Piper Alpha: Fire in the Night

This programme contains some strong language.

ALARM BEEPS

Every now and again when I'm driving over that way, I'll pop in.

Loads of people go there when the roses are out.

It's a beautiful place when all the roses are out.

I just walk around outside, try to put faces to them,

I know some of the names there...

and just see what they look like.

Piper will never go away.

It'll be here forever.

My granddaughter, she did an article at school on the Piper Alpha.

She said, "Can you tell us a little bit about it?"

I said, "There's not much to tell."

"Did you jump from the rig?"

I said, "Oh, yeah."

"Was it high?"

I said, "Oh, it was high."

"How high?" I said, "It was high."

When the black water comes from the depths of the northern ocean,

then will be the beginning of our tribulations.

For as long as man has lived on the borders of the North Sea,

he has intermingled his respect for it with fear and hatred.

Is it too fanciful to imagine that the small sea towns

which border this coast cower from the sea,

perhaps as if in race memory

of the invaders who came across these narrow seas, the Vikings?

Or is it perhaps an awareness

that the North Sea gives up its treasure unwillingly,

that the men who have fished it for generations know that, for them,

the North Sea is a widow maker?

Nothing remotely like them had ever been built before.

From the seabed to the top of the drilling derrick would be 690ft.

The steel had to be protected inside and out

by a combination of plastic coatings and electrolysis.

Not something you can do in any old totter's yard.

This is one of the most exciting things

that's happened to Europe for centuries.

And somehow these cumbersome steel contraptions had to be set afloat

and towed 110 miles offshore,

had to be set upright and pinned on the ocean bed.

On launching day, nobody could guess what might happen next.

It was as much religion as engineering.

The structures were designed to withstand waves of 94ft

and winds of 130mph.

In the splash areas, the impact of a wave

could be several thousand tons,

striking both sideways and downwards at the same time.

Floating cranes had to be designed to lift into position

units that were heavier and more cumbersome

than anything that had ever been lifted before at sea.

Nobody knew all the answers.

Nobody could hope to think of everything.

You could only do your sums and say your prayers.

It wasn't expected that they'd ever turn out quite like this -

machinery has bred machinery, platforms have grown up and out

like junkyards on stilts.

Piper, one of the largest fields in the North Sea,

holds the current world production record for a single platform -

at the moment, more than a quarter of UK production.

A vision of hell, I thought it was. The first time, I thought,

"God, how could anybody work on one of these things?"

Your ship seemed to be quite comfortable in comparison.

When you see these guys, these ants walking around in their hard hats

and their overalls, I had nothing but admiration for them.

If that rig decides to get upset with you,

there's only going to be one winner.

Ten stone of man, 2,000 tonnes of rig, he's going to win all the time.

CLANKING

SHOUTING

Everything was hunky-dory then.

It was good.

There were some cracking times...

before that night.

It was work.

I didn't go to work there thinking we were particularly unsafe.

It was a different environment,

but it was an environment you soon got used to,

because a lot of it was just similar to working on shore,

except obviously, the getting there and the getting home.

It was 112 miles, so about an hour, 50 minutes to an hour,

depending on the weather conditions.

You just sat there and either fell asleep or read a book

until you got out to the platform.

It was all a new experience then.

I have seen people fly out,

step off...

and say, "I'm not... No, I can't do this."

I've seen that happen, yeah.

I always thought, if there was ever going to be an accident,

it would be the transfer there and back in a helicopter.

Because you do think about it - if anything ever happened.

You think once you get on the platform,

you're safe for a fortnight.

Obviously, I got that wrong as well,

so my judgement's not brilliant, is it?

LAUGHTER

What a life it is in the North Sea.

Here we are, far from home.

It was sort of, we're not meant to be there.

You're stuck in the middle of nowhere,

but you're seeing other rigs around you

where people are in exactly the same situation.

There's no way you would exist if you didn't get on.

It was as simple as that. So you did.

You got on and you had a good laugh.

You made a laugh of it because if you didn't make a laugh,

you'd probably cry.

OK. One steak monkey gland.

-Well-done sirloin.

-This isn't well-done sirloin.

Pat. Well done. Well done, Pat.

The Piper was the main key way for the oil

because the oil pipeline going back on shore came via the Piper.

We took the oil from the Tartan,

we took the oil from the Claymore,

two more rigs,

and we piped it then into the mainlines going ashore

and that's what's caused a lot of the problems.

Quite a few people didn't like the Piper, particularly.

But it was the first platform

I'd ever been and I thought it was quite good. The food was good,

the accommodation was good, the work area was good

and I thought it was quite...

to me, quite safe.

