87 Dead Bodies in this Block
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- Опубліковано 25 бер 2023
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My lovely brother lost his life on this platform, he was 23 years old. He wasn't meant to be there, it wasn't even the rig he worked on normally, he was filling in for a trip. He was asked at short notice to go and didn't really want to but it's hard to not help out if you want the same courtesy back so he went. He was brought back in a lead box and identified by his teeth. We finally laid him to rest on the 5th of november, 4 months after the explosion. I thank all those involved in fire fighting,rescue and the workers involved after in every field for their hard and distressing work. This should never have happened.
Truly sorry to hear this I joined a safety company in 1990 spent the last 30 plus years working to give them safe evacuation equipment but the size of this explosion nothing other than luck saved some them Cullen report gives a clear account of the size of the incident sorry for your loss
So sorry to hear about your brother 😢x
💔💔💔
rip
My sincere condolences for your loss. The oil fields were a great boon to Scotland but the human cost can't be forgotten.
This is why a lock-out system exists. They should have been unable to start the pump regardless of incompetence and paperwork.
Probably the kind of accident that helps them implement those kinds of changes.
@@waterlinestories Oil & Gas are well known for their 1 priority production which = profit. Safety, the Environment and people coming up a ways behind. As in sloppy procedures and the fire stop walls that were made of a fireproof material that everyone knew was brittle and easily shattered. The fact that there were no underwater Safety valves on the pipelines. All cost cutting measures taken to maximise profits with zero value placed on Safety.
@@waterlinestories
A bit late for those poor guys though😢
But hey the money men got rich so what a few deaths when their bank balances rise 😡
They should of done time for the sloppy safety procedures.
RIP lads 💔✌️🇬🇧
@@waterlinestories Yep thats what happened.
@@jackdbur Yes..Because it's cheaper to burn a platform down than implement safety training...
Safety is only as good as the men implementing it...
You missed some details:
- the emergency procedures stated to NEVER jump from the platform because you would die from impact, or from hypothermia. This is why the 87 people stayed in the accommodation block. The majority of survivors were ones who ignored that and jumped
- the oil rig was not designed to handle gas, the fire resistant walls were only fire resistant, not explosion proof
- the other oil rigs continued to pump gas to piper for hours despite seeing the fire, out of fear of being fired. They only stopped when one operator ignored commands from a superior and shut it down
“Out of fear of being FIRED” lmao
@@tastyduckling4646 unintentional pun! But its a big issue with the oil industry. Shutting down operations costs millions per-hour.
People are too scared to take responsibility for that kind of decision.
Its sad though, they could literally see the fire on the horizon and kept pumping that shit. Even when they finally did shut it off, its was largely meaningless because there were still thousands of cubic meters of gas in the pipelines.
The whole disaster was a total shit show, and should never have happened. The only good thing that came from this is health and safety on oil rigs went from meh, to absolute.
ironic corporate culture....how much did the fire cost them in productivity payouts to next of kin (I presume their insurance rates likely increased) and loss of the rig?
business is far more myopic than Mr. McGoo.
you can't die on impact if you put your legs together and land on your feet, maybe cover the old fella
@@john-ic5pzOccidental - including Armand Hammer - had the shameless and shameful brass to claim some of the compensation paid by the UK government for themselves in cases where the dead were contractors rather than employees. Their behavior before and after the destruction of the rig was appaling.
My late step-father Hamish was the medical examiner at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary when this happened, he was the guy who determined the cause of death. He didn’t talk about the Piper Alpha often, but when he did he told me it was the reason he stopped being an ME, that a lot of the bodies weren’t intact, and it left him with PTSD, horrible depression and alcoholism. Any time I visit Hazlehead Park I go to the Piper Alpha memorial, I think of Hamish. He eventually took his life at 56, it was just too much to live with.
If anyone is ever up this way visiting Aberdeen I’d recommend visiting Hazlehead, it’s a beautiful memorial.
Gosh, I am so terribly sorry for the loss of your step-father Hamish. We severely neglect to recognise the impact of mass traumas upon those on the invisible front lines, the people we believe ‘should’ most be able to ‘handle it’ - pathologists, forensic techs, forensic photographers, coroner employees, police chaplains, family liasion officers etc…
I’m so sorry that this tragedy also claimed your step-father Hamish.
I always find UA-cam such a surreal creation- immediately before your comment, I read the comment prior, whose father was killed in this, and their body was one of thirty never recovered.
Only to then read your comment.
I send my love to you and all of your loved ones who grieve Hamish twice over; the first, lost to trauma. The second to death.
May you each find peace.
Poor guy. Just didn't have the help back then😢
@@ricksterk7014 There's less now than then.
@@ricksterk7014 Some things can not be helped. That's just how it is.
Damn, that fucking sucks.
My friend Carl Busse was on the Piper. He was the Directional Drilling Engineer, and also the only American to die in the disaster. He was from Navasota , Texas, and was a great guy
Rip to your friend
God rest his soul. God bless Texas
sorry for your loss man.
I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend.
RIP Carl ❤️
I served in the British Army with a guy who’s father jumped off one of the highest parts on the rig and survived, rescuers were amazed how he survived the jump, I’d take my chance jumping against being burnt to death any day, another colleague was from the Shetlands and he told me that he saw a fire rescue boat come into harbour, when he was a teenager, a day or so after the disaster, the paint had blistered and cracked along the hull, such was the heat. RIP to all those who lost their lives that awful night.
Wow, that's extremely admirable, thank you so much for sharing.
@@teaguejelinek4038 Pleb
I've worked offshore and have often stood on the upper decks of platforms thinking what if I had to jump in an emergency. Of course you'd do it but damn it's a long long way down....
This is exactly why so many people chose to jump from the twin towers, a few seconds of free fall and an instant death upon impact vs the agony of literally cooking to death
@@mathewbuchanan9380 chill dude, It's a good story. Who are you talking to?
Thanks for your video, I'm glad people remember. I lost my dad in this disaster and I can always remember seeing that first tv image. Unfortunately, he was one of the 30 never recovered. There's so much about that diabolical platform and night that can still bring out the rage in me 35 years later.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I don't think I would ever get over that.
