Oilmen tell of rig disaster

Press, 31 March 1980, Page 8

Oilmen tell of rig disaster

NZPA-Reuter London The v first ■ of •' the death throes of the doomed North Sea oil rig Alexander Kielland was greeted by unsuspecting oilmen aboard with a cheer, survivors have. said. “We were, in the cinema when there was a bang, and everybody cheered, thinking it was an anchor cable that had snapped,” a 40-year-old foreman rigger, Jim Lister, told reporters'.

.“That would have meant a day off for some of them while repairs were made,” he said. “But there was another bang, and everybody went silent because they knew it was something serious. Then the whole rig just tilted and everything Went flying. It was terrible —- everyone was clambering up the floor trying to get to the door as water came gushing in.”

■Mr Lister was one of 13 British survivors from the disaster on Friday. . flowri: home to be reunited with their families.

Terry Sylvester, aged 29, said he had leapt 25m from the capsizing rig into the icy North Sea. As he struggled in the water he. saw the accommodation platform slowly turn turtle. ”.‘I don’t know how long I was in the water,” he said. “But it was hellish — icy, cold. I remember being pulled out and inched up to the drilling platform nearby in a basket they use for hoisting stores.” . -. '

Gerry StigeJ tersely summed up his ordeal: “I got the hell out of it and swam for my life.”

When disaster struck, some workers were asleep in their cabins after a 12-hour shift.

Another 50, including a Norwegian engineer, Olav Skotheim aged 28, went to the cinema on the bottom level of the giant structure in the sprawling Ekofisk field.

Friday’s 'film was “Jeremiah Johnson” a Robert Redford epic about an American [mountain man who survives :a fierce winter in the Rocky mountains against all odds. The movie had just started when the platform began to capsize. The men aboard iwere soon themselves fighting for their lives in the ’world's worst offshore oil ■field disaster, with 40 known dead so far and 85 men missing, now presumed dead in the icy waters. The . quick-thinking Mr Skotheim clawed his way to the door of the cinema, raced to his cabin and grabbed his survival gear. Not many of the others got to their orange coloured thermal survival suits.

Then, with the water gushing jn, he pulled himself up the stair rail to the deck, already awash. He planned to jump into the sea- and swim for a drilling rig 90m away.

A metal catwalk linking the rig to the Alexander Kielland was torn in two when the platform collapsed just as drilling crews were changing. Mr Skotheim was plucked from the- deck by a big wave and struck out for the rig. “It was murder in that water,”- he said later. “I was exhausted after I’d only swum 20 or 30 metres.” He was saved by a crane operator bn the rig who lowered him a wire basket and pulled him to safety. Others were not so lucky.