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♪ [music playing throughout] ♪♪
When the disaster occured, when the explosion of the
rig occured, I really was interested in going down
to Louisiana and doing some filming of the environment.
But the expense was a little too much for me just to go.
So after about a month of listening to reports and seeing
it all on the media, I got to talking to some individuals here
at Eastern, and what happened was it inspired me to go beyond
my own personal finances and ask for additional funds to take a
group of three students down.
And so basically there were three students from WEIU, Center
for Academic Technology Support (CATS), and the
Geology/Geography department, and we all went down there to go
and experience this.
What I told the kids was, we were not going down there with a
preconcieved notion of what were going to see, although it is
very difficult but at least we could go down there without any
storyline for the documentary or the project, but go down there
and experience it, so that was the priority for this project.
I think coming from this standpoint, this was a different
opportunity that a lot of students do not get to receive.
We had the chance to go down to the Gulf Coast which is unique
for really any documentary group, any news organzation,
especially because of the distance, coming from the
midwest and being able to go down to the gulf coast is a very
unique experience.
And then on top of that to be coming from a university setting
and to be able to actually go down there and get the hands on
experience of speaking with people who are directly affected
and also indirectly affected by this disaster and also having
the opportunity to get the firsthand experience of what was
going on down there and not just seeing it from other media
outlets but being able to see it first hand through our own eyes.
I think we're extremely fortunate to get
down here on a day like this.
We could have gotten in a car and driven 14 hours, and it
could have been raining or just a cloudy day, and we had just a
perfect beautiful sunny day and it
couldn't have been any better.
Guards are nice and let us down there and I think you'll have to
change your shorts after this is all said and done after all
that, but it's a pretty awesome experience.
>> Zach: I don't know, it's kind
of sad to be honest, I never thought of Grand Isle
as a place where people lived, I just heard
about it and oil and I never put two and two together, but
driving out here I think that really is a solemn feeling,
driving out here and seeing all the houses and the signs that
people had up, saying things about BP where it really shows
that it's impacting people.
And I think that's something that I never really thought of,
I never thought that people actually lived here.
I thought it was just a little island, it hurt the environment
but I never realized it had such an impact
on the people who were here.
>> Cameron: First, after dealing with
the law enforcement, the first feeling was,
"What just happened?"
Because when we cross that, we see all of the booms, we see
military personnel, but what we didn't expect, what I didn't
expect was a completely clean beach.
That was, what happened to the story?
What happened to everything we see on the media, or saw on the
media, that completely changed our attitude as far as actually
seeing it firsthand.
And so they cleaned it up pretty quickly.
Now there was an individual that came, that went down to Grand
Isle a week before we arrived, that we arrived, and they found,
they took pictures, and there was oil everywhere.
And when we went down there, it was all cleaned up, so it was
very impressive.
It was quite mind boggling to think that it's never going to
be perfect, we're setting foot on this beach, it's never going
to be like it was.
You're on a barrier right on the Gulf of Mexico who's name is
Daulphin Island, spelled, D, A, U, L, P, H, I, N, it has a very
rich history from the French, Spanish, British, it was a
hotbed during the Civil War, so there's a lot of historic value
to our little island.
But our little island is originally was only 14 miles
long, very narrow, and hurricane Katrina cut off seven miles of
the island, which luckily for us was undeveloped.
So we have a little seven mile island, and there's
approximately 1100 registered voters.
We're so small we don't even have a traffic light.
And it's a bedroom community, like semi-resort.
And the beach houses that people come down and rent are homes
that individuals own they're not large corporations, there are
two small, well not too small, there are two developments of
condominiums and they're also rented.
But there are days that even during the season one can walk
on the beach and you may see one or two people it's just not like
jones beach in New Jersey, this is a very quiet good place to
bring a book resort island.
The sands on our beaches are sugar white, unlike California,
or the northeast we have no stones, there's no coral, it's
pure white sand.
The only thing that ever really mars the sand it would be
seaweed, or an occasional seagull dropping by.
You know, most of the gulf has handled this with grace, with
the grace that the gulf gives us.
