Vietnamese, Cambodian fishermen among hardest hit by BP oil spill

Local shrimper Can Van Nguyen sits as local Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen try to get information at the China Sea Restaurant in Buras, Louisiana. Local translators came to the meeting to help with the language barrier. (Sean Gardner/Reuters)

Many Vietnamese and Cambodia fishermen are without work now because of the BP oil spill, and some still feel the effects of Hurricane Katrina. BP is trying to help, but there's a language barrier.

May 8, 2010
By Bill Sasser, Correspondent
The Christian Science Monitor

Buras, Louisiana — While the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has idled hundreds of fishing boats in coastal Louisiana, the disaster has hit the close knit community of Vietnamese and Cambodian shrimpers in Plaquemines Parish particularly hard.

“I don’t know how I’m going to pay my car insurance,” Cung “Kim” Tran, a deckhand on a commercial fishing boat, declared at a community meeting Thursday at the China Sea Restaurant in the town of Buras. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay the note on my car or my house. Can you tell me what to do?”

Attended by BP representatives, parish officials, a regional United Way director, and over a hundred local fishermen, the meeting was called by Spencer Aronfeld, a personal injury and malpractice lawyer from Miami, Florida, who arrived in the parish earlier in the week.

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