The Piper had just one stand-by boat, the Silver Pit.

Everyone was trained in firefighting within the platform itself.

Every week you did your lifeboat drills,

where you went to your lifeboats

and also on board you had your hoses and equipment

for survival in that respect, and firefighting.

There was also the Tharos,

which was the accommodation rig next to the Piper.

It was there as a firefighting barge as well,

it had water cannons on board there.

The Tharos, wallowing only slightly in a force-nine gale,

has all the grace and clean-cut lines of a floating building site.

This 30,000-ton barge has not been built for beauty,

but for situations like this,

a blow-out, the oilman's nightmare,

and it could happen in the North Sea any time.

The water cannons on the Tharos can envelop a burning rig.

It won't put the fire out but it will stop the rig melting.

Below decks, there's a hospital and intensive care unit

that can cope with 90 men

suffering from the burns, hypothermia and broken limbs

that would follow a disaster offshore.

Aboard the platform, they don't talk about safety much.

They don't talk about disasters at all.

They all know it only needs one careless or foolish man

for a North Sea platform to become a flaming torch.

There was a saying on the platform that in the priorities,

safety came first, production second.

But we always said safety only came first

if it didn't interfere with production.

You just felt that they were looking to cut costs all the time.

When you see now how much money is involved in oil,

there was probably no need for it.

Keep it flowing, keep it flowing. Pump it out.

It was a time bomb waiting to happen.

It was a time bomb...

and it happened.

It was an exceptionally busy time on that day.

There was a lot of maintenance going on on the rig.

We had the gas modules shot down

and we had to get this gas module back up and running

as quickly as possible.

We knew we had a few days to do it in,

or we thought we did. Put it that way.

This was the first time that they had tried to do a shutdown,

keeping part of the platform still pumping oil.

It was a live experiment they were doing.

At the end of the day, obviously, it didn't work.

The sea wasn't rough, it was a pleasant day.

The work went all right.

We didn't have any blockages in the blast machine, as I remember.

Yeah.

And nobody mixing paint with their hands.

The guys knew they were going to be going across to Tharos

to sleep that night.

One of the lads came to me, he'd just been married six weeks,

and he wanted overtime. I couldn't think of anything to give him

and then I thought, "Oh, the compressor needed filling, diesel,"

I said, "You can do that, fill the compressor

"and I'll see if you can stay on here tonight."

Stayed on to go back to Tharos.

The contract lads were knocking off from the gas module

and they came down to the instrument shop

and I was writing out the log to hand over,

because the next day I was going off

and I said to them, "OK, lads, you can knock off,"

and I sent them back up,

not realising that I would never see them again.

Another ten minutes and it could have made the world of difference,

they might have survived.

But you don't know that at the time, you don't realise that,

you think you're doing them a favour, a good turn.

But, it wasn't, as it turned out.

RADIO STATIC

'It's 25 years ago and I can remember it as if it was yesterday.'

Well, we had a problem, which was very much a routine problem

we've seen a lot of times before,

what we call the condensate injection pump shut down.

We called condensate what the layperson would call LPG,

the stuff you buy in the blue bottles

for your barbecue or your fire.

So, we needed to get it going quickly again,

there wasn't a panic about that, because the condensate pumps,

from an equipment point of view,

tripped more than any other piece of equipment.

It was just, "Oops, the condensate pump's tripped."

Accepted the alarm

and then pop the gas alarms in, and it just all came in together.

ALARMS AND KLAXONS WAIL

All the alarms are coming in

and every time I'm trying to stop one,

there's another one coming in, so I couldn't stop the klaxon coming in.

And the explosion came.

Next second, I'm 15 foot away, up the other end of the control.

It wasn't just a big bang, it was more of a karrump.

And you felt it, right through the rig.

I mean, the instrument container was...

shaking like you knew it was something big.

RADIO STATIC

I can see myself in the control room now.

I can see the smoke and the destruction

at that end of the control room.

My hearing was OK, because I could hear some of the alarms going,

my hip was hurting, I struggled to walk a bit.

The logical thing to do was then to get out of the smoke,

which is what I did.

We got outside and we were concerned

because the platform alert hadn't gone off,

which the fire panel used to...

Part of the logic used to put the alert off,

and that hadn't gone out.

And the other thing we were concerned about, we didn't have any firewater.

At this point, Bobby V, and Robbie Cal, both put breathing apparatus on

to go into the smoke to try and start the fire pump,

which was the control room operator's job,

but because of my hip injury and this

I was struggling to move about,

-never mind put my air set on.

-And what happened to them?

