TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
The suicide of an Alabama charter-boat captain on Wednesday came as waves of trauma washed over fishermen and their families throughout the Gulf Coast.
Hoping to avoid similar tragedies in Florida, state officials are asking BP for $1.7 million for crisis-intervention services in the Panhandle counties where families who have spent generations fishing the Gulf of Mexico fear their way of life may soon end.
To endure the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster now, after barely having emerged from the destruction of 2004's Hurricane Ivan, is "the equivalent, quite frankly, of someone who's had two tours of Afghanistan and has come home and is now facing redeployment," said George Sheldon, the secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
His request for 57 mental-health counselors in eight Panhandle counties is being considered by state officials and BP.
"It's the knowledge of what they've already been through and the desperation of what they might be going through," Sheldon said.
Capt. Allen Kruse, who spent more than 20 years fishing in the Gulf just across the Alabama-Florida state line, shot himself in the head on Wednesday. He died just hours before Florida officials were to discuss the urgent need to bring mental-health aid to Panhandle residents suffering from the stress of the ongoing disaster with no end in sight.
Many Panhandle families are just now recovering from the trauma of Ivan and hoped that this summer would provide a financial shot-in-the-arm for the economically depressed region.
Instead, work as they knew it ground to a halt for charter-boat captains such as Kruse. Now they are scouring the Gulf for signs of oil in the hope that they can help prevent the greasy fluid from contaminating the marshes and wetlands that are breeding grounds for the marine life on which their livelihoods depend.
They and their children are inundated with televised images of oiled pelicans, contaminated beaches and tens of thousands of gallons of oil spewing out of BP's wrecked Deepwater Horizon oil rig into their waters.
Stress, frustration and fear of the future are overwhelming the stoic fishermen, a self-reliant crew for whom asking for help is anathema.
"The tension is there. It's almost like it's about to explode," Bob Zales, a Panama City charter-boat captain and a member of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's BP claims-processing work group, led by Sheldon, told the panel on Wednesday, before learning of Kruse's suicide.
Friends of Kruse said that the 55-year-old fishing captain was despondent over the oil spill.
"There's not a doubt in my mind, the oil spill was the cause of this," Tom Ard, who fished alongside Kruse for 25 years, told AOL News. "It was just too much for him."
Zales, the president of the National Association of Charterboat Operators, said that uncertainty about the future is casting many in despair.
"I'm afraid that that's just the first of many to come," he said.
Zales said that all of the fishermen he speaks with each day are despondent or otherwise psychologically impacted by the situation.
"I don't know anybody that's not. I don't know of any fisherman out there right now that is confident that their life will return to normal," he said.
Sheldon said he hopes to find mental-health counselors inside the BP claims offices, to make it easier to get help.
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