My sympathies to you and your family. God bless 🙏
I'm sorry for your loss. Must have been very traumatic for you 🙁
I'm so very sorry for your loss. 🙏
Sorry for your loss
My friend Andy Kiloh was on it, he was in a coma, he should have died but made a miraculous recovery, not without long term health issues. He was retired due to this. With a huge pay out he could live his life out without worrying where is pennies will come from.
Such a tragedy.
I'm so glad he got a payout. So many times the companies dodge out of it, leaving wreckage behind without a care in the world.
@@lincroyableprocrastinateur5414when? You're just making shit up to be mad about, aren't you?
@@lincroyableprocrastinateur5414Talk about BP and the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP fought to the bitter end litagations all the way up to the Scotus to minimize the fines and settlements as much as possible, and ultimately lost.
They had set aside $43bn for all settlements so I believe they're still paying ecocide fines to this day.
@@jonascastejon5888thanks for that info update
@@jonascastejon5888I mean I get not wanting to fork up 43 billion.. but Jesus Christ these people have no morals.
When I was in the Navy and taking safety training, I took a class called trace barrier analysis, and this was used to show how one step can cause an accident or prevent one.
Part of the problem or the solution
The Navy’s Lockout/Tagout program prevents these type of catastrophies. At least if the exact procedures are followed and not gundecked, which we know is a problem everywhere. I think non-sailors refer to this are “pencil whipped”.
Bob - Question, how did the term come to be? I understand the “pencil whipped”. Hear it in aviation industry, 1:25 regarding ghost or made up or creative entries in maintenance logs. Also in pilot logbook entries.
It comes from gun crews relatively common practice of short cutting safety procedures in handling powder and ammo years ago. to make it easier to handle powder and ordinance or increase their rate of fire. Such as propping hatches open to pass powder and ammo rather than using passing scuttles most famously seen in the battle of Jutland and was the cause of so many of the British Navies sunken ships and loss of men. so when the gun crews short cut allows a normally survivable incident to become a catastrophe i.e a hit on the gun bypasses the protection between it and the powder room setting it off, which then sends the blast through the open armored protection hatch into the exposed powder elevator down through the open door to the powder magazine and now instead of a damaged gun and a couple dead and wounded the whole ship and crew are lost because it was faster to pass the powder through the hatches rather than using the scuttles. Hence the term it was gundecked or gundecking
@@robertswafford4145 any type of job working with machinery or hell even vehicles and theres shifts involved and always changing hands i think Lock out Tag out is required. otherwise you endup with a guy who was working on something not coming into work due to sickness or vacation. and someone else walking up to the same piece of equipment or vehicle they've always used without knowing try to operate it not knowing its missing parts or partially dissasembled.
My father was a compression diver working in the North Sea and told me the story of how he was on the Piper Alpha days before this happened. Not only that, during the 80's he was a diving supervisor and the absolute cowboy approach the oil & gas companies had back then was nothing short of gung ho, he still has all his little black books from the time, shocking. Thanks for retelling these stories, lest we forget that these large companies will treat us like nothing more than grist for the mill given half a chance. Profit is king, we are seen as expendable.
Safety was something pracriced when the bosses were inspecting!
What are those "little black books"? Logbooks?
It's usually low-level management cutting corners that causes the issue. No successful oil company is ok with safety hazards because they are VERY VERY expensive.
I feel like if one had to pick a place to work of three choices. Submarine, Oil Platform or the ISS. Id pick the ISS. Spaceflight seems safer than the first two.
"Tyrants prosper till the serfs slit their throat"
My Grandad worked on this oil rig as, I've been told, a maintenance diver, he was on shore leave in Glasgow at the time when the rig exploded and had to watch all his friends die on TV. Was quite messed up, sadly I never got the chance to ask him about his work there but, I've always been interested about it.
Its great to hear essentially what his role was while he worked there.
After the incident he never went back into the sea ever again.
I’m sure it was a bitter day for him.
Horrendous.
Why lie?
@@sleepysombre4307 Get a life, you loser....Imagine saying that to almost everything as your first sentence, as if there is not a chance with today's internet that someone's relatives out of well over 200 people knew someone of those that perished personally or through other people, not even taking other bonds they could have had into account. What he described above is detailed and isn't necessarily far fetched or hard to believe. Plus oil rig working is also done in shifts with rotations of crews back to the land in mind after a set period. They don't sit all year round in there.
Not everything everyone writes is a lie and you have no reason to waste here arguing if this guy is the real deal or not on a mere comment. It was an international news disaster type of event with people from almost all around the world with diverse backgrounds and nationalities and not too far away with a very good likelihood that people who witnessed those images first hand are still alive.
@@sleepysombre4307 elaborate?
I worked for the dive company (2W Taylor) who had the contract on Piper A when this happened. Thankfully I was on leave when it happened. It was one of the "best dive assignments" in the North sea diving business at the time. Piper A was unique. One of the most productive platforms in all of the North Sea, OXY drilled the heck out of the oil field. They added more drilling capacity to the platform than any other in the world for it's size and design. Way too much in fact. The platform jacket was super stressed and began to fail. It had cracked members everywhere. The documentary talks about the huge diving platform and that was accurate. No other platform in the North Sea had anything like this. There was a full time repair program ongoing for years. We installed massive custom made clamps on every joint and node. So much NDT work looking for structural cracks and so much clamping and repairing. It was the best full time job for any diver and a very coveted gig. A fantastic learning assignment back in the day. Oxy drilled the thing to near destruction. The drilling power was immense and the torsional stresses created by the huge power of the drilling gear twisted and loaded the structure like no other. It was all about production no matter what happened. 2W Taylor also supplied divers to help recover the accommodation module from the seabed and onshore in Orkney due to divers ability to use breathing equipment (SCBA), cutting gear and in general just do whatever needed done. God bless all those involved and their families in dealing with this horrible event.
I also worked for 'Wharton Williams Taylor' on the Piper, Claymore, Tartan and numerous other rigs in both the British and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. The Piper was the worse. Many times you would be sat in the Galley or other areas and suddenly feel a huge sway of the rig as she moved in bad weather. Even the OIM (Offshore Installation Manager) use to comment that the best times of his job was when he was on the chopper 'going back' to Dyce Aberdeen.
You would know Les Yeaman, from Hull.
My father had just finished working on the rigs when this happened. He said many times the men in the industry all said that the Pipa Alpha would be the next big disaster for years before it happened.
