Bishop: ‘Piper Alpha memories still raw’
Religious leaders have spoken of how the world must remember Piper Alpha because “we dare not forget”.
Religious leaders have spoken of how the world must remember Piper Alpha because “we dare not forget”.
On the evening of the 6th July 1988 I went to bed as I always did at just after midnight because I was in charge of my then baby son’s last feed. Having listened to the news during that feed I was aware that there was a fire offshore but at that point in time the details were sparse.
With the 30th anniversary of Piper Alpha upon us, the oil and gas industry deserves credit for its response to the tragedy and the way health and safety measures have been improved to protect the workforce.
Steve Rae counts himself among the fortunate 61 who survived Piper Alpha and has made it his duty to ensure that the legacy of the disaster of July 6, 1988, when 167 offshore workers perished, “continues to be revisited, referenced and shared whenever possible with all those connected to and directly employed in the oil and gas industry”.
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Piecing together precisely what happened, why it happened and how to prevent another Piper Alpha happening again took Lord Cullen well over a year and 400 pages. The impact can be seen across the industry today and his verdict on the present state of offshore safety continues to hold great weight.
The scale of the Piper Alpha disaster was beyond anything Aberdeen's flagship hospital had experience before. At the helm was medical director Gordon Stone, who vividly recalls the extraordinary team spirit show by staff.
“Safety is not an intellectual exercise to keep us in work. It is a matter of life and death. It is the sum of our contributions to safety management that determines whether the people we work with live or die.”
The first government official on the scene after Piper Alpha exploded still remembers the smell of the burning paint that greeted him when he landed on the nearest support vessel.
It is a date written indelibly into our history.
The earliest memory Marc Reid has of his father was that his hands looked different to other people’s – badly scarred during his escape from the blazing platform.
Oil and gas industry bosses have been urged to maintain the focus on safety in the face of new challenges within the sector.
A flotilla of vessels quickly converged on the scene as everyone joined forces to try to save as many lives as possible. The captain of a tiny fishing boat was among those who joined the rescue effort.
When world-famous US firefighter Red Adair flew in from Houston to orchestrate the operation to “kill” the Piper Alpha wells, the mission appeared immense. Some even thought it impossible.
When the dreadful news about Piper Alpha broke I was in London working as a graduate trainee for Shell’s downstream business.
In the three decades that have passed since Piper Alpha this industry has changed exponentially: the disaster driving an unprecedented pace and quality of change in operational safety for offshore oil and gas.
Thirty years on as we remember the Piper Alpha disaster and the 167 lives that were lost, it is a poignant time to recognise the positive safety changes in the years since and how these principles need to be passed from one generation to the next.
Nothing was ever quite the same for Geoff Bollands or his family after tragedy struck the Piper Alpha platform on July 6 1988.
It’s a well drilled unit, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice and help get sophisticated technology up and running as fast as possible.
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