ABSTRACT
Not long after 9 P.M. on 6th July 1988, a series of explosions tore through the Occidental-owned Piper Alpha oil production platform in the Northern Sector of the British North Sea. With the benefit of hindsight it is now clear that the chances of survival for those onboard had been made slim by a corner-cutting and profit-hungry management regime. Negligent emergency provision and undermaintained critical safety systems were to make a catastrophic situation worse: emergency lighting failed; there were hardly any torches available to the crew; each of the lifeboats was located in the same section of the platform, which also happened to be inaccessible; and no provision had been made for an alternative escape route to the sea. Most people on the platform gathered at the emergency muster point, the accommodation module, which due to its location above the gas compression module also happened to be one of the areas on the platform most exposed to fire and explosion. The accommodation module, constructed from wood and fiberglass, quickly began to burn. The water deluge system-the platform’s main defense against fire-failed, but in any case Lord Cullen’s report of the official public inquiry was later to conclude that “it is likely that if the deluge had been activated on 6 July 1988 a substantial number of the deluge heads would have been blocked by scale with the result that they would not have been discharged” (Cullen 1990, p. 205). When two life rafts were
launched, they failed to inflate. The standby safety vessel, a converted fishing boat, had no medical supplies to treat survivors as they were pulled from the sea, and the Tharos, Occidental’s state-of-the-art floating fire engine, could not muster sufficient water pressure to reach the flames. In the midst of all of this, those who ignored company emergency procedure and management instructions and sought alternative escape routes actually much improved their chance of survival (Wright 1993).
