The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has caused considerable damage, and the worst is yet to come: oil is expected to come ashore in the Florida Panhandle in the next few days. The Associated Press reported Thursday that some oil washed ashore at the mouth of the Mississippi River along the Louisiana coast. So far only sheens have reached some coastal waters […] No oil was found on 29 dead turtles that washed onto the Mississippi coast over the past few days. But experts won’t know until labs test tissue samples whether the turtles ate contaminated fish or jellyfish or came into contact with toxins from the oil.

You can read about the progression of the oil creep all over the Internet and on television, so we won’t repeat what you already know about it. We just wanted to say to all the people concerned by this disaster that we support them and as far as France has already been concerned by several ‘marées noires’  (oil spills), we are very well aware about the consequences of the considerable damage the oil spill will cause.

Hulksman, a regular Sama Reader, lives near New Orleans and he told us he can smell the oil already even though he can’t see it yet.  One Louisiana resident told the BBC the disaster was more serious than Katrina, the hurricane which devastated the region in 2005. “This is worse than Katrina, much worse,” he said. “Because it’ll take years and years to fix this.”

We hope the impact will not be as disastrous as announced, and that British Petroleum (BP) will pay for the cleanup operation and also compensate all those affected by the oil spill…

Image description: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (appearing as a dull gray color) is southeast of the Mississippi Delta in this May 1, 2010, image from NASA’s MODIS instrument.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team. Visit NASA Website for more.