CORDOVA, Alaska (AP) - Communities along the Gulf Coast

wondering about what kind of legacy the monstrous oil slick will

leave can look no further than the towns along the Alaska coastline

that were ravaged by the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

Crude oil from the tanker still lingers on some beaches a full

21 years later. Some marine species never recovered. Families and

bank accounts were shattered. Alcoholism, suicide and domestic

violence rates all rose in hard-hit towns.

"As far as what's ahead, we have a feeling that we kind of know

what those communities and individuals are going to go through, and

it's absolutely tragic," said Stan Jones, spokesman for the Prince

William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council.

On March 23, 1989, the 987-foot supertanker left the port in

Valdez loaded with 53 million gallons of North Slope crude from the

trans-Alaska pipeline. The ship hit a reef three hours later,

rupturing eight of its 11 cargo tanks and dumping 10.8 million

gallons of crude into Prince William Sound.

About 1,300 miles of Alaska shoreline was affected by the spill,

including 200 miles that were heavily contaminated, according to

the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Responders found

carcasses of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters. That was

considered to be a fraction of the bird and animal death toll

because carcasses usually sink to the seabed. The council estimated

250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald

eagles, up to 22 killer whales died along with billions of salmon

and herring eggs.

Exxon said it spent $2.1 billion on a cleanup, but in a

testament to the persistence of crude, oil a few inches below the

surface remains on isolated beaches. Students on field trips to

islands in Prince William Sound devastated by the spill often

uncover rocks soiled in oil with little effort. An estimated 20,000

gallons of oil remain from the spill.

"It just smells like a gas station," Kate Alexander of the

Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova said of the

lingering remnants of the spill. "It's a very disturbing

experience, but very real."

Alaskans also see uncomfortable parallels as BP takes heat for

allegedly downplaying the initial threat of the spill in the Gulf

of Mexico after a drilling rig exploded. A similar scenario

unfolded in 1989 after the Valdez disaster.

"There were promises made that it was manageable, containable,

that it could be cleaned up," said Jones, whose group is dedicated

to preventing future oil spills. "It turned out the oil industry

was just not capable of doing that. That seems to be what's

happening in the gulf."

It is still too early to know what the lasting effects of the

Gulf Coast spill will be. The well is spewing an estimated 200,000

gallons of oil a day and is on pace to quickly eclipse the Exxon

Valdez spill as the worst oil disaster in U.S. history.

The environmental effects of the current spill will be different

in some ways from what happened in Alaska. The warmer temperatures

in the Gulf will help the oil degrade faster, and marsh and sand in

Louisiana may react differently than Alaska's gravel and rock

beaches.

But coastal towns no doubt will clearly feel the pain of a

spill. The coastal communities in the Gulf of Mexico rely heavily

on shrimp, oyster and other types of fishing just like Alaska towns

rely on salmon and herring.

"I was watching the news the other day and I saw the fishermen

in the gymnasium, and I went, "Yep, that was us, day three or

four,"' said longtime Alaska fisherman RJ Kopchak. "I saw the

guys filling out the paperwork to get their first claims processed,

and I said, 'Yep, that was us, post spill, day five or six."'

Exxon Valdez oil in recent years has shown up in sea otters and

harlequin ducks. Some species never recovered. Though it was never

definitively proven that killer whales were affected by the spill,

"They dramatically lost abundance right during the spill and after

the spill," said Craig Tillery, a member of the Exxon Valdez Oil

Spill Trustee Council who has worked on the spill since the week it

happened.

Pacific herring, which spawned in heavily contaminated areas,

were hard hit. Herring made a short comeback, but remain classified

as "not recovering."

Jones' group commissioned studies to see how the spill affected

people in small communities where fishing gives people their

identity. Cordova was probably the most painful example because its

fishing industry was hurt so much by the spill.

"The community exhibited every kind of social stress you can

imagine," Jones said. "Alcoholism went up. Suicide went up.

Family violence went up. Divorces went up. Of course, bankruptcies

and various kinds of financial failures went up with the attendant

stress on families."

Those who lived through the Valdez catastrophe said they felt

enormous sorrow for the Gulf Coast because they know how painful it

will all be, especially once the prolonged legal battles begin over

compensation. The Valdez dispute was agonizingly slow and marked by

several frustrating appeals.

Like many in the Alaska fishing business who feel burned after

the U.S. Supreme Court slashed the jury award, Lynden O'Toole

cautioned those on the Gulf Coast to not pin any hopes on a

settlement.

"Don't sit around and wait for somebody, for the justice

system, for instance, to come and rescue you because in our

experience, that's not going to happen," said O'Toole, who had

just gotten into the commercial fishing business when the spill

happened.

"What's going to happen is they are going to end up

exhausted," Kopchak added. "And eight or 10 years from now,

they're still going to be fighting this."

Still, Alaska came away from the disaster with some valuable

lessons. The state is much more prepared to deal with a future

disaster because it has a huge response apparatus still in place.

The system involves a flotilla of fishermen ready to go in the case

of another disaster, including 350 vessels under contract ready to

participate in a response.

"Some of them are under contract to be ready within six hours,

out of port and deploying boom within six hours of the notice, and

others come in within 24 hours, and then others are just kind of on

a list to be called up as the oil gets farther and farther out of

the sound," said Jones.

And Jones' group published a guide for how to cope with

disasters like this. "It's not how to clean oiled birds," Jones

said. "It's how to help the human beings that are in the way of

one of these disasters."