The Alaskan Oil Spill : Rock by Rock, Workers Wipe Away a Tragedy
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Every day, seven days a week, about 100 day laborers descend on the Prince William Sound area of Alaska, trying to clean up the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Among them are the workers shown in these photos from Naked Island.
Using their hands and absorbent pads that they call “diapers,” the crews painfully and slowly clean off rocks, scrub boulders and rake the muck from beaches.
Officials from Exxon, whose ship spilled the oil, say they are “responding to pressure to put somebody out there” to undo the damage. But even they admit the futility of hand-scrubbing away the effects of the massive disaster.
“What we’re doing is just a drop in the bucket, really. But you’ve got to start somewhere,” said one worker.
So, day after day, they scrub and scrub.
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