Fire in the Night (eBook)

The Piper Alpha Disaster

Stephen McGinty (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2010 | 1. Auflage
304 Seiten
Pan Macmillan (Verlag)
9780230738874 (ISBN)

Infos

The fire was visible seventy miles away as a distant, flickering flame on the horizon. The heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile. Flying at a height of 200 feet, the air crew saw that the tongues of flame extended high above the rotor blades. On the surface a converted fishing trawler inched as close as possible, but the paint on the vessel's hull blistered and burnt, and the rope handrails began to smoke. In the water surrounding the inferno, men's heads could be seen bobbing like apples as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat.

At the centre stood, at least for now, the Piper Alpha oil platform, 110 miles northeast of Aberdeen, once the world's single largest oil producer. On 6 July 1988, its final day, it was ablaze with 226 men onboard. Only sixty-one would survive.

Fire in the Night tells, for the first time and in gripping detail, the devastating story of that summer evening. Combining interviews with survivors, witness statements and transcripts from the official enquiry into the disaster, this is the moving and vivid tale of what happened on that fateful night inside an oil rig inferno.

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The fire was visible from seventy miles away and the heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle the rig at a perimeter of one mile. On the surface of the sea, a converted fishing trawler inched as close as possible, but the paint on the vessels hull blistered and burnt. In the water surrounding the inferno, mens heads could be seen bobbing like apples as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat.On 6 July 1988 a series of explosions ripped through the Piper Alpha oil platform, 110 miles north-east of Aberdeen in the North Sea. Ablaze with 226 men on board, the searing temperatures caused the platform to collapse in just two hours. Only sixty-one would survive by leaping over 100 feet into the water below.Newly updated for the thirtieth year since the tragedy, Fire in the Night by journalist Stephen McGinty tells in gripping detail the devastating story of that summer evening. Combining interviews with survivors, witness statements and transcripts from the official inquiry into the disaster, this is the moving and vivid tale of what remains the worst offshore oil-rig disaster to date.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.11.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Journalistik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Bauwesen
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-13: 9780230738874 / 9780230738874