They were both killed. Both of them.

I started making my way to my lifeboat.

And I met two lads from the control room with gas masks on

and they said to me, "No-go, Roy.

"The pumps have been blasted to pieces on the initial explosion.

"They've been taken out."

And he said, "The lifeboats have been smashed as well."

I went on down to the 68-foot level.

As I'm walking along, you're looking at a sprinkler system

and all you're seeing is drops of water.

So, the valve for the water had obviously opened,

but there was no pressure,

there was just the residual water dripping down, from the sprinklers.

So, I knew then we were in serious trouble.

The only way was down.

One of the riggers found a big rope

and he tied it to the handrail

and threw it over the side.

So, I managed to get hold of a lifejacket

and I went down the rope with other people.

I managed to get inside,

into the Zodiac rescue craft off the Silver Pit.

The Silver Pit was this little boat,

now and then you'd see it doing this in the sea

and we used to say, "Whatever happens on here,

"you'd never get me on there."

And I was really pleased to get on there.

It was our job to man what we called the fast rescue craft.

When we launched for the first time,

the fire was still very localised.

What happened after was, one of the guys came down the spider deck,

the spider deck was the lowest deck on the oil rig.

Now, at that time, we just thought the guy was going to say,

"Right, OK, boys, we see that you're there. Can you hang off,

"because we might get problems?"

From the look on his face, we thought,

"This is a man that really doesn't want to be there."

Then there was guys coming down the spider deck.

Most of them were just dressed in their normal everyday gear.

That's when we realised then,

there's something really not right about this.

RADIO STATIC

That night I was in the Sandhaven.

It was a supply vessel, but converted into a safety vessel

that could do supply work as well, at the same time.

I could see smoke coming out of one end of the Piper.

I knew it was a big problem then.

Because there was no lifeboats in the water.

And I thought, "Well, men could be in the water."

Even in that decent weather, not going to last long in the North Sea.

So, I launched the boat and off the lads went,

and I followed them up.

It was Brian Batchelor, Ian Latham and Malcolm Storey in the boats...

that went up to the Piper.

The initial phase was for the oil personnel to go to their lifeboats.

But I think what happened that night

was just completely different to anything that was planned.

You couldn't get to your lifeboats,

because they had to pass through an area

where the fire had taken hold, and it had taken hold so quickly.

The amount of smoke around, I thought,

there's no helicopter coming in.

You can't even see to come in, it was that thick with smoke.

The Tharos, we thought, maybe,

but the bridge between the Tharos and the platform down,

but the Tharos had pulled off and no way could that get close,

because they would put themselves at risk as well.

So, it was confusing,

and people weren't quite sure, really, where to go next.

Well, there hadn't been an "Abandon Ship".

There was no official "Abandon Ship" on the Piper that night.

There was no-one who said, "OK, everyone off the rig."

Because, there was nowhere to go.

We saw that the divers had actually gone down and knotted rope

and they left the knotted rope there.

We said, "Well, we'll follow them down."

I'll be quite honest with you,

my adrenaline hadn't started going at this point.

But you hadn't been up and seen the actual fire.

I had a lifejacket on at the time, so I took it off.

And at this moment, there was a massive explosion.

EXPLOSION

I just went up on the ball of one foot,

kicked off on the other, and spun round, and then,

I didn't know what was below me, I knew I had to get out of that flame

and most of the lads who I was standing with

never made it.

Three dead that I know of.

Three of us that were in that area,

but a good few of the lads never were seen again.

I was maybe 50, 60, 70 yards away from the platform

and the heat was intense, even then.

The lads jumping off the rope, falling off the rope,

jumping over the side, it was horrific.

The legs had things like protectors on them,

to stop the supply ships bumping against them.

I remember one lad falling off from a height

and bumping onto this and bouncing off his back.

I thought, "Oh!"

I can't remember his name, but I met him later

and he had hurt his back, but he survived.

You wonder why people would jump out of a 30, 40-storey block window,

when fire's at the back.

Well, I know why now.

Because I jumped as well...

and I was very lucky to survive.

When I hit the sea, I went very deep, very deep.

You could see, up above,

the flames were lighting up the surface of the sea,

so I started swimming up towards the surface.

You're blowing out bubbles

and trying to keep at pace with the bubbles, sort of thing,

which is old films that you've seen, you know.

What I learned at sea was, you might have got away from a rig,

you might have got off a sinking ship, yeah?

But once you're in that water,

that's when you really DO need all your survival skills.

If you're working in a factory, the alarm bell goes,

you go into the car park, you're safe, yeah?

You get your name ticked off, the fire brigade arrives, yeah?

