Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Byford Dolphin Incident

Transcript

Short Stuff: Byford Dolphin Incident · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's j j. Let's get started. It's one of the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: most gruesome things that has ever happened in the history
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of the world. Yeah, and probably the most grewesome thing
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: that's ever happened on this show. Yeah. I don't think
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: it's probably about it and we've talked about some gruesome stuff,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: but we should probably give a little c o a here,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Like the stuff we're gonna talk about is kind of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: graphic of people dying and being mutilated. So just heads
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: up on that one. I just looked at the pic.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you, yes anytime. I can't believe you hadn't so far. Yeah,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I avoided it. So until you say the full color one?
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Is that the one you looked at? Just now you're
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: talking about the tray of Yes? Okay, alright, so how
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: everyone knows what we're talking about? Uh? There was and
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: still is. It sounds like a drilling rig called the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Biford Dolphin. Uh. Now it looks like it's contracted out
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: by BP I think so. And in November on November
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that was in the North Sea, a very horrific accident,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: an explosive decompression accident that occurred on the Byfor Dolphin
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: or not on the Bifor Dolphin, but but very far
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: under the sea. No, no, it was on the Biford Dolphin.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: But does that mean I thought this happened below deck?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Let me take this, Let me take this. You're ready?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: All right? Good night. So the whole thing, the whole
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: thing centers around saturation diving. Yeah, I get it, Sure,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I get okay, Okay, So well let's explain to the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: peeps at home at saturation diving is then, okay, it
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: means you can live down there basically in work. Yeah,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So like if you're working on the Biford Dolphin, you
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: could be drilling into, you know, thousands of feet um
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of a bedrock under the sea to get to whatever
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: gas or oil you're after. And so you might be
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: working hundreds and hundreds of feet down every day, which
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: means that when you come back up, as if you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: listen to our cave diving episode, you've got to decompress.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: And if you're going to decompress, that takes time. So
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: that means that you know, it could take hours and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: hours every day after your shift to decompress before you
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: can finally come up to the surface. So since that's
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: just so ridiculously inefficient, um, they've come up with this
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: thing called saturation diving, which kind of gets around decompressing
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: every day. Yeah. Plus you gotta keep him on the clock,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you know, while you're decompressing, you gotta pay for the decompressing. Yeah, alright,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So the way I understand it is they, like you said,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: it's more efficient to stay down there and work, which
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: they do, but they don't live down there necessarily like
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: in the Abyss right right, they come back up to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the ship, but the whole journey from sea floor to
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: ship is pressurized at the same pressure, is that right?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It is? And then once they get to the ship,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: they have to live and stay in these pressurized environments
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: so that they don't have to decompress every day. So
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: they're working down on the sea floor and then there
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: live being on the ship, and then they're traveling between
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: the two and a pressurized diving bell. But the point
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: is is everywhere they are for weeks on end, during
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: their shift or their their stint or hitch, that's what
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: they call it, their hitch of working the sea floor,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: they're living in this pressurized environment whether it's on the ship,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: in the diving bell or down on the sea floor,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: it's all pressurized to the atmosphere, the atmospheric pressure of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the work site down on the sea floor. And this
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: makes a lot more sense now. Yeah, I was under
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the impression it was like the Abyss and they all
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: just lived down there and played cards and made pithy remarks,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: complained about the food. It was a good movie. Though.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: It was a great movie, so this does make a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: lot more sense. So basically, the hatches of the diving
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: bell and the ship chamber are all lined up and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: clamped together by these divers that are on the outside
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: dive tenders, yeah, dive tenders. And that's where it becomes
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: a little bit like a movie. You move from one
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: to one and make sure everything is super tightly clamped
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: together obviously because it's all super pressurized. Yeah, and to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: like hook the diving bell up to um the pressure
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: chambers where they like live and eat and play cards
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and give pithy remarks to one another on the ship.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: That's all pressurizes if it's you know, at nine atmospheres
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: down on the sea floor. Even though outside of those
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: chambers on the ship it's at one atmosphere, it's at
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: sea level pressure. You can't just pop out and have
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: a smoke, No, you cannot. You have to stay in
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: what's what is that gerbil habitat called you know what
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. You can put like a bunch of
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: tubing and stuff together and let your gerbil run around.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: So this is basically what these divers lived in. And
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: it was all pressurized. And so when you're traveling from
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you know, the sea floor up to the chambers on
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the ship and this diving bell and you clamp the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: diving bell onto the pressurized chamber, you need to make
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: sure that the tunnel that connects the two is pressurized
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: and then you can open up the hatch and then
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: move into the chamber, shut the hatch, de pressure eyes
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: that that um that little tunnel, and then remove the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: diving bell and you're fine. It's just a lot of
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: extra work and thoughtfulness to live like this for weeks
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: on end for saturation diving, but it means that you'll
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: only have to decompress once at the end of the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: several week hitch before you go out into sea level atmosphere. Right,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: and given what's going on, you would think that there
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is a robust system of fail safes and check marks
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and hand signals to make sure that everything is hooked
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: up and sealed tight in order to maintain that pressure.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And today you'd be right, but in three not necessarily,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: that's right. So we're gonna take a break and tell
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you what happened on November of that year, right after this. Alright,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So here's what happened on number November five. There was
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a team of four divers down there working in the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: frig gas field in the North Sea. Uh, there were
