Page 3 - Control Burn News Today

Oil spill in the gulf of mexico. if weather conditions hold up, the controlled burns of the thickest parts of the spill could begin shortly. oil from a damaged undersea well is gushing into the gulf, at the rate of about 42,000 gallons a day. right now, that massive slick is slowly drifting towards the gulf coast, threatening beaches and sensitive wetlands. joining us on the phone, coast guard commander richard schultz. commander schultz, when will the decision be made whether to set fire to thi...

Will it work. >> reporter: well talk about that in a second but auto want to put it into perspective, how big it has become, the oil slick has grown to 100 miles wide and 45 miles long. the total circumference im told is 600 miles, roughly the same size as the country of jamaica. and this is really growing in terms of the size, plus is being pushed ashore and now is 20 miles or so, away from venice, louisiana, where we are and you mentioned the control burn, this is something theyve done in the ...

Latest updates on this topic.

Chris, show us whats going on behind threw. >> you bet, shepard. can you see crews are working hard to lower more of this boom on to this vessel to take it out to sea. this boom its orange in color. you see it here. its a floating barrier. they line the shoreline with this to protect the shore from that oil. im told roughly 100,000 feet of this boom already lines the coast from louisiana down to alabama and these guys are working extremely hard to get this boom out there before night fall, shep....

Latest updates on this topic.

Continuing. the weather here is finally cooperating after a couple of rough days of weather, rough seas as well. thats allowing for boats to go out and skim, and thats pulling in and theyre trying to continue to pull the oil spill, the oil sheen, into an area that they can hopefully ignite a control burn which they did last week. so because of the weather, its now cooperating, they can move forward with that. meantime, theres a lot of frustration with a lot of the fishermen here. the federal gov...