There is a reports today that the alarms were disabled on the Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the explosions that started the oil disaster in the Gulf. The alarms had been off for over a year.
Why? According to the Financial Times the reason was:
When he alerted supervisors to his discovery, Mr Williams, chief electronics technician for Transocean, said they told him they “didn’t want people woken up at 3am to false alarms”.
The April 20th explosion killed 11 workers and led to the sinking of the rig. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that:
Mr. Williams testified that the alarm system, if fully functional, was designed to detect a sudden rise in natural gas and would have warned workers in rooms handling heavy drilling fluid to get out before the first of two explosions rocked the rig. Several workers are believed to have died in those rooms.
The general alarm should also have automatically shut down air vents into engine rooms. When the well blew out, natural gas is believed to have been sucked into the engines, causing them to speed up and explode.
There are so many cases were we see disabled safety procedures that would have saved lives. Examples of guards sitting in back rooms or only partially installed. Actions that never should have happened. Hopefully, this testimony and the resulting tragedy will be a wake up call for all of those companies that have disabled safety measures. It’s time to get back to making sure that people are protected over profits and convenience.
