Gulf Residents Grow Desperate in BP Claim Wait

(CBS)  As oil continues to spread through the Gulf of Mexico, the damage grows by the day. At least 110,000 claims have been filed with BP so far, and $183 million have been paid out.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

But tens of thousands of people are still waiting for their claims to be paid, running out of patience and money, CBS News Correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.

Twelve weeks into the oil spill Karen Hopkins is desperate.

"For the first time in my life, I applied for food stamps," Hopkins said.

In better days, Hopkins made $4,000 a month working for Blanchard Seafood in Grand Isle, La., but because of the fishing ban work has come to a halt. BP paid her $2,500 for lost wages last month, and another $730 for rental assistance. On Tuesday morning, she was told the rental help was going away.

"He said, 'Things are changing, and we can't do that anymore,'" Hopkins said.

All of the employees at Blanchard Seafood live in company housing. It's part of their salary, but because it doesn't show up in income tax returns under new BP rules it's not factored into compensation.

"They've taken away every ounce of security that I've had," Hopkins said.

Forty-two thousand claims are on hold or being adjusted downward because of what BP calls "insufficient paperwork." Another 13,000 are stalled because of "bad contact information."

"We intend on getting the money out, but we've got to look for ways to do it faster, and we will," Darryl Willis, a BP vice president, said.

Yet even people who keep meticulous records are battling BP. Dean Blanchard owns Blanchard Seafood. He's lost over a million dollars in net profit already. BP has paid him a fraction of that, $165,000. It's not nearly enough.

"I don't know anybody in my business that has lost something that believes that BP made an attempt to make them whole," Blanchard said.

In about three weeks, Kenneth Feinberg will be the ultimate authority on claims instead of BP, and people like Hopkins will have a decision to make: take a settlement or sue.

"I feel like a criminal that's being sentenced for a crime I didn't commit," said Hopkins. "It's scary."

With her job, her home and her future on the line, like thousands of others here, this may just be the beginning of Hopkins's nightmare.

More Oil Spill Coverage

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Obama Admin. Ordered BP to Halt Well Work
Gulf Coast Hotels Aim to Soothe Oil Worries
Gov't Hopes New Drilling Moratorium Survives
Allen: New Cap Could Seal Oil Leak Completely

[pragmatist1]

Obama appointed Kenneth Feinberg is the one overseeing the legitimacy of claims and coordinating the payout of the additional $20B BP has set aside for claims that haven't already been issued. Recently, Feinberg mentioned that many claimants are trying to get claims without any type of back-up documentation which proves the worthiness of the claims and supports amounts some claimants are due. Either claimants can prove their losses and get a settlement or not; if they can't support their losses with proper documentation, then that's the claimant's fault, not BP's.

[ajvw]

pragmatist - thank you, kept me from writing the same thing.

[nonhater]

This tradgety will be the one of very, very significant catastrophes that will never completely be reversed. Whenever there are tornado's or hurricanes of the Katrina or Camille (1969) intensity, floods, even the Exxon Valdez spill, we were always able to rebuild or repair so that victims of any disaster usually, with a certain amount of help, be it governmental help with money or temporary housing, and friends, neighbors, & family, usually came out of it relatively well. But this? I really have my doubts. And the way BP is handling this is like watching a three stooges film festival. I wonder how the British Government or for that matter the British fishing industry would react if this would have happened off of their coast. They'd be crapping a brick, especially if the rig in question was owned by a US oil company. I realize that it's not the time to point fingers, there will be plenty of time for that after the leak is finally capped. But, for BP's part, the last thing they should be doing is to start jerking people around about getting paid. Even when this first happened, fishing boats were working dawn to dark trying to spread booms over leak areas. I was watching the news one night, and it showed a fishing boat captain pulling an oil soaked boom aboard his vessel, which was covered with oil. Clearly, this craft was so filthy with oil, it could never be used for fishing ever again. But the part that really moved me was when the cameraman showed the Captain pulling the boom aboard, crying. And the biggest travesty was the fact that he and many, many other fishing boats were out doing the same thing, and not one oil drenched fisherman had ever been paid up to that point. BP says that it was a clerical mistake or some such load of crap. I wonder how long it took to get those people paid? With all of the technology being used to get to, and successfully creating new sources of oil, I wonder why there was no established protocol to follow. Especially after the Exxon Valdez incident. They should have come up with at least a general procedure so that in the event of another spill, leak, what ever, someone would have an idea on how to proceed. I wonder if there will be anything learned by the oil companies after this mess. Maybe all sea located oil rigs will have the caps necessary to minimize or even stop a leak of this magnitude. But, they can't even pay the people cleaning up their mess on time, so why would I think the oil companies would pay for caps on the sea rigs?

[billyboyC]

I understand BP is paying all the BP service stations first who say they have lost income due to non support by the AMerican public. So I hope you get in line down there cause you guys are the ONLY ones getting any money right now. The rest of America is looking for jobs. Don't count on the Gul;f clean up to get you back into employment since all the oil on the bottom of the Gulf can't be cleaned up and has killed all the flora and other sea creatures that the fish fed off of. It's lose/lose situation. 20 billion dollars is not enough and will never bring back the Gulf Coast.

[cleantheDCcesspool]

Don't fret, folks. obamao is all over your situation, it is his first priority, right after jobs. Oops, I mean right after rebuilding New Orleans. Oops, right after he gets back from Maine. Oops, gotta get to Michigan for a speech. Oops, got his tenth tee time lined up since the spill began. Oh, sorry, got a fundraiser in Nevada, then he'll be on it.

[fiberglass3]

Element51 - Many thanks for your comments. You said it correctly.

Clean likes to find fault with a President who is working very hard at his job. I would re-elect President Obama in a heart beat.

[MercuryGlass]

Really element 51? My 12 year old son could do a better job of handling this crisis than our current POTUS.
The Gulf of Mexico is more important than any president, any union, any corporation or any elected official's career.
Once they new what a cluster **ck this was, the man should have moved his immediate staff to a hotel on the gulf coast until this apocalypse was over. At the minimum, he should have accepted every country's offer of help and be holding video conferences with the affected governors on a minimum daily basis. Maybe then Mr. Kick-ass could have done something to help.

>>Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf. Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis. The Coast Guard and the EPA issued a joint temporary rule suspending the regulation on June 29?more than 70 days after the spill.<<

>>Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act. I belonged to a union for twenty years. I'm ashamed that the maritime union didn't make a public statement demanding that every asset offered be allowed to join the battle.

Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation?that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.

To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we "embrace a clean energy future." In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?<<

I was a member of Greenpeace from the beginning...I've cancelled my membership in every one of the groups who took out the add in the WaPo defending the president's handling of this crisis. It's been shameful from the start. Hell, the EPA can't even find the balls to stop the use of the dispersant. That's going to come back and haunt us. I can't recall if it's a teaspoon or tablespoon full of oil per amount of water that would fill an Olympic swimming pool...but that's how little oil can disrupt the reproductive hormones of salmon. Now we have managed to disperse a huge amount of the spill into a soup that is going to harm the food chain in ways we can't even imagine. Carville, Cousteau and the ex-CEO of Shell Oil would have been a better team than POTUS. He didn't have to wave his hand, he should have simply gotten the hell out of the way!