Eleven men died so Transocean officials could sleep

In yet another disturbing revelation, we are learning of an environment of fear on the Transocean rig where the workers were afraid of reporting safety violations out of fear of retaliation from the assholes that sit in offices on the shore. What is worse is that the safety alarm was disabled for as long as a year so that the officials would not be awakened at night to false alarms. As a result, eleven men died when the alarm didn’t sound during a not so false alarm.

Critical fire and gas leak alarm systems had been disabled for at least a year aboard the Deepwater Horizon because the rig’s leaders didn’t want to wake up to false alarms, a rig chief engineer tech told federal investigators.

When are the executives that bring down the big salaries going to be held accountable for manslaughter? Eleven men died, and those deaths could possibly have been prevented had it not been for the irresponsible acts of the high level executives and managers of Transocean and BP.

Besides the irresponsible behavior of idiots holding positions of authority for which it is evident they were imminently unqualified, we also are learning that the rig was built to substandard specifications.

The emergency shutdown system also had previous problems. Williams said another employee, at some point before the April 20 disaster, inadvertently triggered an emergency shutdown system to an engine that was running. Down came fire doors intended to deprive the engine of oxygen, which would have put out a fire in the engines had there been one.

But the doors weren’t built strongly. Once the doors came down, the force of the engines ripped the fire doors off their hinges.

BP and Transocean KNEW that critical safety systems did not work, and yet they willingly sacrificed the lives of their workers simply to meet an artificial schedule, and save a few measly quid. At least we are learning the value of human lives – according to BP and Transocean, it isn’t a hell of a lot.