Nu de offshore training achter de rug is, is het wellicht leerzaam om eens te kijken hoe het er aan toe kan gaan tijdens een echte noodsituatie op een booreiland. Een zéér actueel voorbeeld is natuurlijk de ramp met de Deepwater Horizon in de Golf van Mexico. Wat is daar gebeurd vlak na de explosies? Op CNN.com vond ik een indrukwekkend relaas van een aantal van de overlevenden.
Hieronder een stuk uit dat verhaal:
"The force of the blast was like a freight train. It picked Brown up from behind and tossed him into the engine room control panels, fracturing his left leg. The elevated floor collapsed, and Brown fell inside.
Sprawled on his back, out of breath, Brown struggled to his hands and knees. Then -- boom! -- a second explosion jolted the rig.
The massive structure swayed.
"This is my time," Brown thought. "I'm gonna die."
Daniel Barron had just jumped through the door off the drill floor. He sprinted toward the lifeboat deck.
The rig was completely dark, except for the orange glow of flames. He turned around, then froze. The fire stretched so far and so high, he couldn't believe his eyes.
He prayed to God that the other guys on the rig floor had gotten out.
He could see Aaron Dale Burkeen, high up on the crane. The Philadelphia, Mississippi, native struggled to exit the crane cabin. In the light of the flames, Barron watched him run down the stairs, holding onto the handrail.
An explosion "literally picked him up ... like a child would throw a toy," Barron said. He landed on the deck. As Barron stood in a daze, a rigger shoved him and shouted:
"Go! Run! Get out of here!"
In the bunks where the men off-duty slept, ceiling tiles fell. Walls collapsed. A walkway was ablaze. Jostled a second time from his bed, Christopher Choy rushed to his designated fire station. Nobody was there. He turned and saw the derrick, the giant tower-like structure, for the first time. Flames shot more than 150 feet in the air. Choy made his way to a second fire station. It too was empty, except for one colleague who told him Burkeen was down. The man had tried to pull the injured crane operator to safety, but he was too big for one person to move.
Choy quickly put on a fire suit. They set out after Burkeen.
Boom! Another explosion.
The deck wasn't just on fire -- it was like a giant torch.
Choy was distraught. Burkeen, the bear of a man whom everyone confided in, was just within reach. But flames blocked the way.
Deepwater Horizon had four lifeboats, each equipped to hold about 75 passengers. The explosions blew two off the rig. Workers from all across the burning rig made their way to the remaining two, dangling 50 feet above the sea.
Every Sunday, the crew took part in evacuation drills. But now, as bloodied survivors stumbled aboard, some realized they'd never actually sat in the boats before. Some didn't know how to buckle the seatbelts. They hoped the motors worked.
Rig leaders tried to take a "muster," a headcount. It would tell them: How many were present? How many were not?
People screamed. "Put it in the water! Let's go!'"
They feared that the entire derrick would collapse and crush them.
Arriving on the scene, Doug Brown found co-worker Brent Mansfield dazed, barely functioning, a gash to his head. Brown helped him board a boat.
On the deck, Matthew Jacobs stopped and looked up. "This can't be happening," he thought. "It looked like you was looking at the face of death. ... You could hear it, see it, smell it."
Amid the chaos, men were ordered off one lifeboat so a more accurate headcount could be taken. "Man, we ain't got time for this!" a voice shouted.
Another explosion went off.
"Abandon ship" rang out over the PA system. Panicked, some men jumped overboard into the oil-slicked sea.
After 30 long minutes, the lifeboats finally descended into the sea. They bobbed through the water, guided by the bright orange glow of the raging fire.
Their destination was the Damon B. Bankston, a support vessel nearby when the well first hissed. Covered in mud, it had become a rescue boat.
The lifeboats slammed into the Bankston, and riggers worried a hole would get punched into the sides, that they would plunge to their deaths so close to being safe.
The injured were unloaded first. A new muster was taken: One hundred fifteen were present. That meant 11 were missing.
"I just remember looking back at the rig," Matthew Jacobs recalled. "It was awful."
After a while, he found a spot to sit alone. "I couldn't watch it knowing that we had left those 11 guys on that rig."
Christopher Choy couldn't bear staring at the fire either. He turned his head away and looked up at the Bankston's wheelhouse.
There was no escape.
In the reflection of the vessel's windows, he could see the flames."
Het gehele verhaal is hier terug te vinden op de website van CNN.