Your father was correct. Companies like BP, Shell, Exon, Texaco etc took safety and operational issues seriously, arising from many years of operating refineries and oil fields around the world Conversely, there was a series of independent operators, without such a culture, of which Occidental was viewed as the most casual of them all. While it was no certainty that it would blow up, it was widely viewed as the most likely to do so.
It's was common talk around the diving community they all knew the poor state of some of these rigs, they saw it with their own eyes. It was no big suprise it was Piper Alpha, back then like now, you whistleblow you lose your livelihood.
Grandad was a scaffolder he was getting taken main land on a helicopter at the time
I served in the British Army with a guy who’s father jumped off one of the highest parts on the rig and survived, rescuers were amazed how he survived the jump, I’d take my chance jumping against being burnt to death any day, another colleague was from the Shetlands and he told me that he saw a fire rescue boat come into harbour, when he was a teenager, a day or so after the disaster, the paint had blistered and cracked along the hull, such was the heat. RIP to all those who lost their lives that awful night.
@@stephenburnage7687 True, but in the book ''Fire In The Night'', Steven McGinty stated that Piper Alpha was about the only rig (besides the Norwegians) that even had a safety committee at that time.
My Wife & I were married at Morpeth Registry Office on the 28th May 1988.
The newly wedded couple that were married ahead of us were tragically separated when the husband was killed a few weeks later in this disaster.
Always remember the happy look on both of their faces as they passed us wishing us both good luck for the future and us wishing them the same.
Huuu, how very tragic and sad 😳
A pity your empathy does not flow to the Russian speaking Ukrainians murdered by their own government for nine years now.
Instead you support a Nazi regime in Kyiv .
Do you feel good showing that Nazi rag.
@@dannyormond6839 look everyone the beta soyboy is defending one of the two evils
Sorry to hear that.
Same area as me.
Back in 92 i was working for a company called Trolex, they made safety systems for the coal and oil industry, after the Piper Alpha tragedy there was steps put into place to stop this ever happening again, i was on the team at Trolex to prototype several projects directly attributed to the Piper, my main project was the developement of a lighting system that was installed into the accomodation block,it would stay illuminated for hours after power was lost,and it would also keep illuminated at depth,i have to say that the thought of those poor souls who lost their lives drove me,regularly i think about them still to this day,i hope their family's are at peace with what happened that night,RIP guys.
yes you always can wonder why the men did not exit the accommodation block once the emergency got underway - however, there will be processes and protocols to exit the block such as waiting for the signal to exit wait for proof there are liferafts waiting for otherwise you will drop into the deep dark ocean late at night and be lost - it would be a TERRIFYING experience not knowing what to do the mass hysteria the waiting to know what to do the shouting and yelling turning into hysteria chaos even fighting and punching each other in the pitch black darkness hearing the sirens and explosions not knowing what was going on all in the blackness apart from the heat coming in knowing the whole place is an inferno - a truly shocking way to die
I work in software. Two event almost daily inform my decisions. Piper Alpha and the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.
Have you ever heard of the Therac-25? It was a type of radiation therapy machine used for trwating cancer. It killed multiple patients and injured hundreds more because it relied solely on software to make sure the right type of radiation was being used, and certain inputs would cause an error where it used a much stronger radiation than it was supposed to.
This is such an outstanding, straightforward, no-melodrama, no-nonsense walkthrough of what happened. I really wish we had this kind of thorough, honest, and hysteria-free storytelling for, uh, just about everything.
Thanks.
I well remember this; even here in the US it was huge news. The "error cascade" is so common to these sort of disasters... it's not just one thing going wrong; it's a whole sequence of events, each of which were manageable... but sometimes the holes line up in the Swiss cheese. The term "Piper Alpha" is as permanently emblazoned in my brain as "Challenger Explosion".
Yes. Textbook example
Why are the people from the challenger explosion still alive today?
Noone died in the unmaned challenger explosion though.
@@garrysekelli6776 wat? Challenger had 7 people on board.
@@HitLeftistsWithHammers yes if you believe the official narrative.
I remember this accommodation block being towed to Flotta in the orkneys before opening up and removing the remains ….horrible job for anyone to do but had to be done and done with decorum and respect.
I'm not sure if like to do that job. Very sobering.
My brother was in the accommodation block, found in the October of that year I think. My parents were never the same after his death. He should’ve arrived on Piper Alpha the week before to make repairs but the weather was so bad the helicopters couldn’t fly. Wrong place, wrong time.
@Sharon Cross I'm sorry to hear that.
My condolences and respect goes out to you and your family.
@@sharoncross5371 so horrific for your brother and for you and your parents left behind…..❤
@@zhdrums3872 Goes for us too .
The the lad shown at the end of this video was a mate of mine, Davy Elliot. He jumped and survived. For the rest of his life he was a bitter about it and when we were out drinking he always said he would never trust anyone in authority again. He never worked after the disaster. This tragic loss of life reshaped the North Sea oil Industry and brought about huge changes in safety. It was a tragedy beyond words. RIP to all those who perished.
Man had it rough
Piper Alpha is often cited alongside USS Forrestal as how bad responses and planning can turn survivable incidents into uncontrolled disasters
Recovering that housing unit must have been the most horrible and gruesome sight.
Was on the MV Western Cove in the area at the time and was on scene searching for survivors a few hours after the event. Only found debris from the accommodation block. Will never forget the mattress floating along complete with sheet and blankets and a clean pair of overalls laid out upon it.
Whoa, no-one would forget seeing that
Salute to you going to the rescue! A door to hell I think.
Where is the owner of the overalls?
@@Kenneth-ts7bp I suspect they’re deceased. We didn’t stop to recover debris as we were under orders just to report them to the Naval vessel co-ordinating the search. We were only to slow our search if we saw survivors. Alas, we didn’t find any.