That doesn't happen at sea.

Particularly not on a ship, particularly not on an oil rig, yeah?

That fire alarm goes off, if you can't fight that fire,

if something happens to your rig or happens to that ship

and you end up in the water, that's when your survival starts.

That's the beginning of your problems,

it's not the end of your problems, it's the beginning of your problems.

As I got towards the surface, I was struggling then for breath.

I didn't think I was going to make it.

And I started swimming a bit more

and I thought, "Oh, blow this bubble business!"

You start panicking a bit, you know. Finally, I did hit the surface.

I looked up and you were under a grill.

There was no other word to describe it.

The top of my head started to cook.

Steam was rising off the water.

And I was really in a bad way then.

I thought, "I'm going to die,

"either I'm going to be burnt to death

"or I'm going to drown."

And I said, "I think I would sooner drown," I said.

"I think that's a more peaceful death."

And so I...plunged myself under the water

and pedalled down under the water.

And I thought I was maybe going under for the last time.

It wasn't as if I had an option.

I just had a choice of one way or the other.

My decision was that I thought drowning might be...

an easier death than burning.

I got an image of my younger daughter

and I'd promised to give her the same type of wedding

as I'd given my eldest daughter,

which was a grand affair.

It had gone very well and, as I say, my youngest daughter,

she'd said, "Look, I'd like a wedding like that,"

and I'd promised her, I said,

"You can get a wedding like that, no problem."

And...this sort of, clicked with me

and I said, "I've got to survive this."

I knew I had to push through the barriers and make this happen.

When I hit the surface again,

and I was a bit further away from the rig,

and the flames were curling up a little

as you got further away from the rig.

The currents were taking me away as well, thank goodness,

and I started swimming then.

I noticed a body quite close.

He had a life jacket on.

I didn't realise that it was...

I thought, "It's someone, I'll go over

"and see how they are," like. And I swam over towards him,

and realised it was face-down, still, and he was not moving at all.

And I realised he was dead.

And...he had a life jacket, which I didn't have now.

And I thought...

"I can't steal his life jacket,"

I just couldn't do that, I couldn't take it off him.

I said, "What I'll do, I'll rest against it,

"rest against it on his back,"

and I didn't want to lift him up to look at who it was. Because...

..you knew it could be someone you knew.

Excuse me, I'm sorry about that. Erm...

and you didn't want to...

You didn't want to... You wanted to treat him with respect.

I lent on him, as I say, and it gave me a respite.

Even now I feel a little guilty about doing that.

My strength started building up again a bit

-and then I heard voices shouting me...

-'Over here!'

..and it was lads who were clinging to a quarter of a lifeboat.

And so I let go of the body and swam over to the lifeboat.

There was about five of us on this bit of lifeboat.

One of the lads, Eric, a French lad, he was in a very bad way.

He was very badly burnt and you could see that just looking at him.

Erm...

And then we were looking around

to try and find a way of surviving again, and the Silver Pit,

we were waving like mad, it went past us waving like mad

and never saw us.

And then it came back, going the other way,

and it saw us then.

They came up to us and dragged us on board.

At that point I felt even euphoric because we'd survived.

We'd actually lived through it.

You didn't realise just how many people had...

Had gone, in that night, you know?

We look back on that now and say

that was day one in our life, a new life.

That's the way some of us look at it, you know?

EXPLOSIONS

Fire in the night, yeah, uh-huh.

You were hearing explosions.

I can only describe it as a kind of like staccato.

You know, "Bam, bam, bam." EXPLOSIONS BOOMING

Maybe a couple of explosions and then a pause, another explosion,

and then a bigger pause.

But I mind to think at that time we didnae have a choice here.

We have to do... We have to get them on the rescue craft.

We have to get them to safety.

Men were screaming.

At the time, you know, you thought to yourself, "But I have to do this.

"I really have to get you off this life raft

"and get you somewhere safe."

At one time there was a massive double explosion above us

and I honestly thought, for me, this was it.

I thought, "This..." you know,

I thought to myself, "I'm going to die here."

But, like everything else, a split second later,

you're still here, eh? You've survived, you're here, you know?

And that was at the time, I think it was the diver,

we watched the diver swimming towards us.

He went down and I thought, "We've lost him."

Then he bobbed back up again and I thought, "Great,"

and I was still coming,

because we're still trying to push towards him, he's still swimming.

He goes underneath for a second time and I thought, "Oh, right."

Then he bobs up again, eh?

Then he swims, then he's almost right at us

and I mind he went down for a third time,

and I don't know what got me,

but there's an old seaman's adage that says

"if you go down for a third time you'll never come up."

