The iconic sign welcoming visitors to Pensacola, Fla., has become an ironic sign during the past few weeks. For years, the giant swordfish has advertised the area as the “world’s whitest beaches.” Recently, the pristine sand has been drenched in brown and orange shades of oil, which has begun to seep onto large stretches of the 28-mile beach.The oil has been slowly      flowing onto the beaches in stronger and stronger doses. Just two weeks ago, Baton Rouge resident Lolly Martin stayed in her condo in Perdido and saw few effects besides small tar balls here and there.”I’ve never seen the water as beautiful and clean as clear as it was,” Martin said.But with the failure to cap the spill and strong winds from Hurricane Alex, the oil has continued to wash on the beaches as fast as the 24-hour-a-day crew can clean it up.The effect has been quick and devastating on an economy that relies heavily on tourism. It’s a tough blow for an industry that has finally bounced back from Hurricane Ivan, which hit the area in 2004.”We were set for the best year in tourism we’ve ever had,” said Ed Schroeder, director of VisitPensacola, Escambia County’s convention and visitor’s bureau. “We had a 15-percent increase both with groups and reservations.”As more oil has spilled, fewer people have been willing to spend their summers at the beach.Cancellations came in waves. One hundred cancellations were made around the second week of the spill, according to Schroeder. June 10  — the day the first tar balls hit the beaches — saw 1,000 more cancellations.In addition, the phones have stayed ominously silent as new reservations have dried up. It’s been a week since the heaviest batch of oil hit the area, but the damage has already been done to the industry.”It’s pretty safe to say about 75 percent of our reservations that have been on the books are gone,” Schroeder said. “Some condos and hotels are 100 percent cancelled.”Oil cleanup has been a day-to-day process with cleanup crews working around the clock. Night cleanup has been the most effective because of the cooler weather.”With every change of the tide, the impact is different,” said Sonya Daniel, public information manager for Escambia County. “It’s like a windshield wiper effect. There are good days and bad days. As long as the oil is still flowing, we’re going to have a chance for oil.”Alex has been a major impact on the cleanup efforts, covering as much as 20 percent of Pensacola Beach and 40 percent of Perdido Key with tar balls. On Tuesday alone, workers collected 166,926 pounds of tar balls, oil material and sand.The beaches remain open but under a health advisory to swim at one’s own risk.”In the last two days, we’ve seen it impact the majority of our beaches,” Schroeder said. “We’d like to hope that after this hurricane spins through the Gulf and gets out of the way, this stuff stops coming on shore for a little while and gives us a chance to clean it up.The people helping to clean up the spill are a mix of British Petroleum workers and Escambia County residents. Although hundreds of volunteers went to Pensacola to clean the beach before the oil hit, there aren’t many situations where untrained workers can help. “Right now there is a tremendous desire across the country to come down here and fight this thing,” Schroeder said. “You have to be trained, equipped and placed into service to volunteer, so there isn’t really a role for them.”Schroeder said people can help by continuing to visit Pensacola for vacations.”We’ve got 28 miles of beaches, and the oil hasn’t hit all of it,” Schroeder said. “There’s always some stretch that is clean and clear and beautiful.”The future of Pensacola’s tourism industry looks bleak at the moment, Schroeder said, but it is still too early to say anything for certain until the oil is contained.”I don’t know what we’ll be facing,” he said. “Once this well is capped, there will be a sigh of relief coming across the entire country. Until it’s capped, it’s just a catastrophic effect on tourism, across the Gulf coast.”Day-by-day is the mantra in Pensacola, but even so, the oil looks like it will be in the Gulf for years to come.”Without knowing what the oil spills looks like in the future, without knowing any of that, I think it is still easier to predict that the spill will have a longer-term impact on us then a hurricane,” Schroeder said.
 
 
 
—-Contact Katherine Terrell at [email protected]