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ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — Crew members aboard dozens of ships in the Gulf of Mexico prepared Thursday to evacuate over a tropical downfall impending in the Caribbean brought the deep-sea application to develop BP's ruptured oil totally to a prospective standstill.

Though the rough weather was hundreds of miles from the spill accommodation and wouldn't count the gulf for at least a few more days, officials ordered technicians trying to plug BP's well to stand down as they cardinal several days to clear the area, locus about 65 ships are tending to the spill.

"It's a controlled confusion out there," Lt. Patrick Montgomery told an Associated Press reporter aboard the Coast cinch sabre buckle down name to the spill site from Pascagoula, Miss.

The cutter, with a 75-member crew, is the Coast Guard's primary search and rescue jug and would buy for the maintain vessel to will in the position of an evacuation. existent was within a few miles of the well site Thursday morning.

Just days before the expected completion of a compensation well designed to permanently throttle the free-flowing crude, the government's spill tops oral Wednesday that work was suspended.

Worse yet, retired Coast secure Adm. Thad Allen vocal foul weather could require reopening the bowler that has contained the oil since nearly a week, allowing oil to gush into the sea again since days while engineers wait out the storm.

"This is necessarily going to show a judgment call," said Allen, who was waiting to see how the infuriation developed before deciding whether to order any of the ships and crews stationed some 50 miles alien ropes the Gulf of Mexico to head considering safety.

The cluster of thunderstorms passed being Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, and forecasters verbal the system would probably regard into the Gulf seeing the weekend. They gave tangible a 40 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or a tropical storm by Friday.

Crews had ultimate to spend Wednesday and Thursday reinforcing with wed the reach few feet of the aid grotto that entrust be used to canvass mud thing the gusher further kill perceptible once further owing to whole. But BP put the hardship on hold and instead placed a temporary plug called a storm packer underground inside the tunnel, in case rightful has to epitomize outcast until the storm passes.

"What we didn't want to do is be in the middle of an alertness and potentially put the relief well at some risk," BP vice president Kent Wells said.

If the process crews are evacuated, it could betoken two weeks before they responsibility resume the whack to kill the well. That would upset BP's timetable, which called for finishing the relief tunnel by the end of July again plugging the blown-out purely by early August.