The B does stand for British
An account by Mike Williams, Deepwater Horizon‘s chief electronics technician, who survived the explosion and fire, and was one of the last people to make it off the rig alive. He describes how the last life raft full of survivors almost didn’t escape the burning oil slick under the doomed rig because no one had a knife to cut the sea painter with due to Transocean’s no-knife policy.
June 8th, 2010 at 9:44 am
The life rafts are required, under SOLAS regulations (Safety of Life at Sea) to have both a knife that can cut the painter, and a break-away link in the painter.
Did BP think that BOTH are dangerous?
June 8th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Wow…
June 8th, 2010 at 10:04 am
No knives is a Gulf thing, not just a BP thing. As I understand it, the closest thing allowed to a knife in the Gulf is a box cutter with a spring-loaded blade set to automatically retract if there’s no pressure on the thumb stud.
June 8th, 2010 at 10:14 am
So says the guy who has already filed a multimillion dollar negligence suit against BP and Transocean. Call me a cynic, but I’d treat what that guy says with a bit of caution.
June 8th, 2010 at 10:54 am
They are brits/bitches and knives are restricted in their own country. Why not on their oil rigs too?
June 8th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Flighterdoc – sure the rafts have knives but try to remember that when your fear system is shutting down rational thought. Try to remember something you heard in training but never saw or touched. A knife on your belt or in you pocket is something you handle everyday and are more likely to remember when disaster strikes. Not to mention the desire to have basic survival tools at hand when you spend your days surrounded by hundreds of miles of an environment that will suck the life out of you.
When I was at sea (not in the oil industry), I had a knife and a flashlight on me at all times or in my pants at the side of my bed when I slept. It was far too easy for things to go against you, way too fast.
NPB – the the employers should be required to provide a personal line cutting device of the size to cut any safety line or painter of the design used for seatbelt cutters to every person as soon as they leave shore. A good argument can be made for at-sea working knives not having a point (at least on ships) but no-knife policies are irresponsible from a survival standpoint.
Some Law Talking Guy – I know nothing of his lawsuit but he’d have to sue to establish his claim for any maritime personal injury compensation. “Workers comp” doesn’t work like it does on shore. Negligence is an element of a Jones Act claim. The rig was obviously unseaworthy (if only for a moment) because it blew up, caught fire and sank. He may however be pursuing a claim outside of maritime personal injury.
June 8th, 2010 at 11:37 am
JKB – I agree: When I go sailing I always have a knife, light, and whistle on my person. My harness also has a strobe, rescue streamer and water-activated light.
However, the reason the USCG requires annual training is to overcome the fog of disaster. Nevertheless, the break link (which is required to be far less than the buoyancy of the lifesaving device) will keep the raft from going under. The required safety knife has been mounted nearby the attach point of the painter, too, at least on every life raft I’ve ever been in: An enclosed lifeboat would probably have a mechanical release as well.
So, the suit at hand is at best specious and reflects on the incompetence of the individual filing it (and his attorney). Further, there are many applications where a ‘senior electronics technician’ needs a knife-like device (preparing cable for stripping, for one), and if the individual was especially cautious he could have availed himself of non-knife devices like ‘EMT shears’ or a ‘rescue hook’. And even that box cutter with retractable blade would work on the painter.
June 8th, 2010 at 11:42 am
If no knives were allowed, how did they eat their steaks?
June 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am
In Hamburger form, Paul.
I’ve been carrying a knife since I was 10 years old. It wasn’t allowed at school, it was probably illegal everywhere else, but I used it all the damn time, and I didn’t care about idiotic rules or the opinions of morons. That’s when I was ten, and by my own standards, I was a little pussy. Of course, I’m an American, so we pride ourselves in being rebellious, insubordinate, and ballsy.
June 8th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Transocean is not BP; Transocean is also Swiss-owned.
(I mean, it says right there in the quote that it’s Transocean policy, not BP policy, right?)
June 8th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Now now Sigivald, if you go and harsh people’s high of bashing BP, what would folks post about?