ORANGE BEACH, Alabama – “Why aren’t they sending some kind of money?” For most of the summer Jeff Hardy’s employees have outnumbered his customers. “I have lost three times more this summer since the whole BP disaster than I lost through the whole recession last year in this same time frame.”
But so far, there’s been no help from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility.
“If we were dealing with a house fire and there was smoke, the fire department would say this is an emergency. We need to put this out. Well, Orange Beach has been smoking ever since the thing blew up out there in the gulf and there’s no sense of urgency,” says Hardy.
That’s one of the issues he hopes Kenneth Feinberg will address in Orange Beach Wednesday. “Nobody has been made whole, nobody has been made that has been satisfied with what they’ve gotten.”
For Tony Stubbs owner and operator of a furniture store in Gulf Shores, tomorrow it won’t be about his claim it will be about the man himself that is under review. “He is playing with peoples lives right now.”
His store is full of furniture and not much else. “He has no idea the gravity of the situation that’s going on up here. There’s so many people that are dying right now, about to go under and all you can get out of them under review, under review,” says Stubbs.
Both men plan to attend the Feinberg meeting but hold out little hope anything will change.
“I think we’ll get more lip service. I don’t have any confidence in the world of any of the group,” says Stubbs.
“I expect it to be a lot of people that are very, very upset because nobody that I know of has gotten a check down here,” says Hardy.
That meeting is set to get underway at the recreation center in Orange Beach at 11 am. Mr. Feinberg is scheduled to speak at 12:15 pm.
See video here: http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/article/angry-residents-expected-at-orange-beach-meeting/930912/Sep-14-2010_7-46-pm/