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: two divers in a bell and that's we talked about.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: We I think we did a whole podcast on a
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: diving bell, didn't me. Yeah, yeah we did. We totally did,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: which is kind of weird to think of. But yeah,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I remember because remember that one cook on that ship
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: from Nigeria that went down, he managed to like live
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: in like a little air pocket for a couple of days. Yeah.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So the diving bell is is the chamber that takes
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: people back and forth. It's the taxi basically transporting them
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: from the work site back up to these pressurized chambers
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: on the ship. Um it had just been cranked up
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to the surface and they were crawling through this passageway
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: it's called a trunk to this attached sealed decompression chamber,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: which is where they lived and worked and or lived
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: in eight and made exactly don't forget the cards, and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you got to complain about the cooking. And then there
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: was a chamber another chamber pretty similar nearby that had
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: two more of the diving team. And then each of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: these chambers, this trunk, the bell, and the chamber were
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: all completely pressurized. And again the system was in place,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and it had worked pretty well up into this point. Yeah,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: but for some reason, on this particular day, one of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the two dive tenders, one of the divers who were
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: outside in the normal pressure atmosphere outside of this pressurized chamber.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: They their job was to assist in making sure the
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: diving bell was clamped up to the trunk correctly and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: opening and closing valves and stuff like that. One of
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: them unclamped the diving bell from the trunk. Before them,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the hatch had been shut, closing off the divers in
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: their their quarters. They're deep, they're pressurized quarters. This was catastrophic.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: It's what it did, was it introduced the normal one
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: atmosphere of atmospheric pressure into the pressurized dive chambers, which
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: were pressurized to nine atmospheres, and in a fraction of
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: a second, the pressure inside of these things went from
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: an extremely compressed nine atmospheres to an extremely decompressed one
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: atmosphere again in less than a second. And it was
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it was again catastrophic, is the only way to put it. Yeah,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: this is something that they would take nine, eleven, twelve
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: hours to decompress usually, and it happened in under a second.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: It caused an explosion. A decompression explosion killed all four
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of these divers, uh, and the dive tender immediately. Uh.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: They did a follow up study, of course, they found
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that the three of the divers were were literally killed instantly.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And I guess we need to say this right. Yeah,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: so the diver, uh, their bodies ruptured. Basically, the diver
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: closest to the door, his organs, spine, and limbs, it said,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: were ejected, and his remains exploded through a narrow gap
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: in that chamber door. Yeah. Before this happened so fast
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and he was pulled apart so violently that before that
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: chamber door that he hadn't gotten shut yet could slam shut.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: About half of them shot out in a burst of
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: like blood and gore through that that narrow opening. As
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: this the hatch door was slamming shut from the pressure. Yeah,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: they said that they found his liver on the deck
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: of the boat, quote complete, as if dissected out of
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the body. Right, And so they think what happened. So
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: the other three they all died instantly, But the other
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: three their bodies were intact. But what had happened is
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the their their organs and their blood vessels at all
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: rupture because the gases that were dissolved in their blood
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: at that moment suddenly just expanded and just burst everything
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: inside of them. But the guy who was pulled apart
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: exploded so violently because he was the closest to that
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: pressure gradient in between one atmosphere and nine atmosphere, and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: he was he was pulled apart by that pressure gradient,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: like part of him was a little further away from
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the door than the rest of him, and that difference
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: was enough to just be pulled apart by the by
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: this explosion. Yeah. The only thing that I can say
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: that is good about this was that it was so
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: fast there was not even a moment of panic. Of
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: what just happened. There was no fear, even much less pain.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It was just you're going back into the chamber and
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden you wake up sitting on a cloud,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: going what just happened? Where did I get this loot? Yeah?
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Basically or herp it's a heart. At least it was
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: that fast that there certainly was no pain involved, but
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: also no fear or anything. It was just lights out right,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And so you might think like, well, wait a minute,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: how did this guy even begin to get this clamp
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: open that that allowed the pressurized chamber to depressurized catastrophically. Well,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people said afterwards, and so
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the Norwegian Oil Directorate and the regulations body Norsk Veritas
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: basically said, this can never happen again. If you have
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: an old like um saturation diving system set up, you
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: have to retrofit it following these new specifications that make
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it this impossible, Like you couldn't possibly open a clamp
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: um before the trunk has been like depressurized, before the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: hatch has been shut, before all this stuff happens to
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: the its an actual fail safe. Yeah, And the thinking
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: all along was that it was a human error, that's
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: what the report said, fatigue or just you know, somebody
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: made a mistake. But it seems like years later some
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: of these relatives of the of the gentlemen that were
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: killed got their hands on a report that said it
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was actually faulty equipment. So there you go. Yeah, and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: where did this come from? Who do we have to
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: thank for this? We've got a lot of people to thank. Um,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: everybody from History Channel too. There was a guy on
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Reddit actually named spectrum Merrow who did a great job
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of explaining saturation diving in this particular accident. So I
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: gotta got a handful of people to thank for this one.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Good stuff, Yeah, well, terrible stuff but interesting nonetheless. Yeah,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: there you go. Check. I think he saved us at
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the last minute. Uh. Well, thanks a lot for joining us.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: We hope that you can carry on the rest of
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the day without um shuddering good luck. Uh. In meantime,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: short stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is a
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: production of I Heart Rady Knows How Stuff Works. For
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: favorite shows. H M