We work, we don't mind working, that's what we do, and we don't
want a handout, but we would like what's fair.
And we want to make sure, and we're going to fight for what's
fair, and what's right.
But I don't want to have to wait 30 years like they did with
Exxon Valdez with the settlements and everything I
mean that's not right either.
>> Zach: I would have to say one
of the most powerful interviews I thought,
was coming from Amy, Amy Vice, just because, and I
don't know if it was because she talked about her family and how
just her little daughter was affected by this oil spill, how
she couldn't go swimming, how she was asking questions, how
they were worried about their island being shut down and her
preschool being shut down.
I don't know if that was it but she really brought it down to a
personal level and showed, it's not just affecting businesses,
it's not just affecting the economy it was affecting her
home life, her personal life.
She spent numerous hours, extra hours at work, trying to deal
with reservations and problems with clients because of this oil
spill, so she was away from home and then she was still
explaining this to her daughter about what was going on.
And it really showed how, just this spill
affected every walk of life down there.
Whether we're talking about businesses, whether we're
talking about just home life, it affected everyone.
The situation with Daulphin Island right now with this BP
oil spill has had a major impact on our businesses on the town,
just the perception of the oil, even if the oil isn't on the
beach, it's very damaging to the fishermen, the oystermen, and
on this little island that's what they all do, they're all
involved in that line of work.
And it ripples down to everybody, if they're not
selling seafood, they're not buying something else, but we've
had a lot of cancellations, and like I say even if the oil isn't
on the beach the perception that's given, like through the
media and everything else, it might as well be there because
it has the same effect.
It started the first weekend of May, and our phone, we walked in
that Monday morning, we had 52 messages waiting for us to pick
up in the morning.
Our phone never stopped until, probably a
week ago, this past Friday.
>> female speaker: Everything is cancelled.
>> Robin: Everything, basically the
majority of our reservations are cancelled
so we're not receiving the cancellation calls
anymore, the phone has stopped ringing, we should be receiving
calls for reservations, all we've received is cancellation
calls and it's just a completely different change of not only
lifestyle, but in the way of doing
business on Daulphin island.
We're having to change gear and rewrite everything that we do.
>> Mary: It's like a silent killer,
is what it is.
Invasion is a good way to describe it.
We have more people on this island from BP than
we have residents.
>> Robin: First, when the rig exploded
and then several days later they found
out that the well head was leaking, I think
at that point in time it hit us that we're at the head of the
gulf, we're in the Gulf of Mexico, we're a barrier island
but we are populated and I think that that's when it first
started to hit us.
And then of course the panic set in with the crews coming onto
the island, setting up all the command centers, just a mass
influx of workers being here, and we were kind of in a state
of confusion, chaos,
>> male speaker: Occupation.
>> Robin: Yeah we were really
frightened and then of course the phone
calls started with the cancellations because
of the media coverage on it.
And it wasn't also necessarily negative coverage, but it's a
negative perception.
They moved in with large crews, quite a few weeks ago, and the
island hasn't been the same since, because there's so many
people on the island.
The media made it look like we were just slathered with oil for
months now, so tourism dropped in a hurry.
>> Amy: Instead of a happy go lucky
vacation island and tourist island, we're now the
contractor island, and it's a total different feel for
us, and trying to raise a family here, and trying
to keep everything as normal as possible
on the human side, I mean on that
side, it's completely different.
It's like, "Gracie, it's okay to come outside
today, we don't smell fuel."
And we haven't smelled fuel in probably a
week and half, two weeks.
So, they just opened our swimming waters
again, so now we can go in the water.
And that's what we do, we swim, we fish, and we rent the island,
or sell the island and we want people to enjoy us.
>> Mary: Our little Daulphin Island,
the three months that these businesses operate
is kind of like Christmas for a big
store, what they make during the summer gets them through the
winter, because things really slow down.
So, to lose all the rentals and whatever business you're in,
selling snow cones, or whatever you're not making the money you
thought you'd make and a lot of our fishermen, because they've
been closed down since [unclear dialogue] season closed down,
you know even shrimping season closed down, so you know they're
hired on with BP just to make some money to
keep their head about water.