Celtic strip on it? Seeing as how shite floats.
my cousin was on Piper Alpha when this happened. such a tragedy and will never been forgotten. being in the industry now it’s good to see safety standards increased - at least in Europe
Thanks for this excellent presentation of a truly horrific event. I was a diver on the Piper Alpha in 1977, working from the Sedco 704 drill rig that was being used as a diving platform. In those days, the Piper didn't have a special diving platform. Both saturation and surface-supplied diving was from the rig next to it. The bell, lowered through a diving moon pool, had to be pulled in closer to the Piper by means of a tugger wire from rig to the Piper and then back underwater to the bell. Surface supplied diving was by a stage lowered from a rig crane, and entering the water that way I personally installed one of the huge boat bumpers at a corner leg, the bumper visible in one of your pictures. Inspection showed that the Piper"s 'underwater structure had already rusted considerably,. Topside, it was having trouble with gas leaks from the flare stacks. One day I photographed from the rig one of the flares on fire midway along it. In one photo you can see black smoke billowing up and over the helideck. In another you can see the bent flare, melting, about to fall into the sea. And so, although you do a very good job of showing what plausibly are reasonable seququences that together made for a disaster,, an unhappy fall of the cards, I believe that eleven years before that I thought that the Piper might not have a happy fate in store for its people. The North Sea in those days was full of disasters and, along with great courage, it also had great stupidity. I remember a drill rig that had a sign at the stairs up to the drill floor. The sign said, "Days since accident" with a place for a chalked in number. The number never got above 1.(one). On that same rig the steel grate upon which divers had to walk around the bell systerm was open in places with jagged holes, and rails here and there were wobbly. A lifeboat drill was postponed because the falls didn't work properly. The instpectors, as far as I knew, didn't worry about any of this. They did warn me, however, about a file that I was using without a handle on the tang. That was very dangerous, they said. They knew of a man whose hand had slipped, the tang had cut the artery in his wrist and he had died. Those were the days. I guess. On a night of my fifth dive offshore, having gone off a twelve hour day shift to be immediately on a twelve hour night shift, in rough water, with only the light of a flare stack (not the Piper's) and miy own hazy dive light to guide me, I was sent down to clear one of the kort nozzles of a huge tractor tire (that had been used as a boat fender) that was bound up in the screw. The tool I was sent down with was a hacksaw. And the first night I hopped off the helicoper onto a helideck I was asked by the guy taking my duffle whether i had ever been in combat. Because if I had, he said, "you'll love it here, because it's just like combat." And maybe it was. The reasonable sequences, with their terrible coincidences, were like the little sequences through the air of a bullet from muzzle to brain. But in that case, with a lot of noise before hand, it's fast. On the Piper it wasn't, and if you think about too much you can't sleep well ever again. I salute he or she who had the depth of soul to become a drunk after that.
You need to write a book. Fascinating commentary. Thank you.
Damn dude, what the fuck. I agree with the other guy; write a memoir, you're not bad at writing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.✌️
This was amazing. Your knowledge and vivid recall have me right in the midst of the action. Cheers, and hope you're well.
Important, dangerous work. Thank you for your contribution. I hope you feel well compensated.
It's scary to hear of these dangers, and those lost. Fossil fuels have helped mankind, but with a huge toll. I hope we can quickly move on to renewables and modern, safer nuclear power for most of our needs.
Began diving in 1970 in the GOM and in 1973 continued in the North Sea for many years, and I could not agree more!! That was the WORST rig I have ever been on. It was always an accident waiting to happen and I dreaded even temporarily landing there, in transit to another location. The difference between operators/Oil Co's is amazing and OXY was definitely at the bottom!
My Dad was part of the team that recovered the bodies from the Accomodation block
Oh geez. What a job to do. I don't suppose her every told you if they recovered the bodies and then brought up the block or if they left them in there and brought them all up together? I've been trying to find out and I just can't find the answer.
@@waterlinestoriesii believe they raised it intact as the dangers of entering it underwater was still significant, but that's just from my memories. I know one man whose body was recovered from inside the block.
@@GB-vn1tf Thanks. Ive seen some other comments to say it was raised intact and then the bodies were recovered. But one comment said they recovered the bodies while on a ship and another that said they took the block to Flotta and then recovered the bodies.
@@GB-vn1tf My brother was in the accommodation block.
@@sharoncross5371 my brother was the block
I don't think most people realize just how quickly everything went south.
Yeah. Once it gets away from you there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.
@Waterline Stories you said 30 tons of gas per second coming out of the main line? There was never a chance, especially with 20 miles of head
Scary fast
Most people don't care.
Extremely sad.
My uncle worked on Piper Alpha, He left shortly before the fire. He earned really good money while working on the rig, whenever family would see him, they'd notice he wore really nice clothing and looked well. So when he quit they were a little disapointed, little did they know. RIP Uncle Craig.
I remember this when I was a kid. A few people in my town lost their dads in this tragedy. It was a sad day for our community. A lot of oil workers in my town.
Lock Out Tag Out or LOTO is now an industry standard for situations like the pump maintenance that caused this. Now you would open the circuit to the equipment and place a physical lock and a lockout tag on the main panel of the equipment like flipping off a breaker in your house. Lock out tags are also placed on any control points for the equipment so anyone can quickly realize why that equipment can not be used. There is also a log that everyone can check the reason for lockout and the key to unlock it is kept secure until an unauthorized person verifies the scope of work is complete and is in safe working order.
Yeah I believe when divers work near a shops prop, they give him "the keys" to start the ship. It's so he can be underwater and no fxxxxr starts that engine.
I don't know if they are actually 'keys' like you'd start a vehicle but he gets something that is required to start things.
I think it would be an authorized person not an unauthorized person
Lock outs were part of electrical code on land before that oil rig started getting built. No reason for oil rigs to not use lockouts by the 1980s.
@Alexander Wardrope Even in 1992 in Canada we experienced ignorant plant manager illegally removing electrical log out tag out, resulting in an apprentice being fried. The business covered up the case.
Yeap ..I know all about TLCT ..after working for a chemical company for the last 24 years
I'm from Aberdeen and work in the oil industry and remember this terrible event. My brother in law was a police officer and he was assigned to the temporary mortuary set up at Aberdeen airport. He spent several months there working with the forensic scientists trying to identify all the bodies. Sadly there were some which were too badly burned ever to be positively identified
Soul destroying work. Knowing the families would like to bury their loved ones and not being able to.
Reading some of the heart breaking comments here brings me straight back to being a kid in Aberdeen in 1988. My dad worked in oil and although he was never involved with Oxydental, he had his fair share of physical scars and stories from a career in oil.
I’ll never forget this night, but as a kid i never fully knew of the absolute cluster that brought about the chain of events that killed so many.
My deepest condolences to all the bereaved.❤
I have two relatives who's shift rotations saw them leave the rig several days before the disaster.
My heart goes out to those who were lost and to the families of those unfortunate victims.
