Or it could have been the original explosion of oil and gas the ruptured the floats. A sudden shock wave from an explosion, and the evacuation of water from under the float, then water crashing back in to replace the water displaced.
They design some torpedoes to detonate below a ship, never touching it, because the shock wave and water displacement breaks the keel of the ship.
I’d still like to know why the Coast Guard rig fire response manual was changed 7 months before the explosion. The article read like this was a new directive(for the CG not to fight the fires themselves). If this was something new,it would appear that someone did this without enough planning for such a shift in response,command and control...leaving a leadership and response vacuum during a real time event. Just a thought.
This floating drilling unit has pontoons and columns that, when flooded with seawater, cause the pontoons to submerge to a predetermined depth. It sits low with a large part of its structure under water. Those pontoons are departmentalized , it is not one large pontoon.
If you notice from that pic they are connected to each other, this allows listing to be corrected. All floating rigs can be manually controled, they dont need electricity. If you look at the pic, those grates you see can very well be under water, they often sink it lower in bad weather even to point those grates may be submerged, it lowers its profile and gale force winds have less impact on low structures.
Last the area directly above the grates is a redundant pontoon, it can not be filled with water by the control system or manually. Those four redundant pontoons are capable of keeping the rig on the surface even if the main pontoons are completely filled. Also those pontoons can not be flooded with fire hoses. Damaged in the explosion? highly unlikely if consider those primary pontoons were 60 to 130 feet under water, that much water makes a very good ballistic barrier to flying debri.
The fire fighters action played no role in the rig sinking, no amount of water dumped on it would have any noticible effect.
Seems more likely they are looking for an escape goat to point at. I dont know why it sank, but an explosion damaging it to the point it sank is highly unlikely. Automated fire systems are independant of the electrical grid, they have battery and in most cases pheumatic safe guards that in an emergency close ballast ports. Unless those systems were disabled, and that would have to be done on purpose I see no way it could sink.
I’m not one to yell government did it on purpose but I see no other viable option than to think it was sank and not from an explosion.
LOL -
I wrote my post #35, and didn’t look back at the thread. Just saw your post #34 and #41. I realized as soon as I saw your excellent observations that my early post with absolutes needed to be modified.
You need to modify your thinking a bit too, it seems. The reason that underwater explosives’ shock damage (mines, torpedoes, etc.) are so powerfully destructive is the almost incompressible nature of water. The shock of the explosion is very efficiently transmitted with little attenuation. The explosions on the Deepwater Horizon platform due to the methane, etc., would not have much effect on the pontoons and other underwater structures as the shock would have been transmitted through air and damped by the water surrounding the structures. (The effects of evacuation of the water by the explosion is a separate issue and clearly not applicable to DH.)
It seems that the major fault here that was not addressed (in addition to over-flooding of the deck of DH) is the failure to make attempts to power up the bilge pumps in the pontoons and other flotation areas with some type of auxiliary power.