This powerful safety DVD unravels the sequence of events that in the course of one critical hour lead to the disaster. Each easy to understand workshop in the series can be run by facilitators even with minimal experience in presenting training courses. In addition, tips and guidelines are included to help facilitators with every aspect of the workshop. Here they truly provide a vivid picture of how these men survived against near impossible odds.
It's truly emotional watching them speak and I always love stories of truly ordinary people, especially Brits, being heroes. Although this documentary doesn't break new ground, it utilises the best contemporary techniques today to create a moving and informative picture.
Definitely a recommended film for the year. Details Edit. Release date June 21, United Kingdom. United Kingdom. Piper Alpha: Fire in the Night. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1 hour 34 minutes. Dolby SR. Surf the Earth. Wheels Lovers. Popular Shutterstock Videos See more shutterstock videos. Financial business diagram with charts and stock numbers showing profits and losses over time dynamically, a finance 4K 3D animation Dark Blue.
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The first explosion was quickly followed by an oil pipe rupture and fire. The sequential failure of the gas lines then caused a rapid escalation of the disaster. Many lessons can be drawn from the tragic events on Piper Alpha; this paper focusses on seven key areas. Personal safety over process safety fire water pumps on manual start to protect divers ;. Permit to work and isolation for maintenance pump re-started before maintenance complete ;. Handover inadequate transfer of information between crews, shifts and disciplines ;.
Piper Alpha was designed to produce and export oil. The requirement to export gas — with the associated separation of condensate — was an afterthought and involved extensive modification. The retrofitting went on in several phases, starting with separation of condensate and ending with production of export-quality gas. The new facilities were located beside the control room, under the electrical power, radio room and accommodation modules, so that when disaster struck, it did so with disastrous effect on the rest of Piper Alpha.
The control room was badly damaged in the first explosions the control room operator survived and gave valuable evidence to the Public Inquiry on the sequence of alarms preceding those first explosions.
The radio room was rendered useless; communications were lost almost at once. In many retrofitting projects, non-ideal design solutions are required. However, in the case of Piper Alpha, the worst-case scenario on which the process safety design rested fire was not revisited effectively when the platform was modified to treat gas with additional risk of explosion. Despite the extensive fixed fire protection system on Piper Alpha, not a single drop of water was applied from Piper Alpha itself to any of the fires.
Water alone would not have put the oil fires out and with gas fires one should not even attempt to do so but it might have cooled the structure and pipelines and have prevented — or at least significantly delayed — the gas line rupture which was the major escalating factor in the Piper Alpha disaster. After the rupture of the first gas line, Piper Alpha was doomed. For many years, the practice on Piper Alpha was to switch the fire pumps from automatic to manual when divers were in the sea.
As diving was such a regular part of normal operation, in practice the pumps remained on manual most of the time. It is much easier to imagine the horror of a close colleague being sucked into a pipe as had happened a few years earlier although the diver survived and prioritise it over the danger of leaving men unprotected in the highly unlikely event of fire. The assessment of risk was skewed. The suction pipes under Piper Alpha were protected with grilles to prevent divers from being sucked in, although anyone within 5 metres of the inlet could be drawn towards them when the fire pumps started with the risk of serious injuries.
On other rigs this was managed by close communication with divers and a temporary override used only when the divers were working within a short distance of the inlets, a relatively rare occurrence. When fire broke out on Piper Alpha, the only way to activate the fire-fighting system was to start the pumps locally. Despite valiant attempts, dense smoke and fire prevented anyone from reaching them.
It is not known whether the initial explosion on Piper ruptured the fire water ring main or damaged the control system for the fire pumps. It is likely that electrical power was knocked out, but there was a diesel back-up. It is not known how effective the deluge would have been had it deployed as the nozzles often blocked with scale and the fire-water pipework on Piper Alpha was undergoing phased replacement.
The night shift operators were aware that condensate injection pump A was out of commission for maintenance and also that maintenance had not yet started: the maintenance and associated work permits had been suspended overnight. The suspended work permits were not displayed in the control room but in the safety office. It appears that the operators were not aware of another suspended permit. The pressure relief valve for pump A had also been removed. Even if operators had gone to the safety office to check, permits in the safety office were filed by trade and not by location.
The pressure relief valves for the condensate injection pumps were located one floor above the pumps. Although it is almost always best practice for a pressure relief valve to be sited as close as possible to the unit that it is protecting, condensate on the downstream side had to be able to drain to an appropriate vessel, so the valve was placed about 8 metres above and 15 metres away from the pump.
In order to reinstate condensate injection pump A, two separate actions would have been required: reinstate electrical power and open the gas-operated suction and discharge valves.
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