I worked with one survivor for six years between 2010 2016 every year on it anniversary he would always talk to me about it I remember the incident from when I was a young teenager it was something Il never forget prayers to the families and survivors
Great documentary. We were made to watch a video about Piper Alpha during our safety induction - scary stuff. You really brought to life the impact diving operations had on the automatic fire suppression - this has never been clear to me in the past. This disaster illustrates why the "Swiss Cheese" model of risk remediation is still not perfect - sadly all the holes lined up on this day.
What creeped me out is how much of the events were caught on video. We watched, in close to real time, people dying. It was terrible, and shown on all the local newscasts, even in far away California.
If it bleeds it leads.
At the time there happened to be a documentary crew following the Seaking Helicopter.
If they had spent a very little more money they could have designed gratings that would not suck a diver on to it.
@@MrJest2 It reminds me of 9/11. The whole world watched people dying and were helpless to stop it.
A piping supervisor I worked with in 1997 lost one of his friends on Piper Alpha.
Being Scottish and working in the Engineering Industry I also think on the other disasters in the industry such as Buncefield in 2005 when taking out permits on a job.
The narration was clear and concise and just short enough to keep the main facts prominent.
An accident like this, but on a much smaller level, can happen to all of us. Recently, while doing annual maintenance on my riding lawn mower, I skipped an important step that cost me dearly. I drained the old oil from the engine and replaced the oil drain plug. I needed to stop work and visit my doctor for a checkup. Before I left my garage, I taped a note to remind me that I still needed to re-filled the engine. After I returned and finished other maintenance, I started the mower and began cutting the grass. After a short time, the engine seized up. The note to fill the engine with new oil had blown off, which caused me to forget that important step.
This is so true, I was always taught - do one thing at a time and do it right. Sounds easy but in the business of everday life and the complacency that experience brings, it is incredibly difficult.
How did that cost you greatly
@@AR15andGOD Thanks for your reply. Appreciate all that I receive. Moneywise: $50 to transport the mower to and from my repair shop. $100 to have the problem diagnosed. $300 to have my grass mowed while my mower was in the repair shop for six weeks. $1,200 cost of a new engine and labor. The total cost was $1,650. When I finally got my mower back, I used my label maker and made a pre-start checklist and placed it on my mower's feet rest. I also installed four analog gauges on the side of the mower. Oil Pressure, Amps, Volts, and Engine Temp. The last item on my checklist is "Start mower and check gauges."
@@AR15andGODnew lawn mower 😂
In the days that followed I landed in a helicopter, bringing the fire fighting experts, repeatedly onto the Tharos alongside the Piper A. Even though the Tharos was pumping huge jets of water onto the fire, the heat we experienced on the Tharos helideck was intense. Weeks later we flew a police team to the blackened accommodation module on a barge at Ardersier.
My ex partner was on the Tharos at the time of the accident he was a diver, the Tharos had to pull back because of the intense heat, dive supplies at risk of exploding. When he arrived back on the beach had burns on his face, and the total frustration of being able to do nothing to help. RIP Piper Alpha personnel.
I feel for the families, friends, and co-workers of this tragedy.
Thank you for sharing their story with professionalism and well done mini-documentary.
Thanks. This goes back some time but their story is still as important today as it was then.
Under the bedsheets, I feel for your mom
This incident had a massive influence on my own safety culture at work. It was always the main example given when I was training. Being from the area and knowing family involved it really stuck with me. I know it’s insignificant to the families that lost people but their legacy lives on in our modern safety culture and has no doubt prevented many more tragedies.
I’m from Aberdeen and can remember that day as clear as if it was yesterday,the choppers were nonstop that day.
A survivor who has now passed on Bob Ballantyne and God bless his memory,the fumes the survivors had to breathe were proven to be death sentences in themselves.
A dark day for the City,the industry and more importantly the men and their families who didn’t make it back to the beach
Always in our hearts 🏴🙏🏽
I was on the Tharos that night : seems like a lifetime ago now. The accommodation module has always bothered me Nobody ever really mentions it.
I can't remember seeing that fall into sea : don't know if I was busy with assigned duties, stretcher bearer (no.7) or my mind has continued to keep it filtered out for all this time. The R.A.F. took me off the Tharos at 12:20 am.
I was 27
Stretcher bearer # 7 ...no words bro
Stretcher bearer # 7 ...no words bro
My dad was on the rig next to this one- lost many friends he said it was the single worst event of his 40 year oil rig career😢
Was he on Claymore? My father-in-law worked on Piper until 6 months before the disaster. He was on Claymore as it happened. After that he worked on the enquiry in Aberdeen. He lost a couple of close friends with another one badly burned.
My now bro in law was on the other piper at the time. It was worrying until he was able to call his mum to say he was safe
@@pamelaadam9207 Were they on Piper Bravo?
@@afitzsimons Piper Bravo replaced Piper A a few years later, they placed it 1 mile from the marker buoy
An interesting yet ultimately almost as tragic afternote to the Piper Alpha disaster is the story of Christopher Foster. He was a young salesman in Wolverhampton when Piper Alpha exploded. He was riveted to not only the initial events but to the fire fighting efforts after and the investigations into what had caused it. He became convinced that there was a simple means of manufacturing fire proof seals which would prevent the valves which leaked & sparked the initial blast that night from ever causing a similar disaster again.
He worked for years in his garden shed, borrowing money & came up with what he believed was the solution. He borrowed more money and set up a demonstration for half a dozen key industry figures to test the valves. He really didn't know if they would stand up to the temperatures they needed to do all he claimed they could because he couldn't afford to do the real time test twice. So he stood with the oil company execs with bated breath to see if his revolutionary seals held.
They did. He became a millionaire off the back of them. Bought a heritage listed Shropshire farmhouse with 50 acres of land. He had stables filled with prized showjumpers. They had a lake, half a dozen Labradors, a massive garage filled with vintage & collectable cars & motorbikes. Matching Range Rovers for him and his wife. Matching sports cars too.
In the early hours of Monday 22nd August, 2008, Christopher Foster parked his horse float behind the gates of that mansion so no emergency vehicles would be able to access the property, went back into the house where he un-alived his wife and 15 year old daughter. Then he exited the house, retrieved several large containers filled with diesel fuel, got one of his many guns, un-alived his daughter's horses, all the dogs, his wife's aviary full of birds & set fire to all the buildings. He retirned to the house again, emptied the last of the diese fuel into the downstairs of the house, made a trail if it up the stairs. Down the hallways. All over his daughter's room & the master bedroom too. Before laying back down on the marital bed & letting the inferno take him.
