Friday, July 23, 2010

Alarms Disabled On Deepwater Horizon One Year Before Explosion

From Bloomberg.

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- General alarms on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had been disabled for a year before it exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the biggest U.S. oil spill in history.

The alarms would’ve warned all crew members of a fire or a large amount of explosive gas and were connected to an emergency shutdown system, Mike Williams, chief electronics technician for Geneva-based Transocean, said at a U.S. Coast Guard and Interior Department joint investigation hearing today in Kenner, Louisiana.

Supervisors told him when he discovered the issue that “they didn’t want people woken up at 3 a.m. to false alarms,” Williams said...

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