Beach hotels all along the Gulf Coast are dreading the approach of oil slicks from the massive recent massive oil spill. We get this report on Pensacola beach hotels from the AP:
Florida tourism leaders and workers from Pensacola to Key West grew increasingly angry and worried Monday as an oil slick created by a blown out drilling rig off Louisiana moved closer to the state’s shores and threatened their livelihoods.
Gov. Charlie Crist expanded a state of emergency Monday to include 19 counties from Escambia in the Panhandle to Sarasota in southwest Florida. The massive spill caused by the explosion of a BP PLC oil rig two weeks ago has been slowly moving toward Florida and oil might start washing ashore in the Panhandle by Tuesday and could reach the Keys by the weekend.
“We have an ecological and environmental disaster in the making,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said at a tourism meeting Monday in Orlando. “This could not only be an economic disaster for Florida and our $65 billion tourism industry, which depends on pristine beaches but also an environmental disaster because of our bays and estuaries that spawn so much marine life. People in the Panhandle are panicked. They’re about to start their tourism season and they’re facing the oil spill.
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