Smelly Gulf Breeze

We don't know if it's related to BP's river Great Lake of oil, due south by about 50 miles, but this afternoon the Pensacola suburban town of Gulf Breeze -- just off 3-Mile Bridge -- smelled horrible to us. BeachLover noticed it, too. She writes: "Essence of oil was the perfume of the day in Gulf Breeze proper mid-morning."

Actually, it smelled to us more like the Cayahoga River, circa 1969.

Sure enough, the Pensacola News Journal is reporting this afternoon that "A fuel-like odor throughout parts of Escambia County could be related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

The Escambia County Emergency Operation Center received reports of the smell this afternoon. There is no measurement data for petroleum-like substances in the air, but officials have reported the smell to a BP hotline and the source is being investigated, according to an EOC press release.

We have to say this: BP can shovel all the money it wants into Florida "to support the [tourist] industry’s efforts to provide accurate information about the state of the beaches across the region.” But if the smell that assaulted us today persists over the coming weeks and months, it won't do a bit of good except, perhaps, to attract those few tourists who suffer from incurable anosmia.

Dept of Amplification
5-20 pm

Duncan Black reacts to Florida Senate candidate Kendrick Meek's 'demand' that BP give more money to Florida to be used for tourist advertising:

Now, in a world where people have the wrong idea that Florida is about to be covered in a glorious rainbow in chocolate sheen and are therefore not making travel plans there's a certain logic to this. However, in a world where Florida is actually about to be covered in a glorious rainbow in chocolate sheen I don't really think a tourism ad campaign is going to do the trick.

But Duncan forgets about all those tourists without working noses who are dying to visit Florida!