Diver explains: The Byford Dolphin Disaster

accidents happen when systems break down and there are few systems as complex and dangerous as saturation diving on a deep sea gas drilling rig now when you go and take a look on the internet to find information about the bifid dolphin accident you're going to come across some horrific images so please be careful when you start to take a look for this accident and be aware that what you come across is going to shock you [Music] the buy for dolphin accident is one example of such a complex system designed to drill 20 000 feet into the earth's crust mount kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in africa at just over 19 000 feet so that's like sitting on the highest peak of africa and drilling all the way down to sea level and it drills that deep while sitting perfectly stationary in 1500 feet of deep ocean sometimes in gale force storms the bifur dolphin owned by norwegian company dolphin drilling started construction in 1972 and launched in 1974. this was not a small rig it measured 350 feet by 220 feet by 120 feet deep most recreational scuba divers only dive as deep as 100 foot or 30 meters on the 5th of november 1983 two norwegian saturation divers bjorn bergerson and tulsh heluvik were completing their work at around 80 meters or 265 feet deep that depth is really important because at the surface you have one atmosphere of air pressure but at 265 feet these two divers are working in nine atmospheres of pressure that's nine times as much as at the surface so they finish their work and make their way to the diving bell which is going to take them back up to the surface in order to understand the complexity of saturation diving you need to know a little bit about how gas affects your body under water pressure recreational scuba divers breathe normal air that air is compressed into a diving tank at high pressure and then you breathe that air from your regulator the air you breathe is made of oxygen and nitrogen it's just normal air your body uses or burns some of that oxygen the nitrogen on the other hand starts to get stored up by your body in fact about three percent of your body is nitrogen gas so if you weigh 180 pounds or 80 kilograms then about 85 ounces or two and a half liters of your body is nitrogen gas that nitrogen is absorbed into all the different parts of your body tissue your brain muscles blood heart liver joints bones when you go diving and you're under greater pressure your body still has space for three percent nitrogen but the nitrogen gets compressed and so your body absorbs more nitrogen until the volume of nitrogen fills the three percent space at 265 feet deep with nine times as much pressure that three percent space gets filled with nine times as much compressed gas if you go to the surface too quickly that compressed nitrogen gas will expand back to nine times its size until it's the same size it was at the surface technical divers and saturation divers have to do decompression stops on the way back up to the surface which gives that gas enough time to expand slowly and dissolve back into the air they breathe out recreational divers don't stay down too long or too deep most dives are above 100 foot or 30 meters and last just over 30 minutes with those conservative limits not a lot of nitrogen builds up in your body and that's because it takes time for your body to absorb the nitrogen if you don't stay down too long or go too deep then you can go directly to the surface without serious risk of decompression sickness for tools and bjorn diving at to 265 feet they have to breathe a special mixture of oxygen nitrogen and helium called trimex that's a small detail worth mentioning but it's not that important for the sake of this story because nitrogen and helium are stored by the body in exactly the same way when bjorn and tools arrived on the bifur dolphin they spent about one day acclimatizing to the pressure that's roughly how long it took for the nitrogen and helium to saturate their body that's where the term saturation diving comes from the problem for bjorn and tools is that being saturated with nitrogen and helium at that depth would take them almost four days to decompress safely and so the diving bell they're now climbing into is their life support instead of spending four days decompressing after working their shift as saturation divers they were about to seal the diving bell and lock in the same pressure as the depth they're working nine atmospheres of pressure and so they close the hatch and tighten the seal they radio up to the surface and the winch begins to pull them up to the platform on the bifur dolphin some 265 feet above them on the buy for dolphin there is another set of pressurized chambers called habitat as you can probably guess the habitat is pressurized to nine atmospheres what this means for bjorn and tools is that they can live at the same pressure for almost one month and they don't have to go through decompression until the end of their working tour which is normally about 28 days by the time they are saturated they can stay saturated in fact when tools and bjorn get back to their habitat they aren't alone there's two other saturation divers who are asleep in the habitat british divers edwin coward and roy lucas now a saturation habitat is