CNN– When you’re on vacation or live in a coastal community, it’s a symbol you
simply don’t want to see: a no-swimming sign, along with a beach health
advisory.
More than two months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Pensacola awoke Wednesday to the largest onslaught of black crude on Florida’s coast, as more than nine miles of white shoreline and beaches were soaked with syrupy oil.
A health advisory has been issued by Escambia County for parts of Pensacola Beach and Fort Pickens.
“It’s pretty ugly. There’s no question about it,” Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said. “It does break your heart.”
Surrounded by hundreds of BP cleanup workers wearing protective suits in the sweltering heat, Crist toured the area by helicopter and on foot, and he thanked workers for their efforts.
“Its like Jimmy Buffett said, we don’t want to take the ‘sky is falling’ attitude about this,” he said of the musician and coastal activist.
“We want to see it, we want to address it, we want to clean it up and stay after it and stay after it and stay after it. … It’s the attitude we have to take,” he said.
Oil also washed up on nearby Perdido Key, where workers cleaned up 8 tons of tar balls.
Read more about Oil Soaking Miles of Beaches.
© CNN, 2010
Photo by flickr user USFWS/Southeast
This is such a heartbreaking image. Florida beaches are some of the most beautiful and pristine in the world; when you add the destruction of wildlife into the equation, it becomes unfathomable.