He was in millions worth of debt, much of it to HMRC - what we call our tax office His business had been taken over by receivers, he was being sued by a supplier for breach of contract and the bailiffs had just posted a notice of repossession on his house.
During the investigation it was discovered that almost all of the antiques he had spent £250,000 buying to furnish the house were cheap reproductions. Mostly plastic which had melted in the intense heat.
I find it fascinating that story because what he did to his family was monstrous yet it is undeniable that he did save and to this day is still saving the lives of untold numbers of strangers on oil rigs and other industrial facilities all over the world.
damn that's a crazy story
I guess people won't read your story cause it's too long for who are not used to read two lines of something. That's bizarre. I didn't know about that and i'm watching a video about this right now. That's crazy!
Great now I have to go down another rabbit hole. 😂 Thanks for the tragic history lesson I never even heard if this before.
I remember that incident, it was horrific. I realise that he obviously became mentally unstable, but have never understood why anyone would take their own family, never mind the animals with them.
Sadly, a flawed mindset not uncommon, poor souls, all of them.
@@TherealLumpendoodle He was always a psychopath. Molested his younger brother for years. The lass' mates at school were sure he'd been fiddling his daughter too. A few of those kids made tribute videos to her where I learned this. There were some very suspicious photos of him interacting with her in a less than fatherly manner.
His utter refusal to pay his tax or bills or to honour the exclusive supplier contracts he'd signed which turned out to be his downfall financially were evidence of psychopathy too. Also his addiction to shooting was evidence of this psychopathic trait. He'd shoot hundreds of birds in a weekend. Far more than he could ever consume and leave them rotting in the fields. The point of the exercise for him was not harvesting food or even the sport itself. It was to prove his supremacy over both nature and those he was shooting with. He always had to kill more than anyone else. To his insecure mind that meant he was superior to all those people who had been born to money he was associating with.
Many psychopaths are very gifted. When it was obvious he was about to lose face he took himself out and because of his psychopathy he felt that he owned his family like he owned all that property. The bailiffs were about to take it all from him. So he decided to prove the old adage wrong and take it with him.
The families of victims had an incredibly long wait for the accomodation module to be recovered. This was done by the recovery specialists in the most sensitive way possible.
Thanks. I can’t remember if I saw the dates for when it was recovered. I’d have to check again
I remember going into this disaster in depth during dive school.
It's always a bunch of minuscule minor errors that seem to snow ball into tragedies like this.
"the men at claymore platform saw the flames and explosions but did not stop pumping because they didnt have the authority to stop pumping, which could take days to start again" damn, thats kind of like stalin not being rescued by his guards outside his bedroom because they were ordered never to set foot in there
An excellent, clear, and straightforward explanation of a horrific tragedy. I remember it well. Thoughts and prayers go to all those lost, and their families. Thank you so much for doing this.
Wow! My dad has worked on oil rigs for 35 years all over the world including a year in the North Sea thank God nothing like that happened to him or anyone we know. What an incredible series of terrible events.
This was an absolutely horrible time one of those who if you watched the live footage will never forget, but it wasn’t in vain, it changed the offshore safety culture. We used to moan about the over the top safety regime but wouldn’t have it any other way. Just a pity we lost a lot of good folks to learn lessons.
safety rules are written in blood
@@ericalawson631 And they continue to be written after Deep Water Horizon oil platform incident in the Gulf of Mexico.
@@ericalawson631 Sadly true
Piper Alpha is yet another example of safety procedures being important - until they aren’t. A series of decisions and events that appear relatively innocuous on their own culminate in a catastrophic end result. While watching this documentary, all I could think of is that when I make a mistake at work, it affects a document or an email; the only thing hurt is my pride. I don’t have the safety of 200 people on my shoulders. As a Canadian, we had our own disaster in 1982 with the Ocean Ranger, albeit from a different cause. I hope the industry is safer today, or at least as safe as offshore drilling can ever be. My heart goes out to all the men who perished and to the families left behind. 😢
Went to school with a girl who’s dad jumped from the highest part of the rig with a few others and survived.
All the men who go out into the North Sea for work have my utmost respect, it must be about the most inhospitable place on the planet for human life.
I was on my way home from a fishing trip that night....only a young boy. We passed by about 3 miles away. I can never forget what I saw that night.
@@kevinbell6247what did you see 😮
Hey I think I saw a comment at the top of a guy speaking abt knowing a guy who jumped from the top of it .which I think the girls dad ur talking abt it . Would be cool if both of em are the same. I think it was the commenter @alexwilliamson1486 ,Either way godbless u dude and everyone ❤
"Bloody hell, its really on fire isn't it?" Not to make light of this event, but this is the most hilarious case of comedic British understatement I have heard in a long time.
I remember this like it was yesterday, I was 15 and my best friends brother had just started offshore and this was his first trip offshore I looked up to him as a brother it was such a sad day, we had heard rumours that it was the rig he was on but didn't 100% know until my best friend knocked on the front door the next day... I will never forget that moment he didn't have to say a word his face told the story, he was one of the first found/identified in the accommodation block (William 'Billy' McIntosh) a true tragedy and waste of so many lives. RIP all who lost their lives that night. Never Forgotten
I’m on the piper bravo just now and I can see the marker everyday.
I was on a day off and was called in to cover for colleagues who had to go up to the general hospital to wait and hear if their men folk were dead or alive . One of the blokes from our estate he was several years ahead of me his sister my year. He was killed and never saw his child born. It still cuts deep in Aberdeen.
I knew a guy from Albertinia (South Africa) who worked on that platform. He'd fly in to the UK and he handled the landing barge bringing in supplies. Nice to hear the Saffa accent explaining these events
I served in the British Army with a guy who’s father jumped off one of the highest parts on the rig and survived, rescuers were amazed how he survived the jump, I’d take my chance jumping against being burnt to death any day, another colleague was from the Shetlands and he told me that he saw a fire rescue boat come into harbour, when he was a teenager, a day or so after the disaster, the paint had blistered and cracked along the hull, such was the heat. RIP to all those who lost their lives that awful night.