not exactly a comfortable place but there's enough space for each team of divers to have a bunk to sleep they can cook and of course there's toilets and they can sit and play card games and relax this habitat has three chambers each chamber can be sealed on its own or that can be open for divers to pass between them this means that one set of divers can be in decompression in their own chamber while another pair of divers is in the middle of their 28-day working tour and so the buffer dolphin always has a team of divers at the ready as it happens on the 5th of november 1983 no divers were coming or going and so all three chambers were open each chamber was approximately the size of a campervan but as we already discussed when you compress nine atmospheres of pressure into that same space you have nine times as much air squeezed in there that's like taking gas the size of a boeing 747 and squeezing it into a camper van so now tools in bjorn's diving valve gets hoisted onto the deck of the barford dolphin from there it's brought over to the habitat and then the divers and two tenders on the outside go through a procedure to attach it to the habitat a tender is a diving chamber specialist who'll work on the gas rig to make sure that the habitat is functioning correctly they regulate the pressure and the mixture of the various gases in the habitat as well as restocking food and water for the divers the two tenders are william crammond and martin saunders when the diving valve docks with a habitat there is a very strict procedure to work through you can't just connect them and start opening the hatches because you need to make sure the pressure in each compartment is the same pressure the habitat also has a tunnel called a trunk the trunk is a section that a diving bowl will attach to it's also the section that will be open to the ship and so sometimes it's pressurized and sometimes it's not after docking and camping the diving valve to the habitat martin and william the two tenders pressurize the trunk so that the pressure is the same as the diving bell the trunk and the habitat bjorn opens the hatch with a diving bell and crawls through the trunk he opens the hatch to the habitat and climbs in now tools climbs out of the diving belt and into the trunk he turns around and closes the diving bell behind him then the two tenders increase the pressure in the diving valve slightly which will make it easier for the diving belt to disconnect from the trunk then trolls turns back to the habitat and crawls through the trunk and into the chamber what should happen now is for trolls to close the hatch between the chamber and the trunk then william and martin can slowly increase the pressure in the trunk and unclamp the diving valve from the trunk but what actually happened will be recorded as the most catastrophic explosive decompression in the history of saturation diving for some reason before trills could close the hatch between the habitat and the trunk tender william kramens unlocked the clamp that was attaching the diving belt to the trunk in the blink of an eye all the gas that had been compressed into the habitat and all the gas that each of the four divers had absorbed into their bodies instantly and explosively expanded decompression that should take four days to complete now took less than a second the gas in the chamber expanded from the size of a camper van to the size of a boeing 747 all the gas the divers had absorbed into their bodies that 85 ounces or two and a half liters of nitrogen and helium abruptly expanded to nine times its volume all that gas from inside the habitat had only one way to go and that's through the hatch that trools is about to close now trills is standing in front of this hatch and all of a sudden all this expanding gas rushes through the hatch and takes trolls with it trull's body is in the same instant both exploding from the inside out and being forced through the hatch that is only partially open his body parts are sprayed all over the deck of the bar for dolphin parts of his spine and intestine were found 30 feet away from the trunk the diving bell itself is jettisoned like a cannonball instantly killing william crament somehow martin saunders survived but with serious injuries the other three divers are also instantly killed by the gas expanding rapidly from inside their body tissue their blood boils and their body tissue is pulverized from the inside out the coroners will conclude that though their deaths are horrific none of the men would have felt anything because they would have been killed instantly the accident is initially blamed on operator error when william kramen released the lock holding the diving bell in place and before trools could close the hatch a lengthy lawsuit and an independent investigation would reveal in 2008 some 26 years later that the equipment was faulty and there were no fail safes and so tender william crammond was exonerated as the sole cause of this incredibly horrific explosive decompression on the bar for dolphin [Music]

Channel: Waterline Stories

Views: 387,615

Keywords: scuba diving, scuba diving accidents, decompression sickness, accidents, commercial diving, saturation diving, scuba accidents, diving accidents

Id: ph8k7G4Pw5Y

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022