I don't know where that adage comes from, but I sort of thinking it.

And what I remember doing was thinking,

I shoved my hand under the water, more in hope than expectation...

but somehow I managed to come up with this guy with the head of the hair.

Dinnae ask me, you know...

I-I remember, like that...

and almost the minute his head appeared above the water

Jimmy Clark, Andy Kyle grabbed him under the armpits

and we unceremoniously hauled this guy on board.

It was Eric.

Sadly, out of the 36 guys that we had rescued,

unfortunately, Eric didnae make it.

It's all night, it's horrendous.

All doing the same, trying to get off.

It's one of the rare occasions footballing come in me head.

There was still emergency lights

that usually light up the passageways.

Right along to the end, up the stairs, the canteen area.

Seen some guys with their snorkels on

and their masks, heading out the door.

Telling everybody to stay in the canteen area.

By then it was all smoke and everything upstairs.

It was a mess, with windows breaking, glass and everything.

I only went back up to look for my painter

but he wasn't in the first hall.

He'd already been inside the canteen.

And you couldn't get in that door

because there were heaps of guys standing around it.

Then again, if I had gone in the canteen

I wouldn't have been here today.

FLAMES ROAR AND MEN SHOUT

The fire's that way.

'You're going up and down, trying different doors'

and we'd just, like, crack the door

and you could hear the roar of the fire.

FLAMES ROAR

Every door we tried, it was the same. That's when all the lights went out.

'It's when you get the flutters.

'You think, "Crikey, not going to get off this." '

Go up that way!

This way!

Come on, boys, this way!

'This is when I bumped into the roommate, Bill.

'I didn't recognise him. His face was black.'

Saw Barry on the stair.

We told him that they'd been out on the pipe deck

and it was, far as I was concerned, it was clear.

It was just smoke coming from a burning skip.

He said, "OK." I said,

"I've told the guys upstairs earlier that it was clearer down here

"but they didn't want to come."

He says, "No, just lead on, lead on," he said.

So we just took off along the passageway.

We was making us way down different levels.

Some parts you could get down the stairs,

but other parts was on fire.

Then we had to go along the beam, down a column.

You know, just sliding down here and walking here,

jumping about different areas of the rig.

MEN SHOUTING

I'm a rigger by trade and used to walking along the beam,

but Bill, he was a painting foreman.

It wouldn't have been so easy for Billy. He come down like a gun.

You support each other, innit? It's...

It's your friend for life then, innit?

Barry seen a painter rope and he threw it over.

He said we're going down a rope and I said, "Aye, lead on."

I get down the rope into the sea...

It didn't feel cold at the time and I'd fell into the sea before.

I think I could swim in it all night after getting off that.

Then Willy's climbing onto the rope and starting to come down

and I thought, "He can't swim."

Help! Help!

One minute he was in the water, the next minute he's hanging in the air.

Like a bell-ringer, going up and down.

When the swell started hitting me feet, that's when I stopped

and just held on, and Barry's swimming just out from me, shouting,

"Come on, come on!", and I said, "Nah, I can't swim. No, no!"

And he kept treading water, watching me,

and then the boat came round, one of the fast rescue craft...

So, I let go then, when they came near me,

I let go then and they just hooked me in.

I had to pull away from the rig because it was too hot.

I was at the back of the bridge, which was...

I had another, maybe, 40 metres of ship,

and then another good couple of hundred metres to the rig.

And I couldn't bear the heat through the glass at the back of the bridge.

It was a tremendous heat.

But my lads, they'd already picked some men up.

As they came away from the rig the coxswain, Brian Batchelor,

who was one of my best buddies,

he saw another couple of men coming down the bulk hoses,

so he turned round and went back to pick these up.

Well, one of them fell in the water, they picked him up.

The second one, when he got down to the lobe,

which was about 20, 30 foot off the water, he wouldn't let go.

FLAMES ROAR

Oh, it was a tremendous noise.

Tremendous hiss and...then bangs,

and more explosions.

And a... HE HISSES

Terrible noise.

There must have been a big pocket of gas underneath the rig

that was just sitting there, and a spark must have got down to it,

and it just came down onto the water.

The boat was there, then the boat was gone.

I kept on calling and calling, and calling on the radio.

"Answer me! Come on, Brian. Come on, rescue one, where are you?

"Come on, answer me!"

Of course, there was no answer because they weren't there.

Even those shots I have seen on television since then,

seeing the amount of flame there was then and the timescale,

and I think to myself, "I was still on that then,

"with all that...fire going on."

I often wonder how I ever managed to survive it.

