Officials Prepared For Oil Spill to Reach Mississippi Coast

According to a Sun Herald Report officials are prepared for the oil spill on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but can't be sure when, or if, it will happen.

RESPONSE TEAMS READY

BILOXI — Teams of people and equipment are working in staging areas throughout the Gulf Coast, including Biloxi and Pascagoula, in the event an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico reaches the shoreline.

Coast Guard officials don’t believe any oil will reach land for at least three days, but they said they hesitate to predict any further than that.

One state environmental official said Monday it could be weeks before anybody knows for sure.

“They’ve still got it going 30 miles offshore moving east toward Alabama and Florida,” said Earl Etheridge, on-site coordinator for the state Department of Environmental Quality. “But two to three weeks from now we could see some tar balls on the beaches of the barrier islands and possibly on the main shoreline of the three coastal counties.

“Everything is dependent on the wind current and the sea current,” he added.

The oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, and 11 of the 126 workers are missing and presumed dead, but the rest escaped. Two days later the rig sank. Officials at first believed that oil was not coming out of the rig, but on Saturday they discovered two leaks and estimate that about 1,000 barrels per day are gushing into the Gulf.