>> Zach: And just to hear
the stories about how this island
was affected by Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ivan, the
oil, and just to get that view where, these people really
feared that, their home, this little island where they set up
their lives, would become a toxic wasteland.
That's something that you really don't hear about
in the United States.
I mean coming from the midwest, coming from Illinois, I've never
looked at my home and worried what if one day
I couldn't come back here?
What if there was some disaster where it
just became a toxic dump?
That's not something that you really think about.
>> Mary: Well Katrina we had came
from the gulf, from the south, and Ivan,
the year before, came from the north
because we were on opposite sides of the storm.
So for the first time in many years the island, the whole
island got flooded in areas that hadn't been like the village
areas, even this house had water up in it, which hadn't happened
since it had been built in 1912.
So, when Katrina came, the water came from the south but it
reached the whole public beach area, took all the dunes down
and then came right back down the boulevard and everybody got
drowned again.
Our homes that were on the boulevard.
Those that are up high didn't have as much damage on the east
end of the island, where we are right now, but the west end we
lost over 300 homes with Katrina.
>> Mary: I think they're depressed
because like I say, with a hurricane you
feel a little more in control, this you
don't have any control and you want to do something but you
don't know what to do.
You know sometimes you wonder if they know what to do to tell you
the truth, but for an average person they can't go out and
clean the birds, they can't unless you're skimming or
something you feel helpless.
So it's not a good feeling.
>> Mary: Since Ivan and Katrina, we
haven't had as good of tourism until this year.
It's been slowly building but this was the best year we've had
and then it went put.
So it's something we got to adapt to.
>> Mary: I would say in the long term
effect, it's probably worse than Katrina, yes.
As the long range potential loss is probably going to be worse
than Katrina, and that was bad.
I think we've gone through several stages of frustration.
First, it was disbelief that it would continue to go.
We felt that it would be, definitely an end in sight.
We're not an island surrounded by oil, we're
an island that has gas rigs.
So we don't have typically the results of
oil rigs here in this area.
It's become a complete frustration as of May 1st.
In our business we have 118 vacation rentals, we make 75% of
our entire revenues in the three months that we're going through
business right now.
We have had 228 cancellations in those five weeks and we are down
to probably running in the range to 35-40% of our total annual
revenues with just that short time.
That's devastation.
Then you have the impact that the BP claims process, which is
a joke at best.
They are putting personal payments out, so there's a lot
of people getting small checks.
The businesses that need larger checks to pay for their payroll,
their overhead, is getting nowhere.
They're getting $5,000 against a $60,000 claim.
>> Mary: They did ask me if I
wanted to go and make a claim, and I said, "No, I
need to work for our money, we don't need to go make a claim."
>> Zach: The people we spoke
with, they just want their normal lives back.
They don't want any gain out of this, they don't want to make
money or profit off of this, they just
want everything back to normal.
And I think this documentary will really show that, and it
really shows just the human spirit and how people can come
together in light of a natural disaster, and help one another
out and really brainstorm about, "How do we solve this problem?"
And, "How do we get back to where we started from?"
>> Cameron: A situation occured immediately
after we got back from the trip last summer.
And I took the one hour interview on the porch, the
porch on Daulphin Island, and I played that hour interview for
individuals, for my senior seminar class, and it was the
most exciting educational moment in the
10 years I've been teaching.
After that interview was done, the students were just, duh duh
duh talking and chatting and debating all the issues that
were presented in that one hour.
And I didn't have to say anything.
Their attitude and their perception and their ideas
changed about this event.
Of course it was immediately after the event, but the thing
is that they were discussing and critically thinking about the
event through the eyes of the people they were seeing.
>> male speaker: What if that does happen?
>> Amy: I don't know.
>> Kelby: We don't know.
BP says there's no buyout plan.
>> Amy: I moved to be here, I
mean, we chose this.
And I don't want to leave this, and it's
scary, but you can't think about it.
>> Kelby: Every morning, that BP
ad you guys are seeing on TV, the big BP ad, Tony
Heyward saying, "We are going to pay every legitimate claim."
