CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Nearly a mile of newly made oil-containment boom, which provides a final and desperate line of defense against an enormous slick in the Gulf of Mexico, gets trucked out of a small factory in Cape Canaveral each day.

“We’re maxed out,” said Sean Geary, sales manager at American Boom & Barrier Corp. “I’ve probably turned down 300,000 feet of orders.”

Ever since the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded and sank more than three weeks ago, boom manufacturers have struggled to catch up in what amounts to the biggest boom in booms ever.

Along west Florida shores, orange or yellow booms have become the most visible sign of preparedness for what is now the nation’s biggest and still-growing oil spill from an offshore rig.

The rig’s blown-out oil well has been gushing an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude each day into the Gulf of Mexico about 45 miles southeast of Louisiana. Relatively small amounts of oil have fouled the shores of that state and Alabama, and Florida is on high alert.

“It all hit really quick,” Geary said, referring to efforts by the well’s owner, BP PLC, and by pollution-control contractors and government agencies to find available boom as quickly as possible and anywhere in the world.

The rig sank April 22, leaking oil was confirmed two days later, and by the end of the following day, about 21,000 feet of boom had been installed. From then on, demand for boom has soared.

This week, for example, three massive Air Force cargo jets — C-17 Globemasters — rumbled out of an Alaska base to deliver booms to crews in Louisiana.

“We essentially have a very large boom airlift under way,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer. “We already have 1.2 million feet of boom in the water, which is by far the largest boom deployment ever.”

“We have another 400,000 feet staged at the staging locations. We have another 2.3 million feet on order and being delivered as we speak. This boom is coming from places like Norway, Brazil, Mexico and Alaska,” Suttles said.

That 1.2 million feet of boom already deployed is enough to extend from Pensacola to St. George Island, a span that takes in nearly all of the Panhandle’s famed sugar-sand beaches. The 2.3 million feet of boom on order would cover the rest of Florida’s Gulf Coast, stopping short of the Keys.

But the biggest share of boom is in place or destined for Louisiana. Florida has about 170,000 feet of boom, floating in waters along wetlands, sea-grass beds and some beaches. Another 40,000 feet of booms are on standby.

Pushed by federal authorities to prevent oil from hitting land, BP’s strategy has been to douse crude with chemical dispersants, light it on fire when possible and skim up floating blobs with specially equipped boats.

BP has failed repeatedly to plug or contain leaks from the well’s damaged plumbing a mile under the sea. The company is now trying to place a “top hat” dome and pipe over the biggest leak to funnel crude oil to vessels on the surface.

Mike Sole, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the best choice in many cases is to have containment boom ready rather than already anchored in waterways.

“Booms can actually cause damage to the environment,” Sole said, describing conditions in which high winds rip booms free and drag them through sensitive ecosystems. “You don’t want to deploy boom too early.”

That hasn’t dampened demand for a piece of equipment that amounts to a durable plastic curtain that floats because of a 7-inch tube of foam attached to its top and hangs vertically in the water because of heavy chain attached at the bottom. All those materials are in short supply now.

The 34-year-old American Boom & Barrier Corp. has ramped up from 10 employees, working in a single, eight-hour shift, to nearly 30 employees working in two, 10-hour shifts. They use heat-welding equipment to fabricate nearly 5,000 feet of boom each day.

The booms are made in 100-foot sections that fold accordion like into 7-foot bundles, weighing 220 pounds and costing $850.

“I could get another shop going to produce double what I’m producing now, and we still wouldn’t be able to keep up with it,” said company Vice President Nick Naayers. “It’s that crazy right now. We could put up 10 more shops, and it wouldn’t be enough boom to put out there.”

Those bright orange, yellow and red oil-containment booms you see on the news symbolize the fight against the unfolding environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

TV shots show booms stretched for miles along imperiled coastlines, sometimes wrapped around entire islands. Someday, the booms may be needed here.

The question is: Will there be enough to go around? As reports have painfully documented, nobody prepared for an accident of this magnitude. No one set aside a massive stockpile of booms.

So the spill has become a boon for the oil boom industry.

America Boom and Barrier Corp. in Cape Canaveral is one of the largest manufacturers of booms in the state. Company vice president Nick Naayers said that within the past month, his company has tripled its number of employees, from 10 before the spill to 32 at the beginning of June.

Naayers’ production line has gone from a single eight-hour shift five days a week to two 10-hours shifts, day and night, six days a week.

“Once I saw the orders start to come in, within two days, I had a second shift running. Then I continued to purchase everything I could find in raw materials,” Naayers said.

Production at his plant has increased from about 1,000 feet of boom churned out each day to nearly a mile.

Dana Makepeace, part of the sales staff at American Boom, said the company had orders lined up to swallow every linear foot produced for the next four months. Naayers added that he plans to continue at breakneck pace for at least three months after the flow of oil is stopped.

Across the industry, such high demand is creating bottlenecks.

Makepeace compared the situation to a country starting a war without any guns or bullets.

“There’s shortages on everything right now. Every company in the country,” Naayers said. “People are panicking.”

Traditional oil-containment booms are simple devices — fabric, flotation, chains, grommets, thimbles.

