BOOM -- The harrowing tale of the BP rig workers and the Coast Guard crewmen who rescued them
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Lost in the catastrophic aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the gripping tale of the rig workers and the Coast Guard crewmen who rescued them.
Sean Flynn re-creates their long, harrowing, heart-pounding night.
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By eleven o'clock, when the daily safety meeting begins, the cement has been curing for more than eleven hours. Mike Williams listens as the managers and supervisors outline their plans for the next twelve hours. Then it gets tense. Jimmy Wayne Harrell, Transocean's OIM—offshore installation manager—goes last, like he always does. Mike finds it strange that Jimmy is using more technical language than usual when he's talking about sealing the well.
"Jimmy," the man sitting next to Mike says, "my procedure is different than that."
Mike recognizes BP's senior man on the Horizon.
"This is how we're gonna do it," the OIM says, "unless I hear different."
The BP man says: "I'm the company man. And you're hearing it from me."
The two senior guys on the rig arguing about how a vessel with 126 crew on board is going to safely disconnect from a punctured reservoir of explosive hydrocarbons…yeah, tense is the right word.
The driller, Dewey Revette, breaks in, tries to ease the moment: "You know, guys, why don't we work this out on the drill floor? Let's go to work."
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Drilling mud rains down on the Damon B. Bankston, a 260-foot service boat tethered to the Horizon. She's been there all day, and for the past four hours she's been waiting for the Horizon to deliver 1,400 barrels—58,800 gallons—of drilling mud into her holds, on top of the 3,100 she took on earlier.
Captain Alwin Landry and his crew close the Bankston's hatches to keep mud out. Landry isn't particularly worried. He's worked crew boats for twenty-three years, been captain for a dozen, and he's seen the evolution of oil-rig safety up close. He knows it looks dangerous, but he also knows all the procedures, the fail-safes and redundancies. Still, mud shouldn't be speckling his boat.
Landry radios the Horizon, asks why his deck is slicking with goo. He's told there's a problem with the well, and he hears worry in the words.
Then another voice comes on the radio. Landry is told to move the Bankston, to stage his boat 500 meters away.
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Three short whoops of an alarm sound through the PA system at the Coast Guard air station in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, at 10:07 p.m. Kurt Peterson, the chief rescue swimmer at the base, hears fragments of the announcement that follows, but that's all he needs: Rig explosion, people in the water, possibly 130. He hustles toward the tarmac.
Just off the hangar, Lieutenant Commander Tom Hickey and his copilot, Lieutenant Craig Murray, are finishing their paperwork following a routine two-hour training flight. They're both senior pilots, top-ranked instructors.
Possibly 160 in the water, with injuries.
Hickey tells Murray to restart the helicopter, an HH-65 Dolphin, then sprints into the operations center to get the Horizon's coordinates. The flight mechanic, Scott Lloyd, loads a mass-casualty raft. By 10:20, with the rotor spinning, Murray and Hickey learn Good Samaritans—private boats—are in the area. Lloyd unloads the raft to save weight and space in the cramped Dolphin; better to hoist survivors out of the water and fly them to stable vessels. Peterson's job will be to cable down to the wounded and help get them ready for Lloyd to haul up.
The Dolphin, the first one in the air for the rescue, takes off at 10:28. It climbs to 700 feet, half the height of the Empire State Building. Murray and Hickey drop their NVGs—nightvision goggles—and they see a glow on the southern horizon, like a setting sun.
"Is that it?" Peterson hears them mutter. "Holy shit, I think that's it."
The Deepwater Horizon is 145 miles away.
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Jun 21, 2010 at 6:08 PM
Reader Comments (11)
DB...This is an INTERESTING story...what the story is I don't know yet...
White House Budget Director Peter Orszag plans to resign, a Democratic official said Monday night, positioning him to be the first high-profile member of President Barack Obama's team to depart the administration.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100622/ap_on_bi_ge/us_budget_director;_ylt=AmJ.vABpMykMsJYdPaZlHMqyBhIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJqNzQ0aTduBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNjIyL3VzX2J1ZGdldF9kaXJlY3RvcgRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDYXBzb3VyY2V3aGl0
Is it as simple as Volcker running Orszag up the Bilderberg flagpole and something went wrong?
Did Bilderberg investigate Orszag in the process of determining whether to give him an invite to the world domination party and something went wrong?
Did Orszag hear something he didn't like at Bilderberg and start asking too many questions or appear not on board? That sounds way too noble given his history.
Is Orszag appearing to take one for the team because he came off as a star at Bilderberg and is due for a promotion? He doesn’t appear to be much of a marketable product.
It will be interesting to see what others think about this strange move right after Bilderberg.
DB, your bible Huffington Toast is giving the party line on this one with some b.s. story. They would not even speculate which could just be circling the wagons for Obama or it could mean something else. She is usually wetting her pants over this type of news so ripe for speculation. It’s rotten. This could be a big scoop for you DB if you could shake your trees and come up with something newsworthy. It could be another opportunity for you to make some news waves (like David Kellermann story). My guess is that you will give me another justification for nothingness. Please don’t say write it up and you may think about posting it if you like the results. It’s laughable that you think you could properly grade anything that I put together. There would be no upside for me and I don’t trust your biases. I am sure by now we see eye to eye on that score.
1...he needs money...has to support his child with his ex-fiance...
2...he needs money to support his new gorgeous bride...the abc reporter...she makes bank and he has to keep up with her...
3...he is ACTUALLY a deficit hawk by nature...believes in fiscal sanity...
4...he probably realized that obama has no real plans to cut spending going forward, and he made a decision that he doesn't want to get the blame as Obama's budget director...
given all of the above, i don't see any conspiracy regrading his leaving...
he wants more money and he no longer wants to be part of the Deficit Administration...
six month moratorium on the off
shore drilling ban issued by Obama
has been overturned by the Judge in
Louisiana.
More information as soon as we receive it!
Hmmmm, bet Obama is pretty unhappy
with that result! The justice system working
in our favor.
The White House will be issuing a response
shortly stating that they will issue a repeal.
Visit Patriotic Resistance at: http://www.resistnet.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network
But there are even more downright criminal activities taking place right now. According to a government panel, new calculations suggest that "an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days," the New York Times reported on June 10.
In addition, the CNN video above discusses the health problems suffered by the clean-up workers, and the fact that BP is strongly discouraging any type of protective gear, such as respirators and even rubber gloves! In the video, Kerry Kennedy mentions that the average age at the time of death of workers who cleaned up after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was 51!
Today, all those clean-up workers are DEAD!
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/06/22/us-government-allowed-gulf-oil-spill-to-happen.aspx
Be sure to hear the first clip on whats realy happening down there, it gets REAL SCARRY on part two. You will know it when you hear it. Tip Word......................"The UN"........? Im on to clip #-2 now. Question..............Why Fl. becouse that is the way the wind is blowing the oil and gas.