How any of us managed to survive being on the platform that long.

Timescale now, I can't actually put a figure to it.

People were just milling along,

thinking, "Where shall we go, what shall we do?"

And the galley area, that's where everyone was sort of congregating.

I just thought, "There's no point waiting for things to happen.

"I want to see for myself if I can get off."

I was looking after me, by that time.

METAL CREAKS

'How are you feeling at that time? Did you realise...?'

Crapped myself.

Erm...you...

realised how serious it was.

It's like, "How am I going to get off here?"

There was no obvious way of getting away from the platform.

You were boxed in.

It was filling up with smoke, it was obvious that it wasn't a place to be.

There was a guy stood next to me and he had a torch.

He said, "It's no good staying in here, we need to get outside."

I started thinking about going up to the helideck

to get away from the smoke.

That was about the time, I think, an explosion came.

I think that's the same time

that lots of people who were up there themselves decided to jump.

Some people jumped from the helideck.

Well, we were at the platform area of the helideck,

which, I learnt later on, is 175 feet from the sea level.

We were looking down on the Tharos...

and we're waving to them, for them to try and do something to help us.

They was just standing, looking up at us waving to them.

METAL CREAKS

Walked across the helideck, trying to work out what I was going to do now.

There was a fella just standing, staring...

I walked past him and I said, "You cannae stand there, mate,"

I said, "you've got to try and get off," and he just looked at us.

Never said anything, just looked at us. Looked straight through us.

Then I walked away into the smoke again, and never seen him again.

We decided to go up onto the helideck,

but just as soon as we got over to that side

there was a major explosion.

A 36-inch pipe, I think it was, there, it fractured,

and that's when the huge fireball engulfed the rig.

You just didnae know. Didn't know what it was,

but you just instinctively knew,

"God, that was something terrible's happened."

FLAMES ROAR AND METAL CREAKS

-'Did you think, "I'm going to die here"?

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's... I said a few prayers but...

Can we just stop there a sec?

OK...

-Yeah, it was... Sorry.

-'Did you...?'

I thought we were doomed.

I really did. I said a few prayers and there was a huge explosion.

And it blew the end of... this cabin off.

So, it was an escape route, but at the same time,

there was a big hole opened in the floor

and I don't know what happened to the two guys that were there.

To me, they just disappeared, so...

I think they actually went through the hole, but...

Can I just stop again? Sorry.

One of the guys I worked with,

he'd been off and he'd been on his summer holidays.

He says to me, he was glad that he'd such a good holiday...

er, with his kids and that, and that, you know, he came offshore...

..with happy memories of his family.

-'Did he make it?'

-No.

I met his wife a couple of times in Aberdeen and...

I told her what had happened...

and I think she was glad that we were there together.

'It's a difficult thing to say.'

I've not really... I've not said it for 24 years or so.

We'd go one yard one way or one yard the other way

and it might have been me.

The explosion cleared the smoke somewhat, for a while.

It was either...

stay there and get fried or jump, not knowing what was below.

It didn't really seem to matter at the time, do you know what I mean?

So, thankfully, what was below was water.

I was, like, down on me knees and that.

I think I was trying to just get a rest or trying to think.

I even spoke to me wife, at the time.

I says, "I know I'm not going to get stuck on here,

"I'm going to get off," and that's what I said to me wife.

Just trying to think what to do next.

I just stepped out...

of the helideck, into the water.

I ran over to the north side of the platform and had a look over

and I took my life jacket off and threw it in in front of me

and took two steps cos there was a safety net around the helideck.

I took two steps off, two steps and jumped off.

And just... I jumped off, and I just thought to myself,

"What the fuck have I done?"

The Zodiac took the Tharos

and they lifted it out of the water.

As it was lifting up, all you could see

was what was left of Piper.

It was...

Sorry...

It was horrendous. It was...

You just... I felt...

I'll honestly thought I must be the only one that survived that.

As the night wore on,

we were conscious that we were finding less and less guys.

The last time that we went to the rig,

the whole world just seemed to be on fire.

The noise was absolutely deafening, I could not begin...

If you could imagine,

if you can imagine a blowtorch

and then magnify the sound of that blow torch

maybe 3,000 or 4,000 times,

then you will get an idea of the noise.

It was a cacophony of hell,

that's the only way I could describe it.

I will never forget that noise.

Never forget that noise.

It must have been an hour I'd been going around the platform,

trying to find my way off.

I think I was getting to the stage of being quite fatalistic by that time.

The platform was beginning to break up.

I could hear the gratings breaking.

