Deepwater Horizon Survivors Tell ABC News No Alarm Sounded Before Blast, Safety Gear Failed

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

'It Was Chaos,' Says Survivor; Industry Officials Acknowledge Failures Of Safety Equipment On Oil Rig

May 7, 2010 —

Survivors of last week's massive oil rig explosion have told ABC News that alarms meant to warn them of an imminent blast never sounded, and oil industry experts now agree that a critical failsafe needed to prevent the blast and the subsequent spill didn't work.

They were two crucial safeguards that failed during the chain reaction that left 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon dead and led to what some now believe could be the worst oil rig disaster in U.S. history.

"It was chaos," survivor Dwayne Martinez told ABC News. "Nothing went as planned, like it was supposed to."

...

Tony Buzbee, the lawyer now representing the two oil rig workers in a lawsuit against BP and Transocean, said he hopes to get those answers.

"It either tells you that the alarms failed or that somebody muted the alarm because alarms are so common out in the oil patch that sometimes as a matter of course, they mute alarms," he said. The oil industry has long had confidence in its series of fail-safes meant to prevent a catastrophe. A key element in the system is one mammoth piece of equipment - the blowout preventer, or BOP. It's a 50-foot, 900,000 pound contraption that sits on the sea bed a mile underwater. It houses more than half-a-dozen hydraulic valves designed to shut off any leaks of oil or gas.

But documents obtained by ABC News show the industry has been well aware for years of significant problems with blowout preventers.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/deepwater-horizon-survivors-abc-news-alarm-sounded-blast/story?id=10578389

[MilesColtrane]

1. Standard Operating Procedure for BP

http://www.truthout.org/whistlelower-bps-other-offshore-drilling-project-gulf-vulnerable-catastrophe59027

"...MMS fined BP $25,000 in February 2004 for another incident that took place a year earlier on the Diamond Offshore drilling rig. MMS said "the rig's Gas Detection System was bypassed with ongoing drilling operations being conducted."

[defendandprotect]

2. k

[guitar man]

3. Tragic

The logical conclusion of allowing corporations to "police" themselves. If anybody still expects any kind of ethical behavior out of these corporocrats, they are living on another planet. The bottom line rules, they will simply step over the bodies of those dead workers and the irreperable damage they have done to the environment and do it again if we let them. They must be brought to heel, soon.