North sea fireworks

Continuing the account of our offshore training course.

You've arrived at the oil rig, the helicopter hasn't done its impression of a duck, and everything's all right with the world.

Well, not quite.

There's a lot that can go wrong with oil rigs, and there's no friendly fire engine nearby. OK, there's a supply vessel that stands by at all times, but it's not exactly fire fighting material.
And fire isn't the only problem.

Our training instructor gleefully went through the list

• blow-outs. this is where the drill hits a pocket of compressed gas.
• gas explosians
• fires
• nuclear war

OK, OK, I made the last one up. however, the first three were enough to be going on with
Oh, and drifting. Not all oil rigs are built into the sea floor. Some are anchoured, others are 'dynamic', where they use engines to keep on station (which is where our company makes a bit of money with our 'dynamic positioning kit' - a snip at half a million guv, fresh of the back of the lorry. We haven't had an oil rig equipped with one of our systems drift but we did ram the back of a cable layer with a supply vessel once.

And the Queen Mary 2 is supplied with our engines and the DP kit, so if you find it moors itself at the top of the Empire State Building you know it's our fault.

Anyways - back to the fire.

Apparently there's lots of ways to cause a fire on an oil rig, other than the obvious one of 'light match and throw in tank' (they don't allow you lighters on rigs for some reason).
Apparently one classic way is to dump a set of oily overalls in a laundry basket, stir thoroughly and leave for half and hour, after which - 'whooomp' - bells, whistles, runnning back and forth, panic and evacuation.

The worst disaster in UK drilling occurred on the Piper Alpha rig in 1988, which killed 167 peoplewas caused by a whole chain of events but mainly it was beacuse they started maintenance on a valve, didn't finish it by the end of the shift, and operators who didn't know of the maintenance started pumping gas through the pipe.

less of a woof, more of a boom.

So we are trained in work permits, safe working, and of course, what to do in the case of a fire.

Apparently, it's not 'run'

The fun thing about these courses is that your company pays about 800 squids to go on what effectively is a theme park with attitude. I've already described the helicopter training.
Fire fighting training and evacuation is almost as fun.

First - fire fighting. Haven't you ever wanted to let one of those extinguishers off? I have.
You all troop off to a large burnt out looking area. The instructor lines up the various types of extinguisher (gas, foam, dry foam, water) and lights a large pan of oil. Then he tells you to put it out.

'What happens if you use water' you ask. 'Try it' he says. So you do. And you never ever ever do it ever again.

You then try out the foam (can evaporate on big fires), CO2,(get it too close and you blow burning oil all over the place) and dry foam (poisonous, don't spray people).

Lastly, you are given a demonstration of how not to put out a chip pan fire. They heat up a pan of boiling fat. They then light it. Then they dump (using a LONG pole) a cup of water into the pan.

Sigh

A pyromaniacs dream come true.

So that's how to put out a fire. What happens if you're in the middle of one?

I said before you don't run (not if you're in the middle of one). All the heat and the poisonous fumes gather at the top of the room. To run you have to be upright. To keep alive you have to be on the floor.

And it's probably dark.

Actually, it's probably pitch black.

so you have to feel your way along the floor, crawling along to the nearest exit.

Just so you know how to do it they have a maze. They put a large amount of artificial smoke in it, a small fire, give you some breathing apparatus, kick you into the maze as a team, shut the door and tell you to find your way out without losing anyone.

Great.

So we crawl along, one hand on the heel of the person in front, feeling our way and shouting intructions and thinking

'if there's a fire i would be burnt to death by now'.

We all made it out, covered in soot, wishing we were allowed cameras.

So, if you ever have a fire in your house, give me a ring and I'll tell you how to get out.