This video is about the Louisiana oil rig explosion.
USA: Eleven workers are still missing and three more remain in critical condition after a Tuesday night explosion on a BP oil rig, 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana: here. And here.
Britain: Safety campaigners have called for company directors to be held accountable for deaths at work after two companies were slapped on the wrist for their fatal negligence: here.
Leading trade unions have called for workplace safety to be put at the top of the election agenda in the run-up to Worker’s Memorial Day on April 28: here.
Oil Rig Explosion Survivors Arrive In New Orleans
by The Associated Press
April 22, 2010
Families eagerly waited to welcome survivors of a thunderous blast that rocked the oil platform they were aboard as Coast Guard rescuers combed Gulf of Mexico waters Thursday for signs of 11 missing from the still-burning rig.
About 100 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon when it blew Tuesday made it onto a supply boat. The boat reached shore Thursday morning, according Dana Eugene, the sister of Kevin Eugene, one of the survivors. Seventeen people were injured, four critically, in the blast that sent a fireball into the night sky.
Eugene said before the workers can be reunited with about five or six waiting families, they must be checked by doctors in Port Fourchon, where the boat docked. Afterward, they were expected to be taken to a hotel about 70 miles north in suburban New Orleans where more families were waiting.
“We just want to see him,” Eugene said.
Meanwhile, Coast Guard rescuers in planes, helicopters and boats searched overnight for the missing, though no one had been spotted. The rig is owned by Transocean Ltd. and was under contract to the oil giant BP, doing exploratory drilling. Company officials would not comment on the survivors reaching shore.
Carrol Moss, 33, of Jayess, Miss., was waiting at the hotel for her husband.
She said Transocean notified her about the explosion early Wednesday. Nine hours later, the company said her 37-year-old crane operator husband, Eugene Moss, was safe.
“That was pure freaking hell,” Moss said late Wednesday. “To have your kids look at you and say, ‘Mama, my daddy may not come home.”‘ The Mosses have four children.
Authorities could not say when the flames might die out on the 400-by-250-foot rig, which is roughly twice the size of a football field, according the Transocean’s website. A column of boiling black smoke rose hundreds of feet over the Gulf of Mexico as fireboats shot streams of water at the blaze.
“We’re hoping everyone’s in a life raft,” Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry said of those missing.
Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean, said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. But precisely what went wrong was under investigation.
A total of 126 workers were aboard the rig when it blew up. The Coast Guard said 17 were taken by air or sea to hospitals with burns, broken legs and smoke inhalation.
Company officials had not identified the missing workers.
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