Brooke Burke Lends Her Help to Oil Spill
Meg Gatto ABC26 News

June 9, 2010
New Orleans—
Kevin Costner, Erin Brockovich and now Brooke Burke. She's the latest celebrity hoping to help with the oil spill clean-up.

You usually see her on dancing with the stars and her fiance, David Charvet, is well known for his role on Baywatch...but now the couple have left the glitz and glamour of Hollywood behind for an up close look at the oil soaked Gulf Coast. They're here to talk to the Coast Guard about a special type of boat that can clean up oil. Charvet explains, "The boat actually will drive through the oil and it will go through a turbine and spit out the water and keep the oil in a container and then a tanker comes out and actually sucks that out of the boat."

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The boat can suck up 35,000 gallons of oil an hour. Right now, all of the boats are located in France. The couple and the organization they volunteer with, Blue Seals, is working to try and bring them here. "Because of the Jones Act, these French boats aren't allowed to work in American waters, we're trying to work with the Coast Guard today and try to really find a way to allow these boats to come into the water and really show what these boats can do" Charvet says.

The goal is to hire local fisherman to work on the vessels. Brooke Burke says, "People are confused and they're uncertain about the future and they're not sure what to do."

And even if Brooke Burke and David Charvet aren't able to bring these boats to the U.S. to help with the spill, they take comfort in knowing that they helped to bring more awareness to a devastating situation. Burke says, "If people are going to listen because we're in the entertainment business, I feel really good about that and we try to do as much as we can."