On paper, experts and investigators agree, the Deepwater Horizon should have weathered this blowout. The crew itself routinely practiced responding to alarms, fires and blowouts, and it was blessed with experienced leaders who clearly cared about safety. It had systems to prevent gas from exploding and sophisticated alarms that would quickly warn the crew at the slightest trace of gas. It had devices to quickly seal off a well blowout or to break free from it. It was equipped to divert surging oil and gas safely away from the rig. Nearly 400 feet long, the Horizon had formidable and redundant defenses against even the worst blowout. The second part, which killed 11 people and injured dozens, has escaped intense scrutiny, as if it were an inevitable casualty of the blowout. Investigators have dissected BP’s well design and Halliburton’s cementing work, uncovering problem after problem.īut this was a disaster with two distinct parts - first a blowout, then the destruction of the Horizon.

With government inquiries under way and billions of dollars in environmental fines at stake, most of the attention has focused on what caused the blowout. It has been eight months since the Macondo well erupted below the Deepwater Horizon, creating one of the worst environmental catastrophes in United States history. An overwhelmed young crew member, Andrea Fleytas, finally screamed what so many were thinking:

Several said their prayers and jumped into the oily seas 60 feet below. Crew members, certain they were about to be cooked alive, scrambled into enclosed lifeboats for shelter, only to find them like smoke-filled ovens. That same explosion had ignited a firestorm that enveloped the rig’s derrick. Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in highly combustible gas, crawled inch by inch in pitch darkness, willing themselves to the lifeboat deck. Some were swallowed by fireballs that raced through the oil rig’s shattered interior. The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern.Ĭrew members were cut down by shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage.

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