It was just a noise,

like an eerie noise of things just creaking and grinding,

as if the welding was melting.

Supports gave way and the area we were on actually tilted.

Everyone just shook hands

and, you know, we were sort of saying that was it.

We were just shaking hands and saying, "This is the end."

I thought, "I've got to do something, go somewhere, do something,

"keep trying at least to get away from this."

I came out of this tool store...

and that's when I could see clear air.

The crane operator had dropped the pipes onto the deck...

and they were creating, like, a bridge to walk along.

I could see this guy at the end of these pipes.

He'd been walking along the pipes and jumped off into the sea

and I thought, "I'm going the same way, that's where I'll go."

The deck was very, very hot.

It was hot to the touch.

I could feel it through my feet.

It definitely was melting.

I had my life jacket on

and I had my survival suit on and I stood, looking down.

I couldn't really see the sea, if there were any obstructions at all,

but I did as you should always do

before jumping in from any distance at all -

hand across the lifejacket,

hand over your nose to stop the water going too far up,

and I went to jump, but as I was doing that,

someone from behind said that his feet were on fire

and...gave me a shove.

I just remember going head-over-heels and thinking,

"I'm getting away from the flames,

"but I'm going to break my neck hitting the water now."

I don't even remember hitting the water.

I came up on my back, marvelling how warm the water was.

I came across a partition, floating.

So I managed to pull myself onto that

and paddle away from the platform

using some trainers which were floating around.

I was just thinking then, "Thank God for that,

"I'm away from that inferno,

"away from the smoke..."

Which was so... I think the smoke was as bad as the heat.

To be in clear air, floating away from the platform was a great relief.

I say, the trainers were floating by,

that's what I used to start paddling away,

and also boxes of cigars.

And although I used to smoke cigarettes,

having inhaled that much smoke I thought I'd pack the cigarettes in

but I'd start smoking cigars!

You could hear the rig in its death throes

and it was, oh, a big moaning of...

metal, as it sort of melted and was bending.

It wasn't doing it silently. It was...

You could hear the noise, it was like a big...

HE GROANS

Well, I can't get anywhere near it, but...

..it's a sound that will be with me for ever.

It was just the death of the platform

that I was hearing there, like.

And then one big chunk just...

It was like slow motion.

It just went.

And all you saw was legs.

And the end bit of the rig still stuck up, burning.

Realising what was on the seabed -

all them men.

I don't know if they were still alive at that point,

but anyone who was remaining there,

that was them right down to the bottom of the sea.

Aye.

And there was a lot of folks, a lot of lads I knew there.

I thought I'd just see it floating and everybody was going to be saved.

But it just hit and went straight under.

-Do you regret seeing that now?

-Yes.

I should never have stood and watched it.

I suppose that's something I'll never forget.

Thank God for one thing,

all the painters were off the rig for that night.

Thank God they were all off.

Except the one, like.

Can you remember the painter's name?

Shaun Glendinning.

From Brechin.

At least I'd like to think that I managed to get Barry off.

Just a bit of water, that's fine.

I am not sure the number of casualties.

I believe it's about 150.

Fatalities. But I'm not sure yet.

We haven't got the full numbers.

Rescue 01, Tharos.

Which is the next aircraft you can task for evacuations?

'Whiskey 1-3, we will be around in about five to ten minutes.'

I don't remember any of the folk I was with

recognising anybody from the ambulances.

And as time went on and the long gaps developed,

sadness and a bit of despair set in.

And then word came...

no more helicopters.

There was a kind of stunned silence

and then groups started forming...

crying,

crying.

Numb.

"What do we do now?"

Gradually folk just drifted away.

And by maybe five o'clock, half past five...

..all was quiet.

My wife didn't find out until after nine that I'd survived.

You see, they were phoning up all the time

and she says all they kept saying to them was..

that I'm missing, presumed dead.

But thankfully, I'm...

They said I was missing, but I wasn't,

and I'm definitely not dead.

When they got ashore and off the helicopter,

you could see wives and everything looking for their husbands.

Aye, it was... It was grim.

At that point you realised that you'd truly survived.

I was burnt, yeah.

My head was badly burnt and my hands were burnt, and...

my back, I had a slight burn on my back as well, so...

There happened to be a meeting in Birmingham

of all the burns doctors in the country.

They dropped everything and they came up.

And they were there to treat us.

Can't thank them enough for that.

It was me and Roy Carey, were just in a ward.

There wasn't any charring of the skin on my arms or anything,

so there was no direct contact with flames,

it was just the heat radiation coming of the rig.

And they reckon it was actually...

happened during the fall that I had.

I just...

wanted to see my mum, my sister.

