic Party, Mr. “Property Owner”. Assuming you are the owner, not a manager or other employee busy acting like a SEIU operative, that is.
Oh the comments about Katrina were just asinine. And the ironic thing about it all is that for all their criticism of the media most of them bought the media’s idea that Katrina was merely a New Orleans thing or that somehow New Orleans was special in all of it and that clouded how they responded to it.
PS: And the condos, hotels and motels can help too, by setting up simple cleaning stations with paper towels and dish washing detergent bottles such as “Lemon Joy.”
I’m sure they will, out of simple self preservation of their carpets etc.
If you were in the Orange Beach area between ‘86 and ‘05 we probably passed each other by somewhere and didn’t know it.
My parents had beachfront during those years and I spent a lot of time there during those years.
This is all especially sad for me to see...
A lot of them do have cleaning stations to wash off the sand before entering the hotel. All they would have to do is include a few more cleaning items because the showers are already there.
Good post!!! But before this is over, we ALL are going to have to do what we can to help. The Feds need to LEAD but
so far, the GOVERNER’s are the ones doing the leg work. I’m still sifting through the volunteer sites but haven’t settled on where I fit in yet. This is going to be a mammoth, longterm effort.
And the Democrats of this state will make sure that the Obama Regime does not pay.
I have an idea. The state of Florida should require all welfare recipients to work beach clean up. Plenty of labor available that’s already been paid
This is Alabama were talking about here and all the white Democrats hate Obama as much as we do. They’ll gleefully throw him under the bus.
One of the lead stories in the paper today is that Fairhope is deploying its own boom now because they got tired of BP not showing up after continually telling them they would.
My daughter had her vacation planned for next weekend at Orange Beach, where she’s vacationed for the past several years. But she just cancelled and has decided to vacation this year at Panama City Beach, Florida, which is a three hounr longer drive for her. I feel for the businesses on these beaches.
You don’t get to collect attorney’s fees when you sue someone.
You have to pay that cost out of pocket unless you are lucky enough to find a lawyer to represent you pro bono, which is very, very rare.
The oil will get to Panama City soon enough.
I should point out that there’s a huge white trash criminal element in Panama City that there’s not in Orange Beach or Pensacola. Just a word to the wise here.
Here's the only distinction I'd draw - Katrina was a natural disaster. It wasn't any one's, or any one company's fault. It was just the bad luck of the draw for people choosing to live in an area of the country, a very low lying area of the country that had experienced many hurricanes before. People should have been much better prepared for something that was VERY likely to occur (eventually) again.
This is a completely man-made disaster. If a sewage pump-out truck happened to overturn on your front yard, you certainly wouldn't expect the owner of the rig to tell you to clean the sewage up yourself. You would expect, correctly, for him to clean it up and to make it look exactly like it did before the truck overturned. It's the same principle here. BP, and their business partners caused this mess, not mother nature. People have a legitimate reason to believe that BP should clean it up, all of it.
What percentage of Dems are white?
"... they got tired of BP not showing up after continually telling them they would."
Statements like this is why I believe Obama (with the media's help) will dodge any well deserved blame for his horrible mismanagement of the crisis.
No, pensacola was overrun by white trash in the 1990’s.
I do not go there without heat in the car.
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