The United States Coast Guard responded to a report at 9 AM this morning, of 13 people in the water following an oil platform explosion 90 miles south of Vermillion Bay, Louisiana. A Coast Guard District command center, received a report from a pilot aboard a commercial helicopter stating that there were people in the water near an oil platform on fire. All 13 people were wearing immersion suits. The 13 people were picked up by a Coast Guard vessel and taken to another platform. Coast Guard helicopters transported the rescued to a local hospital. The well at the sight is reportedly decommissioned.
Today marks the 75th anniversary of Hemingway’s Hurricane, the most powerful hurricane to touch land in the Western Hemisphere. This Category 5 Hurricane struck on Labor Day September 2, 1935 with little advance warning. It arrived late afternoon and early evening on that fateful Monday with sustained winds of 200 Miles Per Hour with gusts as high as 250. The storm surge is estimated to have been close to 25 feet as it completely covered the middle Florida Keys. The official death toll stands at 408 people, however hundreds more were reported missing and most of those were never found. The storm blew out Flagler’s Overseas Railway which was later paved over and is now Route 1.
Today we are in the middle of the most intense Atlantic Hurricane Activity in more than five years with Earl, Fiona and Gaston threatening the East Coast. A newly formed storm is expected to be christened Hermine later this weekend.
Former Cuban president Fidel Castro, who once looked at homosexuals as counterrevolutionaries and forced into military service, where they could be re-educated, has told a Mexican Newspaper that he was personally responsible for their persecution and now calls the period a great injustice. He once announced that “In the country, there are no homosexuals, they are“agents of imperialism” who should not be allowed in positions where they can influence young people. The Castro government of the nineteen sixties also claimed to cleanse the arts of “fraudulent sodomitic” writers and “sick effeminate” dancers. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1979 and today, Citizens can also undergo sex reassignment surgery for free.
Key West Police are investigating claims of sexual battery after receiving a fax stating that from January 2001 until 2005, a teenage boy was molested and sexually abused by James Rosier Junior, the former Pastor for the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church at 223 Truman Ave. The boy’s parent’s had given custody to Rosier at the time while the boy served as a youth pastor.
The statement alleges that from January 2001 until September 2005, Rosier had performed anal and oral sex on the boy many times at a Thomas Street house. The acts also took place while the two were on trips to other churches at their hotel room. The boy now in his early twenties, said he started receiving counseling earlier this year and has not had any contact with Rosier since.
Key West After Dark
It’s Labor Day and it’s a long Three Day Weekend
At the Green Parrot
Tonight & Friday Night The Honey Island Swamp Band.
Saturday & Sunday it’s Suenalo!
At Schooner Wharf
Friday & Saturday
Robert Douglas Band from 7 to midnight
Sunday Latin Calypso Party with Marty Stonely
At The El Alamo
Friday and Sunday it’s George Victory
with a special Saturday Night performance from the Unsinkable Soundsystem
At Cowboy Bill’s Honky Tonk Saloon it’s Shane Thomas
For more about the stories covered today. please visit radio free, key west.com. Click the radio button to hear the best in reggae, blues and soul. Music for the heart, the head and the hips.
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