I worked with one of the victims , Bill Scorgie … every time I have a cigar I think about him ( he loved his cigars ) … never forgotten
Great video. Thank you for producing it.
My father-in-law worked as an instrument electrician off-shore for a while. Scary stuff.
This also gives the lie to those idiots in comfy newspaper offices who write rubbish about 'health and safety red-tape'!
I have watched a few videos on this accident and none are as easy to understand as yours thank you. This is such a sad story. The way the men died is awful. What those oil rigs do to our oceans when they have an accident is so infuriating!!
Thanks. Until we move away from fossil fuels it's bound to happen.
Good luck going away from them since you need them to make the so called better options. Then you get into that rabbit hole about the precious metals people seem to forget about that is needed to make the green energy Kool-aid. Then you sit here and wonder who drinks that stuff anyways it can't taste good because you need sugar to make it sweet and how do you harvest that amount of sugar to make that much kool-aid sweet. Unless those tall things with those spinny deals on top are sugar plants and I just didn't realize that. 🤯 Don't mind me I'm what you call an Idiot Savant. I do like th videos though you do a good job on them. I get a kick out of the people who make the fossil fuel bad argument while they type out their comments on their stone plates and chisels. Im going to have to go back and watch some Flintstones episodes and study up on how they did it. Don't worry I'll plug my stuff into one of those sugar factories so when I do watch I'm being Green. All jokes aside I do feel for the Men lost and their families.
@@JF2it I live in a place in Spain where they are ruining the landscape and fauna by installing huge windmills that just produce energy half of the year. I'm tired of people coming with the renewable bullshit. To make it simpler, there's hope for humanity, and it's called NUCLEAR. That doesn't mean we shouldn't explore other options for things like public transport and factories. But fuck trying to make me swallow the electric future bullshit thay relies on mining and processing of elements so far worse for environment than diesel burning.
@@GRMNCVS then you and I are completely on the same page. If something is works and is economical governments shouldn't have to subsidize them. So called green energy is just another BS story they sold to people so they could make more money for themselves and their families who start or have big investments in those companies, why else would they subsidize those projects so heavily. They always forgot to mention how much of the thing their trying to replace (fossil fuels) it took to produce their new tall and shiny sugar factory for the kool aid they want you to jug down so nobody questions them. I agree nuclear is the way to go, they'll just come out with more EPA regs. that take years to go through before they'd ever be able to break ground on a great reliable base load power source. Once at that point the I'd imagine the cost of everything for construction would have gone up tremendously which will just get passed down to the end users making the electrical bill higher in the end. Then what do they do with all the towers that are out of their service life? Leave them there in shambles, maybe but I bet they haul them out to sea and then pull the ol' quick what's that to the left. Oh never mind it was nothing , hey has anyone seen those round cylinders or propeller looking deals that were just here? No, well how about those big rectangle looking deals? Huh the deck crew must have forgot to strap them down or they decided to move them quick while we were whale watching off the left side. 🤷♂️
Thank you, a calm well presented insight into this unfortunate disaster, no dramatics just facts. well done. As a post script a few years ago I was is Scotland looking for family members in grave yards in Perth, came across a casualty of this disaster, very sad.
Thanks
I hope you found some of your families resting spots too.
@@waterlinestories Sadly no. We where in the wrong villages, my wife's father was a wily quiet man and took many secrets to his grave LOL.
I go to the football every week in Glasgow with an auld fella who was an electrician on the rigs for years and was working at Piper Alpha when this happened. He was returning from shore leave and was meant to have flown out the next day. He’s such a chipper old guy but the one time he spoke about this I could tell there was a lot of grief for the friends he had lost mixed in with survivor’s guilt.
Thanks for telling this story.
My dad worked on an oil rig when I was a kid, in the early 80's. It used to terrify me, thinking of him out in the ocean on that thing, if anything were to go wrong.
I would cry myself to sleep sometimes, with visions of horrible tragedies, and being helpless to do anything about it.
I would miss him so much, while he was gone, and remember being so grateful each time he returned safely.
I believe this incident provoked a strong need in my dad to search out other work. He became a car mechanic, and came home every night.
Thank you, Jesus, for keeping my dad safe, and God, please continue to be with the families who suffered so much heartbreak and grief, with the loss of their loved ones and friends, and continue to mourn them, to this very day.
Such a horrible, horrible, way to die. It reminds me of 9/11, with the towers, people being told to stay in their offices, waiting to be told whether to evacuate, not understanding the severity of the situation they were in. So incredibly heartbreaking. God bless every soul taken too soon. 😔💔🙏
❤🇺🇲🙏🇺🇲❤️🇺🇲🙏🇺🇲❤
I knew of the tragedy, but had no idea of how it came about. Thank you for a very professional documentary. My heart goes out to those who lost their lives and those injured in this awful event.
I had left school a year earlier and was 17 working in Lloyds of London In reinsurance claims. I remember seeing the names of the victims and the claims were massive for everything and seeing the disaster unfold that night on the tv. The victims, the rig, loss of production etc were huge amounts. The names of the individuals was what I always remember.
After watching this, it was obvious profits were put over lives.
My Dad was off shore in another rig off of Scotland "North sea" . I live on Aberdeen and remember this catastrophe and the lives lost. 🙏⚔️🏴⚔️🌹
One of the key fundamentals which put in place the conditions for this disaster is, at that time, offshore safety was the responsibility of the Department of Energy, whose main purview was production, rather than the Health & Safety Executive, whose main focus was on safety. It wasn’t that production was deliberately put above safety, but it’s a different mindset, which permeated through the decision making of those setting out and enforcing policy etc, leaving gaps and leading to errors. Piper Alpha was a terrible disaster, but a great opportunity for lessons learned. Sadly, as is almost always the case with these big disasters, those lessons are never quite as embedded as they should be, and often have to be tragically relearned and refreshed again at a later date.
Another very good video of a complex event, communicated clearly and simply. Well done
How stupid is it that they can clear as day see a giant fireball and explosions at piper and then just decide "meh im sure its fine keep forcing more oil to it"
Never forget the lives lost that day
Changed the way we work forever
Both on/off shore oil & gas sectors
When I did my permit issuer course the tutor used this incident as a lesson for us along with some mine incidents. Definitely a good lesson as I think back to it with every permit I sign.
These rigs really are marvels of engineering and the human spirit.
God rest the souls of those that are lost.
