two, there is still oil on the beaches. it is not easy to clean up if at all and there will likely be more particulates rolling up on the beaches in the weeks to come. this story is not over. it s fascinating that you can t actually see the oil and you used that equipment and it becomes very visible. still a big mystery in terms of where all of this oil has gone. there is a new snap shot here of the oil disaster after a hundred days, an estimated 3 million to 5.2 million barrels of crude that oozed into the gulf before the new well cap sealed that leak about two weeks ago. now more than 1 million barrels of crude have been collected or burned. more than 825,000 barrels of oily liquid has been skimmed from the gulf and almost 2 million gallons of dispersants have been used to break up the oil on the water surface and beneath it. now to the breaking news out of arizona. a federal judge temporarily blocked part of the state s controversial immigration law
the whole delay on this operation is going to be on the order of five to seven days. but that s certainly better than 10 to 14 which we once feared. skimming operations also have been halted, at least temporarily, for this storm. but they ve slowed down as well because they ve done a really good job over the last eight, nine days with the help of the well cap. i ve had the opportunity to talk to some of these hard-working people trying to clean up the gulf of mexico. one was a u.s. coast guard cutter. on the deck of that skimmer, it s pretty slippery and dirty work. check it out. using the equivalent of a leaf blower to blow up these booms and get them filled up with air like balloons. how much of a mess does that look like? and it hasn t even started skimming yet. what s the process? first, you ve got to make sure that ain t tangled. lift it up off the deck and then
also underwater cameras are being pulled out. the extent of this delay still to be determined. maybe 10 days? also this means that that new well cap that stopped the flow of the oil will be untouched for 48 hours. meanwhile, the reason they ire all down there, this picture. that massive explosion in the gulf. chief engineer tech for transocean testified that the night of april 20, k in the m3: morning, the fire alarm did not sound. why? hear it for yourself pop i discovered it was inhibited about a year ago. i inquired as to why it was inhibited. the explanation i got was that they did not want people woke up at 3:00 in the morning for false alarms. hold on.
what ships in the gulf of mexico are getting ready to head back to the site of the bp oil spill. they pulled it out friday ahead of then tropical storm bonnie. but the storm crossed southern florida and is now pretty much breaking apart. let s go to steve hair began live in the gulf coast and steve, how is the storm going to effect cleanup efforts now? kelly, a lot less effect than originally planned for, some ships ordered away two nights ago have been ordered back to the site of the well and cause a delay to get them hooked up back to the pipe and relief well drilling. not as bad as we thought it could be a few days ago. it s been an about-face. as far as the temporary well cap there s concern about leaving them unmonitored and some of the ships, have the cameras back up and it s a sense of dodging a bullet here, at least in the short-term. in the longer term. that storm could churn up the water and we could see where the storm surge, some of the water hitting the marshes here and
helped to save. and he is the subject of the first house ethics committee corruption trial in a decade, but you might be surprised at what congressman charles rangel s constituents are saying right now. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer, and you are in i m wolf blitzer, and you are in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com hundreds of vessels, and thousands of people all being evacuated right now as the threat of the storm named bonnie halts the massive response to the gulf oil disaster. we are following all of the latest developments. among them, the storm has already made a first landfall hitting south of miami with 40-mile-an-hour winds and it is now a tropical depression, but it could gain strength as it moves over the gulf of mexico. the evacuation is expected to delay operations at the well site by at least 10 days. maybe longer. and it means that the new well cap that stopped the flow of oil will b