it s been a year since the oil disaster threatened a way of life for people in the gulf coast. now cnn is taking an in-depth look at how far the recovery actually has come. our tom foreman reports. reporter: way down on grand isle where the fishermen and tourists were chased away by oil, sara rigo is waiting for them to come back to her restaurant, and for a check to cover her lost income. we re not even 50% of what we used to have. reporter: like thousands, she has filed a claim for reimbursement. but says she s received less than 10% of the more than $100,000 she believes she is owed. when you think back to those ads that bp ran promising to stay and solve everything and fix it all in the end, what do you think now? well i think they were fibbing. i just don t believe anything they tell us anymore.
and yellowing of the skin or eyes. talk with your doctor about your medicines, including those for migraine, or if you have high fever, confusion and stiff muscles, to address a possible life-threatening condition. tell your doctor about alcohol use, liver disease, and before you reduce or stop taking cymbalta. dizziness or fainting may occur upon standing. side effects include nausea, dry mouth, and constipation. [ male announcer ] ask your doctor about cymbalta. imagine you, with less pain. cymbalta can help. go to cymbalta.com to learn about a free trial offer. from the teachers to the students. i had a student the other day that said. miss stacy, this class is changing the way that i look at things. sparking that interest and showing them that math and science are exciting. it s why i teach. i know they can, even when they think they can t.
find is that it was very arbitrary. you can t say it s malicious one way or the other, but you can say that some people got a lot and some people got very little. these are the people that told us they made the same amount of money in 2009. it all depended on the paperwork you showed up with and who you talked to. $4 billion doesn t seem like a lot when you compare it to $20 billion, but we don t know what s going to happen down there. i think a lot of people have said that tonight. we have no idea what the actual damage is in the gulf and what the ultimate damage for a lot of these fishermen. i think there is a big wait and see attitude. and ken feinberg s firm makes a lot of money, no doubt about that. an absolute ton of money. mike, the bp commercials were very, very emotional, where someone would say, we will fix things, we won t leave you behind. when you look at it now, does it
you can just reach down and it coats your glove when you put your hand in it. you can see it out on the reeds coating aobut a foot or two up. the tide has gone down a little bit, but all these plants here have just been killed. they have no plan. the coast guard nor bp has a plan. there s nobody cleaning up the marsh. they told us all along the disbursements would break it apart. i want to see a plan. if you re not going to have a plan, get the hell out of the way and let us do it ourselves. i think it took us a while to realize how untransparent bp was being. we don t yet have all the answers. i m not prepared. i had no prior knowledge. i don t know. i can t speak to that. i haven t seen this. we were asking bp for interviews pretty much every day. i viewed it as my job to get some of their officials on and just ask them about discrepancies. today, just as we ve done every
puts them farther and farther behind. there s a couple numbers in that piece we heard from tom foreman i thought were stunning. first, $4 billion of $20 billion spent. right. that seems low to lots of people. what did your reporting show? and then another number, $1.25 million paid every month to ken feinberg and his law firm to administer the money. we were looking at all the money coming into one specific parish and looking at the effects of that and the cleanup and the claims, as well. as far as the claims are concerned, what we were able to find is that it was very arbitrary. you can t say it s malicious one way or the other, but you can say that some people got a lot and some people got very little. these are the people that told us they made the same amount of money in 2009. it all depended on the paperwork you showed up with and who you talked to. $4 billion doesn t seem like a