The pay every legitimate claim is a legal word that they have
been using whether it's the little guy sitting down here in
our little claim center, in bayou [unclear dialouge], in
Louisiana, and according to the attorneys that means we will pay
as little as we can get by with, and that
needs to be thought about.
BP is huge, this is a terrible problem for them and their
company, but what they are doing is, at this point, already
starting to evade the actual process and slowing it down.
Doing partial payments instead of making companies hold
their...
>> male speaker: Token payments.
>> Kelby: Token payments at best.
>> Amy: Well, and they changed
the process everyday.
I mean one day the National Guard will walk in with a list
of things that companies and property owners need to provide,
the next day eight of them walks in with a list of things that
somebody needs to provide.
Well the first time it was BP claims adjusters that would come
in with this, second time was National Guard, third time was
[unclear dialogue], and then we go or call or a property owner
goes and calls and it's a totally new list.
And then they put on these PR tents and air condition and
weenie roasts and all this other kind of crap, I don't care about
a weenie roast I would like to, anyway.
It's totally different.
I mean they'll smile big, but they perform nothing, and they
have done nothing.
And then you get into the anger.
>> Jim: Amy let me tell you about
the BP personnel rotation, every two
weeks, they rotate them around.
But the people who leave, don't leave any records on what you or
you have talked to, and the new person coming in says, "Bring me
up to speed on this."
Or, "I need, and repeat what you did 10 days earlier."
So it's a ploy, it's a tactic.
It's a stall.
>> Kelby: And they're asking for
information that, this is a foreign oil company,
they have no business with my personal tax
records, they have no business with my social security number,
that has absolutely nothing to do with my proof
of loss for the month.
That is all the heck they need.
But oh no, we have a homeowner right now that one of the phones
that was ringing here beside me, that was a homeowner that had
put her house on the rental program, they are demanding that
she gives her social security number, she's saying, "No.
I've been told it's optional."
The head of the BP claims here, a guy named Paul, said, "No, you
must give us your social security number or the claim
process will not go forward."
Why does BP have any right to our personal business, including
social security numbers?
That's why it's got to get the government between them and us.
>> Cameron: The film is put together
so that there's very little narration.
We want the viewer to make up their own mind, to hear the
stories of the individuals that were impacted
by the situation, the disaster.
And I want people to understand what it is to live in harms way.
These people, a great deal of these number of people, have
already experienced Katrina, and they just got done dealing with
Katrina, and then this thing happens.
And so you become, you empathize with them,
you become more aware of their world.
And I think that's very important this film will
provide a different world view for the viewer.
And without us actually telling the story but letting the
interviewees tell their story.
>> Zach: I think for me personally,
it shows that you always need to look at the bigger picture.
No matter what is going on, whether we're talking about
natural disasters, war, famine, anything like that, you need to
look at the bigger picture.
Because a lot of times, what we see on TV and the stories we
hear, it's usually the worst case scenarios.
It's usually the worst of the worst because that's what a lot
of people want to hear, that really sends the
message home of what is going on.
But there is a much broader view.
And I think this helped me to realize that you need to look
at the big picture and you need to see what exactly is going on,
you need to look at all the different elements, all the
different aspects of the situation and until you do that,
you really don't get a true feel for what's going on.
♪ [music playing throughout] ♪♪
>> Kelby: I'm talking about just
simply being allowed to continue to make a living.
We're not talking about now, "Let's get rich on this thing,
BP's got all the money."
We're talking about trying to survive and earn what we were
already in the process of earning just to keep our payroll
in place, to keep things in place.
>> Mary: Even that the oil may come to
the shores, we'll still go down and watch the sun go
down and watch it rise, you know, so it's just home.
>> Kelby: You go across, you go
to the fishermen, the shrimpers in Louisiana that I got the
pleasure to meet a couple weeks back, those
folks are doing what we're doing.
They're working six days a week, but they do it because they love
it, and they do it because their sons and their generations are
moving on, it's something they've
developed as a lifestyle.
It's not all, "Today I'm going to sell cars, tomorrow I think
I'm going to sell real estate."
It's not that.
It's what the price you pay to live in paradise, and hopefully
we'll be back to paradise.
[no dialogue]