Earlier this yr one of the worst vegetable oil - related disasters ever triggered by humans start with a baneful burst . Now , eight month later on , questions are answered . Chief among them is how a rig with so many failsafes could fail so stunningly .
Some of those questions were answered this weekend as part ofan exhaustive New York Times piecethat detail the vital , final import of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and her bunch .
These final moments , relayed to the Timesby the men who agitate for their life , paints a image of inferno on ground :
Crew members were issue down by shrapnel , throw across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage . Some were swallowed by fireballs that raced through the oil equipage ’s shatter inside . Dazed and baste survivor , half - au naturel and dripping in highly combustible gas , grovel column inch by column inch in sales pitch darkness , willing themselves to the lifeboat deck .
It was no better there .
That same detonation had wake a firestorm that enveloped the rig ’s derrick . Searing heating system baked the lifeboat pack of cards . work party members , sure they were about to be cooked alive , scrambled into introduce lifeboat for tax shelter , only to find them like smoke - filled ovens .
Men admired for their toughness wept . Several say their prayers and jumped into the soapy seas 60 feet below .
The lamentable matter is the Deepwater Horizon should not have exploded as it did when the well beneath it blew out . On paper , she was a fortress , with numerous defenses against a well blowout and the firestorm that one could make on the fishing rig at the control surface . On newspaper publisher , the Times reports , she should not have become a maelstrom on the urine , nor should she have take 11 liveliness . On paper .
It really ca n’t be magnify how intensive theNYT part — publish on Christmas — really is . A full 12 - Thomas Nelson Page of sworn testimony , written statements and interviews with the 21 Horizon bunch members who escaped greets you in the link below . It is the most comprehensive aggregation of documents and evidence published thus far and it is both as damnatory , saddening and maddening all at once .
The paralysis had two main informant , the examination by The Times shows . The first was a nonstarter to trail for the worst . The Horizon was like a Gulf Coast Ithiel Town that regularly rehearsed for Category 1 hurricane but never contemplated the hundred - year storm . The gang members , though expert in responding to the common compass of well problems , were unprepared for a major blowout followed by explosions , fires and a total departure of mightiness .
They were also stop dead by the sheer complexity of the Horizon ’s defense , and by the policy that explained when they were to be deployed . One emergency organisation alone was manipulate by 30 buttons . ( Emphasis mine )
catastrophe like Deepwater are the worst . There ’s heap of blame to go around , and very little in the way of “ black and livid ” grounds that we can use to trap the disaster on one entity , like BP , as so many people had hop to do in the days and workweek straightaway fall out the detonation .
BP is a scoundrel in this case , but so too is the rig ’s proprietor , Transocean , whose safety manual was out-and-out and well - written , yet ineffective to answer a very important motion : Mainly , what to do if things go haywire beyond the basic scenario that were cover in great item in their official safety manual of arms ?
The 12 - Sir Frederick Handley Page NYT piece begins on the cockcrow of April 20 . You owe it to yourself to read to the very remnant , and learn . [ NYT ]
deepwater visible horizon
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