Pedestrians stroll the beach front and look out at the boats that line Marina Park dock. As kayakers glide over the pristine water of Lake Washington, Serret Salles stands in the distance holding up a sign at the corner of Central Way and Market Street.

A car slows as it turns onto Central Way, the driver honking his horn several times at Salles’ sign that reads “Day 50.”

“The more I’ve talked to people in our area – they didn’t even know it was day 50 today,” Salles says of the BP oil spill during a vigil on Tuesday near Marina Park. Nearly 40 gathered as part of a nationwide vigil to raise awareness about the oil spreading through the Gulf of Mexico, which has been declared the worst environmental disaster of its kind in the United States.

For Salles, a Louisiana native, the oil spill is personal.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” the Kirkland resident says, noting her brother and father live within two hours of the Gulf Coast. Her 72-year-old father, who is still working his business in Kenner, La., enjoys fishing along the Mississippi River on his days off. “Soon he won’t be able to do that.”

Salles heard about the local vigil through the MoveOn.org Web site and said she wants to bring awareness to the Kirkland community.

“I don’t think people realize how intense it is and how destructive and once all those mangroves and – not just the wildlife that is suffering – but once all of the wetlands die, like all that sand is the buffer for the next hurricane,” she says, wiping tears. “We’re already dealing with how (the area) had the hurricane. I just don’t think people get how destructive this is.”

Terri Fletcher says she “just feels helpless” for the families, wildlife and environment affected by the oil spill.

Fletcher, who worked in Louisiana in the late ’80s delivering mud boats from Morgan City to Seattle, recalls how schools of dolphins would play off the bow of the vessels.

“So we’re not even going to know how many of them we lose because of the deep plumes of oil,” Fletcher says of the dolphins. “Dolphins are curious and once they surface and start sucking in that oil, they’re gone.”

She’s so upset about the oil spill that she even dreamed about it recently. In her dream, her yellow Lab Hawk that she takes swimming every day, came out of the water at Waverly Beach drenched in oil.

“It’s horrific,” says Fletcher, adding that 64 sea turtles were found dead along the Gulf Coast Tuesday. “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t figure out how to plug the hole? Someone out there should know how to do this and this is going to completely change their entire way of life for a long time.”

For others, like Melissa Brown, of Woodinville, the vigil was an opportunity to speak out and hold the British petroleum giant and the U.S. government accountable.

She said the government’s regulatory body that oversees offshore drilling were “asleep at the wheel and I’m sure intentionally so. There’s plenty of safety measures and none of them were being used.”

Kirkland resident William Wurtz agrees.

Holding a sign that reads, “Stop corporate crime and corporate criminals,” Wurtz blames the oil spill on BP’s “criminal negligence.”

“The only way you’re going to stop this kind of irresponsible behavior is to hold individuals within the corporation and the corporation itself criminally responsible,” he said, citing BP’s long history of safety laws violations.

Margaret Schwender, who also lives in Kirkland, says the oil spill affects everybody, regardless of where people live.

Her daughter, who is an ecologist in Idaho, called Schwender, crying about the wildlife devastation the oil spill has caused.

“I’m saddened,” Schwender says. “It’s not just about people, it’s about the environment, it’s about the animals, it’s about the fauna – it’s everything that’s been affected by this.”