I was told they were on their way to the hospital, so...

I just kind of kept going until I seen them.

And then er...they come in...

-REPORTER: What was that like?

-Aye, well, amazing!

Amazing, you know?

To see my mum's face...

MONITORS BLEEP

REPORTER: You must have unfortunately lost some friends that night,

how are you managing to cope with that?

There's two friends I work with and they've not been seen.

The lads have got families, like, you know?

Whereas we've got injuries and that,

but at least we get to see our families.

You feel sorry for your friends you've lost...

It's one of them things.

Can't be helped.

REPORTER: OK.

In the hospital, the people who was in the ward where I was,

we had a laugh.

That was the point of us being alive.

Erm... It was like everybody was trying to cheer each other up.

But it was like, we're all pals together.

Where have you been?

-Get the beers, please.

-Cheers, mate.

-You're welcome.

-Cheers.

It's been a good friendship.

It's just, for some reason, we meet up every year.

We know what each other's survived,

and we know what each other's been through.

On occasions, Piper Alpha might crop up,

but it'll be a very small subject what it's about.

Propose a toast, right? You do it.

Same next year, same old thing, meet up again.

-We've had 25 years.

-Here's to the next 25.

-Just progress. 25?!

God willing.

GLASSES CHINK

I actually went back to sea afterwards.

And one of the ships I was on was a guard ship for the Piper Alpha,

by that time we'd stopped being a rescue vessel

and we were a guard ship.

And, the heat shield was there

and it kind of reminded me of a squat, ugly crab,

you know, with these two big...

And we hated this thing.

We hated this thing because it caused so much misery.

You didn't want it to be there,

you wanted it wiped from the face of the earth.

And yet, I was also there when they brought the Piper Alpha down,

and they demolished it.

And I mind... I mind of it coming down

and I mind the sea swallowing it up, you know the big wave,

the sea swallowing it up, and then everything returned to normal.

But then I remember thinking,

"But there's nothing there any more."

I hated it for being there, but when they demolished it,

you hated it for not being there,

because there was nothing there that said

something terrible, something...

A great tragedy's happened here.

WAVES CRASH

The four of us in the rescue craft that night

were awarded the George Medal.

We accepted the medal.

Everybody on the Silver Pit

and everybody on the rescue craft that night

deserved a George Medal.

Even after 25 years, I still live with the Piper Alpha.

It's always going to sit with me, it's always going to be there.

I can't get away from it and there's no point in trying.

I wouldn't want to now,

I wouldn't want to forget about the Piper Alpha.

Piper will never go away. There's always a reminder.

I wasn't a good boy the first year.

Drinking, digging holes.

I started digging a hole in the garden.

And I think the neighbours were asking the wife, "What's going on?"

She said, "Just leave him."

Just got a spade out and started digging.

I think, by the time I'd finished digging,

I could just see across the top of it.

Then I took to the drink.

That carried on for nearly a year.

At the time I wanted to forget...

but it wouldn't go away.

And then I went to that survivor's help.

It took them a long time to get me there, but they kept asking for me.

I attended the meetings, I didn't have much to say.

They thought it would help talking it out. But it didn't.

And then Sue Jane came along.

And that helped, yeah.

She had been attending the meetings

to see if she could get somebody to go and pose as a model for her, like.

I said, "Right, I'll do it for nothing." And that was it.

KNOCKING AT DOOR

Hi, Bill.

Oh, hello, darlin'. Great to see you.

She never asked me nothing, she just listened.

That was good therapy, aye.

Great to see the finished thing, like, aye.

There was quite a crowd there that day when they unveiled it, you know.

-It was a sad time.

-Yeah.

Sue, it was easier to speak to you because it was yourself there,

there was no bunches of people sitting around listening.

Just us talking about it together and having good times.

-Especially the talking about it.

-Yes.

-Because we did talk about it a lot, like.

-We did.

And how does it feel like

when you're looking at the central figure?

-Oh, yeah.

-Yeah? Does it bring it all back to you?

You could have given me a smaller nose!

THEY LAUGH

It just seemed such a waste of life, all those people.

I went back out there again

and worked back offshore for another 12 years after the Piper, I think.

Maybe I laid the ghost to rest there.

I've given up smoking cigars...

for the time being.

'In the North Sea...'

HE LAUGHS

Aye.

Yes, I do recognise people here now.

And there's me! My goodness, that's me there.

Yes, sometimes I think about them

and they're always the same age, they're always as they were.

You can't imagine them getting old, you know?

It's just...how you always knew them, like. And that was the case...

They stay young in your mind while you grow old.

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