OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) — It’s a hellish scene: giant sheets of flame racing across the Gulf of Mexico as thick, black smoke billows high into the sky.This, though, is no Hollywood action movie. It’s the real-life plan to be deployed just 20 miles from the Gulf Coast in a last-ditch effort to burn up an oil spill before it could wash ashore and wreak environmental havoc.The Coast Guard late Wednesday afternoon started a test burn of an area about 30 miles east of the delta of the Mississippi River to see how the technique was working. Crews planned to use hand-held flares to set fire to sections of the massive spill. Crews turned to the plan after failing to stop a 1,000-barrel-a-day leak at the spot where a deepwater oil platform exploded and sank.A 500-foot boom was to be used to corral several thousand gallons of the thickest oil on the surface, which will then be towed to a more remote area, set on fire, and allowed to burn for about an hour.If the hour-long test burn was successful, rig operator BP PLC was expected to continue the oil fires as long as the weather cooperated. The burns were not expected to be done at night.About 42,000 gallons of oil a day are leaking into the Gulf from the blown-out well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
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