Because most oil floats, the booms, which have a submerged fabric section, prevent oil from spreading across calm water.

While Naayers’ company is mostly selling his product directly to BP and government agencies, traditional middlemen have felt a pinch.

Mark E. Dilley, the director of marketing for Sarasota-based Interstate Products, which sells a variety of oil-remediation supplies, said his boom stock is sold out, and he does not foresee more product coming his way in the near future.

“It’s chaos,” Dilley said. “Anybody and everybody, they’re coming out of the woodwork trying to get their hands on these products. I had a guy in the Keys call looking to surround his island with booms.”

Price per foot has also risen about a dollar, from around $7.50 per foot to $8.50, Dilley said. “Prices have gone up because some of the raw materials — they just can’t produce enough of it.”

Material suppliers in the boom business are working overtime to keep up with demand.

Darius Shirzadi, business development manager for Coolie Specialty Products in Rhode Island, which makes a high-tech fabric used in some top-shelf oil booms (they are not all created equal), said that in the past 45 days Coolie has manufactured about 70,000 yards of material — the same amount the company produced in all of 2009.

“All of a sudden, they’re like, we need it in a week,” Shirzadi said of his customers.

Shirzadi said customers are also looking for more durable products. That’s because the booms, generally used for smaller-scale inland barge leaks and construction, are being deployed in rougher waters, farther out at sea, for longer periods of time.

JoAnne Ferris, a representative for the trade group representing boom-makers and suppliers, says the rush to create new supplies has taken on a Rosie the Riveter ethos.

“It’s like a war effort. It’s a war against the oil spill. It’s great for business, but if you watch some of the videos getting posted, these are America’s marshes,” Ferris said. “They are trying to rally around and get oil boom material.”

Ferris said some awning and fabric signmaking businesses, which have industrial equipment similar to that used to produce booms, are trying to get in on the oil spill action.

While the sudden rush has created some quality concerns with BP and other large buyers, Ferris said it’s not stopping many from trying to produce the oil containment devices, which are generally used only once and then disposed of in hazardous materials landfills once they have been contaminated with oil.

One Florida firm, Ball Fabrics in DeLand, which usually produces sports-related safety barriers, considered joining the mad race to produce oil boom. But due to a high initial cost, John Ball, one of the co-owners, said he decided against it.

“Maybe in hindsight, it might have been a bad decision,” Ball said.

The demand for oil boom and similar products will dry up eventually, but now it’s until that day comes, the demand remains.

Andrew Aho, managing director of the Geosynthetic Materials Association, a trade group that researches issues facing manufacturers like Ball’s firm, said to help increase production, the government or BP should assist smaller firms with financing.

“One of the issues that is apparent is the end-product manufacturers, sometimes they’re kind of mom-and-pop type shops. Financing becomes an issue. It’s really hard for a supplier to extend a large amount of credit to a small shop they haven’t yet done business with,” Aho said.

Dominick Tao can be reached at (727) 580-2951 or dtao@sptimes.com.

Nick Naayers, 46, is vice president of American Boom & Barrier Corp. in Cape Canaveral, one of a small number of companies making the floating booms used to contain oil from the BP PLC well in the Gulf of Mexico. He spoke with Sentinel staff writer Kevin Spear.

CFB: You’ve seen the unprecedented surge in orders for your floating boom persist for nearly three months now. Is it possible somehow to have too much boom business?

Of course not.

CFB: How much boom are you sending out your doors each day to the Gulf of Mexico?

We’re still making boom as fast as we can. We went from 10 employees working eight hours a day to two, 10-hour shifts, six days a week, and an additional 20 employees. We’re making pretty close to a mile of boom a day.

CFB: Despite weather worries, efforts to cap and plug the damaged BP PLC well 50 miles south of Louisiana are showing encouraging signs. How long do think the demand for your booms will continue to be so high?

There’s still a slick out there the size of Texas, and they don’t have a permanent cap on that thing yet, and they haven’t plugged it yet. Anything could happen. It’s a little too early to tell, until they get those relief wells drilled.

CFB: A few months ago, you said there was a nationwide shortage of all the key materials — such as chain, cable and fabric — used to make boom. How’s that going?

They finally are just getting caught up. As a matter of fact, the only thing I’m a little short on right now is chain, but I should be getting caught up on that pretty soon, too.

CFB: You and some of the people you work with seemed stressed during the early days of the spill. Are you hitting your stride and relaxing a bit?

The only thing that has relaxed a little are some of the ridiculous phone calls I was getting every day. Every vendor in the country was calling us, trying to sell us something. Everybody and their brother was wanting us to come and teach them how to make boom. And, unfortunately, reporters were calling everyday [laughter].

CFB: With all this boom you are making, do you think this spill could end up causing a glut of boom that ruins your business for awhile?

No, I don’t think so. Our customers know what their requirements are, and they are still restocking what they sold to BP. Any boom that’s been used out there, it gets broken and damaged; a lot of it will be recycled — cutting the chain and cable out — and disposed of. The stuff that wasn’t used will get stored somewhere, but I don’t see that being a big issue.