A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [19]
The loss of connections should have triggered the blowout preventer’s automatic emergency mode—and closed the blind shear rams. However, the yellow pod had a defective solenoid and the blue pod’s batteries were weak, so the blind shear rams did not activate.
Sensors for fire, gas, and toxic fumes were working; any irregularities appeared on a screen. But their audio alarms were inhibited. This is understandable, but many rigs don’t allow it. The Deepwater Horizon had hundreds of individual fire and gas alarms. Having the general alarm go off for local minor problems would cost workers sleep, a safety concern. And people would start ignoring alarms—also a safety concern. The idea was: have a person monitoring the computer, and let them control the general audio alarm. Sound it only when conditions require.
But chief electrician Mike Williams has asserted that inhibiting alarms also prevents the computer from activating emergency shutdown of air vents and power. Such a shutdown could have prevented the rig’s diesel generator engines from inhaling the gas and surging wildly.
The over-revving engines send surges of electricity that make lights and computer monitors begin exploding. The engines spark, igniting the gas, triggering explosions.
Transocean’s chief mechanic, Doug Brown, knew there was a manual engine shutdown system. He also understood that he was not authorized to activate it. He later said, “If I would have shut down those engines, it could have stopped as an ignition source.”
Mike Williams hears loud hissing. Hears the engines revving. Sees his light bulbs getting “brighter and brighter and brighter,” knows “something bad is getting ready to happen,” hears “this awful whoosh.”
He reaches for a door that’s three inches thick, steel, fire-rated, supported by six stainless steel hinges. An explosion blows the door from those hinges, throwing him across the shop. When he comes around, he’s up against a wall with the door on top of him. He thinks, “This is it. I’m gonna die right here.”
When he crawls across the floor to the next door, it too explodes, taking him thirty-five feet backward, smacking him up against another wall. He gets angry at the doors; he feels “mad that these fire doors that are supposed to protect me are hurting me.” He crawls through an opening. He thinks, “I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I made it outside. I may die out here, but I can breathe.”
Williams can’t see. Something’s pouring into his eyes. “I didn’t know if it was blood. I didn’t know if it was brains. I didn’t know if it was flesh. I just knew I was in trouble.”
There’s a gash in his forehead. He’s on one of the rig’s lifeboat decks. He’s got two functioning lifeboats, right there. But he thinks, “I can’t board them. I have responsibilities.”
He hears alarms, radio chatter, “Mayday! Mayday!” Calls of lost power. Calls of fire. Calls of man overboard. People jumping from the rig.
Transocean’s subsea supervisor Chris Pleasant wants the rig’s master, Captain Curt Kuchta, to activate the emergency disconnect system, or EDS. With the blowout preventer unresponsive, the last-ditch response is: disconnect the rig from the pipe that is delivering the gas that’s feeding the fire. Kuchta replies, “Calm down! We’re not EDSing.” Jimmy Harrell, Transocean’s man in charge of all drilling operations, has just had his quarters destroyed in explosions while he was in the shower; he now comes running, partially clothed, partially blinded by fine insulation debris. He tells Chris Pleasant to activate the emergency disconnect system. Pleasant tries it. All attempts to disconnect the pipe fail.
Having survived the explosions and freed himself from entrapment in debris, Randy Ezell is trying to get his bearings from where he sits, stunned. “Then I felt something and it felt like air,” he later recalled. He says to himself, “Well, that’s