I'll never forget this. I was only a boy with no connections to it but I remember one of the family coming in to say there was a big fire in the North sea. It was visible from the east coast of Caithness and was on the news live.
Thanks for this video. I remember this in the news at the time, but I was not old enough to understand the full extent of this horrific catastrophe. RIP to all those poor souls who lost their lives.
This Documentary was well done and needed, this tragedy, and those whose lives were taken or traumatized, should never be forgotten.
When I completed MAPPS in 93 prior to working on Brent we were shown some unreleased footage (at the time) about PA disaster and 2 guys actually left the course without completing it.
What does the acronym MAPPS stand for?
Before I found your channel I had no idea how dangerous and complex working on and under water was. Thank you for this public service that you are providing. Eye opening.
also shows the level of negligence associated with the "get it done" attitude in this line of work, in this particular case I cannot imagine a reason for ending your shift without finishing the work on the pump and relying on a report paper to prevent someone switching on that pump, it seems only reasonable to me that if I work on such a piece of equipment, I disable the ability for anyone to start it till the work is done, pull a fuse, remove a switch handle, lock it down anyway possible to avoid a situation just like here
Thanks for watching
look up a delta-p video. that stuff is horrifying
@@dghtr79_36 Sure, that's standard practice now, 30 years after this happened and is standard practice because incidents like this. However, 30 years ago nobody even dreamed of locking equipment out completely with the only person who could unlock it being the same one who locked it.
@@nobodyspecial4702 30 years is irrelevant, I'd disable it purely for my own safety (and it would stay that way till the work is completed), because I'm working on the thing, it would have been true in 1910, 1950, or 2023
this is just negligence, or the story was cooked, might be entirely possible that someone important covered it up to avoid responsibility saying that the control room had no info about the condition of the pump that was being serviced and its safety systems, I mean how could they NOT know, since the service had been started on it, they MUST have known that, if they didn't, that is another layer of stupid on top of negligence
I’ve seen tv shows about this, but your descriptions/narrations really made me feel like I was there. The videos of the explosions-oh my gosh, those poor men. RIP
Keeps pumping even with the fire visable 20mls away' Darwin award to those in charge
NEVER work the night shift anywhere. That is when hell shows up.
I avoid that at all costs
I worked swing and graveyard shifts.
We got more work done than day shift because day shift is when the managers work, and they constantly waste the workers' and supervisors' time.
Underrated channel, love the way u explain everything, my new favorite, very interesting stories....
Thanks. More to come
To anyone in the comments who was related to anyone who sadly passed away that day i send you all my condolences and respect and love and prayers to you and your family may God bless you all 🙏🏻 🙏🏻 this was truly tragic.......
Very well presented outlining the tragic events as they unfolded. Having read the huge Lord Cullen report mapping out the tragedy then all the recommendations was eye watering. This terrible event has touched all of us in the global oil and gas sector. RIP to all the 169 we lost.
Excellent story telling... the pace and detail are perfect.
Thanks I appreciate that. And thanks for watching
My friend died in this tragedy He was on a summer job before coming back to Uni. RIP to all the lost souls
So... everyone in the comments apparently knew a guy who died. Somebody is lying.
@@OwlKnight32 Not that I need to justify myself to you, I’m from Scotland and my friend was from Aberdeen
Why don’t you grow a pair and show a bit of respect people are still mourning this
@@OwlKnight32 Ive seen maybe 5 or 6.. there were hundreds of people on it..
And if you knew someone on there when this happened its not uncommon to watch a doc about it..
I vaguely remember this story. Thank you for documenting this incredible story and giving it new life and historical context. This is a very important tale that needs to be retold again and again.
The hazards of oil drilling in the open sea cannot be understated.
Human error in complicated systems gives one pause on the precautions that go bad.
Sorry for all who lost a friend and family member. May you all rest in peace.
A dreadful catastrophe and one thing I take away from this is there seemed to be constant pressure from higher ups to maintain maximum production. Edicts from those not on scene and who have little to no actual knowledge of what it takes to safely maintain such an operation have caused many a disaster.
I was 17 and worked in Occidentals Pipe Yard in Peterhead. The Aluminium Body Caskets borrowed from American military came in on flat bed trucks and some arrogant Yank ordered me to put a slicker suit on and steam clean them all . I also witnessed personal belongings discarded on pallets in a shed ( a Phil Collins cassette shrunk by the intense heat sticks in my mind ) and Occidental management claiming expensive equipment in the yard was on the Piper. They didn`t hang about long and were already planning their escape. Even as a wet nosed 17 year old skinny lad I remember thinking you heartless bastards.
Thank you for covering this story. Heartbreaking - so much suffering!!! Met the A&E doctor who was on duty that night at aberdeen hospital. Eye opener what he and his colleagues had to deal with that night. Thankfully, after the disaster, the HSE became responsible for enforcing safety of oil rigs in the North Sea.
My old man used to work in the north west shelf oil field off Western Australia, and when he started that job we learned about Piper Alpha as part of his training package. They were basically told that in the event of a fire, the last thing you want to do is jump overboard, because it's not the fall that would get you - it would be the massive number of hammerhead sharks that were in the water there off the Pilbara coast.
Yep, many a man over board drill saw the sharks get the dummy before the rescue crew.
My mate, Smudge Smith died that day. We served in 2 Para together. I only found out years after the event when I spotted his name on the memorial in Strathclyde Park near Hamilton, Scotland. RIP mate.
The high price of oil,I worked on piper B and looked at the piper A marker buoy every day with a tear in my eye.RIP
Thank you for a fantastic explanation and rundown of the sequence of events of this horrific tragedy
"An almost reasonable sequence of events" is an amazing line
Not everyone saw innuendo in it.
Very well put together video, thanks. It’s sad that such an incident had to happen to make important changes to loto and work control
My uncle “Douglas Hamilton” was on one of the platforms in the vicinity and saw it all. It plagued him for years 😢
What an incredible story. Thanks for sharing
I was on the Clyde platform that night , it looked like the sun rising , such was the ferocity of the fire , RIP my fellows
This is the clearest explanation of the disaster of Piper Alpha I have ever seen.
I saw the smoke from Piper when I was 7 from the top of Bennachie. Terrible what those men had to go through.
What a memory to have.
Yeah I can't imagine being trapped in there.
The most important thing I've learnt from stories like these is never wait to be told to evacuate, just get the hell out of there!