‘Silent Summer’: Portions of writer’s fictional oil spill story may come true

[csziggy]

From the Naples News, Naples, Florida; Posted May 11, 2010 at 1:59 p.m.

Editor’s note: In 1979, longtime Daily News columnist and Naples historian Doris Reynolds wrote a fictional account titled “The Silent Summer” about an oil spill just off the coast of Naples. While the Daily News normally doesn’t publish fiction, the story is eerily similar in scope to what the Gulf Coast is now facing as a result of the oil rig explosion. Her story first appeared in “Naples Now,” a magazine that Reynolds owned in the late 1970s and early 80s.

<SNIP

It took eight hours for the first oil to reach the beaches of Naples; twelve, to those in Bonita Springs. But the towns were ready. Barges with cranes aboard dotted the shore. Teams of men, women and children helped to hoist piles of oil-soaked straw onto dump trucks. On the water, vacuum hoses sucked globs of oil into tanks afloat on barges or parked along the shore. On the beached, volunteers of all ages worked from dawn to dusk, with pitchforks and rakes, gathering the oily straw as the tide brought it in.

<SNIP>

Each day the radio stations would announce the total numbers of birds saved and birds dead. By the end of the summer only three to five birds out of each hundred collected had survived. The most pathetic victims were those birds that, having returned to the rookeries, were poisoned by the oil and unable to fly great distances. Thus, they slowly perished.

The oil spread like hot fudge icing across a cake, slowly and irrevocably introducing itself among the mangroves. The smudgy tide driften down the coast, beyond Keewaydin Island to Marco and toward the Ten Thousand Islands. Day-by-day, the waters of Naples Bay darkened, and the stench of dying fish quickly became intolerable.

MORE: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/may/11/silent-summer-portions-writers-fictional-oil-spill/

I just snipped a few paragraphs from a much longer story. It is worth a read. Now multiply the scenario in this story a thousand, a million times. That is what we have to look forward to.

[LakeSamish706]

1. And the biggest problem with the real version is that so far they do not have any means

to stop the flow. This is going to be so bad in days and weeks to come that there are no words to describe what we are witnessing. I really see this disaster effecting the entire world.

[csziggy]

2. That is what is frightening me - and that they are talking about using nukes

To close it. If this were a disaster movie, I would not believe the plot. Frankly, I feel as though we are living in a Clive Cussler novel. We need Dirk Pitt to stop this thing! Just kidding, but it sure would be nice if there were some hero that came up with an implausible notion that turned out to work.

[cliffordu]

4. We need Dirk Diggler to stop this thing....

:rofl:

[Tsiyu]

3. A quick, chilling read

snip

"Along the beaches, people hearing the choked cries of {the dying birds'} distress wept with frustration and anger."


snip


K&R