was talking about, about the latest of how alex is impacting the entire region. it s impacting the effort to clean up. first the latest pictures. this is pensacola beach. this is just from yesterday. every day i m looking at the latest high-resolution images we re getting. this is clumps of oil littering the beach in pensacola. this is one more right here. this is over at forshaun beach. this is also on wednesday. you can see the damage taking place. let s go to the latest video we have and i ll talk to you about this. we could hear that alex could keep impacting the area for days. one of the first ways it s having an impact right now is on boom. one is containment boom designed to prevent the oil from getting further. well alex is creating heavy seas, heavy seas are moving these boom to a large extent. and in certain areas, they re no longer able to contain it. that s one problem. next problem, new video out here, skimmers. there are hundreds of skimmers that are out there to try to c
again, flash flood warnings popping up in parts of louisiana and also parts of texas. it s not over yet, i don t want people to think because the storm made landfall that they don t need to let up their guard. actually keep their guard up because there s the flooding. back to you. all right, bonnie, thanks so much. as you just heard from reynolds, heavy seas did shut down the containment efforts 600 miles away from the eye of the storm. the latest on the gulf oil spill. the coast guard says rough seas are tossing around miles of containment boom, 500 ship has to return to shore. reinforcements are on the way in what is being called the world s largest oil skimmer. it s a tanker from taiwan called a whale. 3 1/2 stores long, 10 stories high. and bp says despite the rough sea, the drilling is continuing on the relief wells. two taskers over the wellhead
got a lot of oil that is washing up on the beach area in louisiana. that is where rick leventhal is now. talk to me a little bit about what it looks like on the beach there today. reporter: unfortunately because of the rough weather yesterday there was a safety stand down for all the beach cleanup workers. all the oil that we showed you yesterday is still on the beach today, the sand is saturated all the way up to the edge of the water. then you see this thick rust, red, brown oil that coats the ground there, coats all the material that is being used to mop it up. it s coating the containment boom and you see trash bags filled with some of the stuff that was collected. one little bit of good news, keep to your left there, guy, you ll see workers arriving now, martha, on the beach. they are going to begin scooping some of this stuff up today, but an awful job. thinks just one stretch of the beach, martha and the oil is worth in either direction. martha: that is not the scene you expec
in the gulf, hundreds, some further west, have been ever evacuated and the majority of rigs have in the, though, but other news, rough surf is breaking up the bigger plumes of oil and they are saying that the high winds could help that oil evaporate but it has forced skim are ships and clean up vessels back to shore and causing problems with the containment boom, as well, so the rough weather is hampering clean up efforts and it should be here for at least a few more days. live from the beach in louisiana tonight, thank you. the man who will try to determine compensation for many of the oil spill victims says help is on the way. our correspondent reports on the capitol hill visit today. victims of 9/11, of agent orange during the vietnam war, and of the virginia tech massacre, all were guided through the process of filing and receiving compensation claims by this man,
the weather has gotten worse? as you mentioned, a the lot of the skimmers have been granted. apparently where we are is one of the only ones where skimmers were actually operating but most of the cleanup vessels had been grounded because of the particularly rough seas and the containment boom, a lot of it has been pulled up because there s fears it would break free and that vessel is supposed to be out at the site to double the containment of the leak, that has been delayed until next week because the seas are too rough. what s this talk of another potential setback in that oil containment operation, rick? they wanted to bring it in there and set it up and increase the amount of oil and now because of this storm, they re saying not only can they not bring that ship in, they may have to suspend containment operations until after the storm passes. there s talk of evacuating the site completely and thad allen