Posted on 07/25/2010 6:24:04 AM PDT by dennisw
KENNER, La. — The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, killing 11 people and setting off the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident.
The worker, Mike Williams, the rig’s chief electronics technician, said the general safety alarm was habitually set to “inhibited” to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens and emergency lights.
“They did not want people woke up at 3 a.m. from false alarms,” Mr. Williams told the federal panel of investigators. Consequently, the alarm did not sound during the emergency, leaving workers to relay information through the loudspeaker system.
While it is not known whether it would have saved the workers who died in the April 20 disaster, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Mr. Williams said.
In a statement, Transocean, which leased the rig to BP, said workers were allowed to set the alarm to prevent it “from sounding unnecessarily when one of the hundreds of local alarms activates for what could be a minor issue or a non-emergency.”
“It was not a safety oversight or done as a matter of convenience,” the company said. Transocean also pointed to a separate audit of the rig in early April, in which inspectors testing the fire detection system found no detectors inhibited.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
More fodder for (justified) lawsuits by oil rig workers who were killed or injured the day of the explosion
More fodder for (justified) lawsuits by oil rig workers who were killed or injured the day of the explosion
Looks like BP is really looking to blame others, too. I wonder how many of these things are commonly done. I wonder how many of these regulations are over the top, bureaucratic nonsense, and are ignored due to common sense.
More than a month ago, I predicted BP would sell off all US assets and become a much different and smaller company.
By the time the lawsuits and fines are settled, all their refineries, terminals and pipelines will be owned by others.
Does anyone know the exact time of the explosion??
I learned a LONG time ago there ain't no such thing as a false alarm, master caution light, or what ever. There are only lazy people.
The late night alarms indicated that something was wrong: a sensor set incorrectly, minor leaks; power issues, the list of minor issues goes on. To correct these issues takes effort, time, and money.
Who among us would replace a fuse with a penny because the fuze kept popping while we were watching TV? Most of us wouldn't, but some would. Want to guess which group has the house fire first?
Murphy, as in Murphy's laws, is a real SOB. Yes, you can fool him some of the time. But he will catch up with you and when he does the bill is going to real high (11 lives in exchange for some uninterrupted sleep).
That's OK by me because BP operated here the way they would in a 3rd world country they could abuse. They ignored safety and prudence on the Deepwater Horizon and rushed things because they were paying a daily penalty rate due to keeping the Transocean rig longer than they contracted for
They also abused America with their Texas refinery which racked up 700 violations while other companies would rack up 8 or so a year
Blame BP too for giving 0bama an opening to abuse honest oil producers who are in the offshore business and to ruin offshore oil field employment for 20,000 Louisianans. Obama is coming down on a lot of our oil production because BP gave him an opportunity
I think that what we're going to find out is that prior to this incident, there had been a great abundance of either false alarms, or low-level alarms miscategorized as high level alarms that did nothing but disrupt peoples' sleep. Crews got sick of getting awakened and alerted by useless alarms and in turn did what any sane individual would do - disabled the audible alarm.
I deal with alarms every day. Nuisance alarms are disruptive and take ones' mind off what they are doing. They should be weeded out so that if the system is giving a high level warning, then something that requires immediate attention is happening or has just occurred.
April 22, 2010...Rig sank at 10:21 AM CDT
Who was sleeping or had gone to bed.
I'm not saying it's okay in anyway for the alarm to be off BUT...what other systems were in play that do the same job...
I doubt they needed an alarm....the movement of the explosion must have been enough to alert everyone. After that...it was finding the best exit..and a place to jump ship....
Fixed it.
You learned wrong. That's the way it SHOULD be, but in the real world, it just isn't true. The folks determining what alarms "need" to occur and prioritizing those alarms are often the least knowledgable about the operation.
If you could have stepped into the system control center at FirstEnergy in the year or two preceding the blackout, and see the plethora of useless alarms, coming in many times a minute, you'd have some idea of what a useless alarm really is. Keep in mind that the people charged with monitoring these alarms also have the lives of linemen, electricians, and the public in their hands. Not to mention, they are the first line of defense in maintaining the integrity of the bulk electric transmission system. Any screwups on their part can result in damaged equipment, power outages, serious injury, or death. With the level of concentration needed to maintain the required safety of the multitude of crews working out there every day, the disruptive nature of nuisance alarms, miscategorized alarms, unimportand alarms, and such grows exponentially.
I was there - I left before the blackout partly because of this problem. Needless to say, that company improved drastically after the blackout occurred. I still keep in contact with some of my old coworkers and they have told me of all the improvements, alarming being one of the areas of improvement.
No doubt they have the cash to do it...
The alarm would presumably have given them warning of something that wasn't right, prior to the explosion. A failed valve, or sudden pressure change, or a failed system of some sort - anything that might have been a precursor to the explosion. Had any type of significant event occurred, and had the crew received adequate warning, they could have reacted by either manually making corrections or shutting down the rig, or by evacuating quickly.
Of course, this is assuming that the event was preceded by a non-catostrophic event that could have been corrected. And, it's assuming that the alarm system is working properly.
That's what I'm thinking. The alarm system in no doubt computerized and every alarm coming in can be prioritized, e.g. turn on a warning light, enable the buzzer in cabin B, etc. Sounds like they just left the alarm system in default mode, or sound the klaxon for every alarm that comes in, and their extent of programming the system was to use the klaxon disable switch.
At least in refinery practice, alarms are categorized and prioritized. I do not know how operations are partitioned on a platform. In a refinery, there is more than one operator in the control room, the quantity depending on the number of process units. Alarms are also prioritized, typically by color coding. The top priority is coded red, and is programmed to appear as such on the operator’s HMI (human machine interface). No, sot some big flashing message as shown on movies and TV, but the process variable value appearing in red on the operator graphic, and the alarm message appearing in red on the alarm summary screen. Appropriate alarm audio tones are programmed as well. High priority alarms can also initiate action by the emergency shutdown system (operating independent of the primary process control system) which is these days typically a high reliability programmable logic controller with redundant features (such as Triconex, ICS Triplex). Older systems may still be using hardwired relay systems for ESD (before PLC’s were certified as high reliability systems). Of course what screws everything up is failure to maintain the instrumentation and the final control devices (valves, etc), and using the infamous bypass switch. In part that was cause of the BP Texas City explosion. So if this is true as to what happened on the Deepwater Horizon rig, all politics aside, I would be expecting a major OSHA audit of BP’s plant operating procedures throughout all of their United States facilities.
I have worked on PHA’s (process hazard analysis’) as part of project scopes. They are not just to stay out of trouble with OSHA, they are to prevent such disasters like these. It is of course then up to the operating company to follow the procedures, maintain the system, etc.
It’s done all the time. Alarms are jumpered over as a matter of course during a start up. Sometimes, formal procedures are written to determine when alarms become active. Some electronic systems (the Moore Products quad log and the Siemens safety PLC come to mind) even come with impedance testing on their input circuits to allow indication of when they’ve been jumpered over.
Greenhorns get worried about jumpered alarms. Grey beards know better.
From your post, I see you do real world maintenance. From the late night point, I’m guessing a boiler house maintenance.
The alarm scheme on oil platforms is the same with one exception. Drilling is a transient operation done for a short while while the well stays there for years. The alarm scheme is more like a mechanical or hydraulic system where the alarms fall into one of two categories, indications of operation and mechanical limit shutdowns. Not to say there aren’t alarms requiring operator action but just that they are fewer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.