Town Hall Meeting Take 2: A Return to Lafitte, La.
Residents of this fishing community discuss how they're adjusting after spill.
July 14, 2010 — -- Diane Sawyer of "World News" returned to Lafitte, La., this week to catch up with some of the men and women she'd spoken with two months ago, when the Deepwater Horizon oil leakDeepwater Horizon oil leak was entering its fifth week.
In May, residents of Lafitte expressed a growing anger and frustration over BP's inability to contain the oil spill in the Gulf, and the federal government's response. On Tuesday, about 80 residents attended a town hall meeting with Sawyer at the Griffin Fishing Charter, a local fishing lodge, to discuss the crippling effects of the disaster on their lives and finances.
Watch "World News" on ABC tonight for more of Diane Sawyer's town hall conversation.
Tony Ting is co-owner of Barn Bayou, a canoe and fishing boat rental whose business has come to a screeching halt since the oil began spilling. Ting said he had no hope that all would be well even if tests showed that BP's cap had stopped the leak.
"Even after they cap it and it keeps coming in for a month or two months or three months, we still got to live here. They still got to clean it up. Then they got to try [to] restore. Then we have to convince people that we're not soaked in oil two years from now so they'll come back here as tourists or buy our seafood again," said Ting.
"We all know the reality that everything that has already leaked into the Gulf is going to change our lives drastically. ... So much has already been [done] to us that our lives are drastically changed. The world has been changed," said Ting's wife, Nancy Ting, also attending the town hall meeting.
This is a community that was already struggling before the spill -- recovering from hurricanes that had struck the region and trying to compete against purveyors of cheap, imported seafood.
"Ordinarily, people who live down here, you live with the storms. ... You realize what's going to happen. Water comes in, it goes out, you rebuild your life and thank the Lord," said one man. "If oil gets on our property .... we don't know what we're facing. And that's the big issue that has a lot of people scared. You've got businesses and you've got homes down here that people could lose that have been here all their lives."
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