Three stories of terror and loss in Gulf oil rig blast

VENICE, La. — Oleander Benton was chatting with a friend in the laundry when the lights went out. The other woman had just gotten up to find a maintenance person when the deep-sea oil rig shook with an ear-shattering “BANG,” followed by a long, loud “hisssss.”

Benton’s safety training kicked in. The cook hit the floor as ceiling tiles and light fixtures came crashing down on her head and back. The concussion had blown a door off its hinges and pinned her friend to the floor.

“My leg! My leg!” the woman screamed.

Benton rose to her feet and stepped over the debris, but she couldn’t move the door. She told her friend to lie flat and slide herself out, and the two made their way into the darkened hallway, where a man in a white T-shirt appeared out of the swirling dust and beckoned.

“Come on, Miss O!” he shouted. “Go this way. This is the real deal! This is the REAL DEAL!”

After a nightmare journey through halls illuminated only by exit signs, and clogged with dazed and injured people, Benton emerged onto the deck of the Deepwater Horizon.

Fire and mud were spewing from the rig’s shattered 242-foot derrick. People with ghastly head wounds were scrambling about.

Many had been asleep when the blast occurred. With its complement of 126 riggers, contractors and support personnel, the Deepwater Horizon — floating 48 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico — had a population larger than that of at least a half-dozen Louisiana towns.

Workers wandered the slick, debris-strewn deck shoeless, clad in little more than their orange lifejackets, their bare skin speckled with bits of white insulation from blown-out walls.

Benton slipped and stumbled as she headed for her assigned lifeboat.

It was April 20 — Benton’s 52nd birthday.

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Crane operator Micah Sandell, 40, of Leesville, La., was in the cab 30 feet off the deck when he saw the water and mud shoot up and out of the derrick. He knew immediately it was a blowout, and he got on the radio to tell the crew to move to the front of the rig.

Then something exploded.

Sandell was knocked to the floor, and fire engulfed the cabin. Certain he was about to die, the devout Baptist clapped his hands over his head and cried, “Oh, God. No.”

But after a few seconds, he stood up and realized the fireball had passed him over. He made it halfway down the stairs before another blast occurred, throwing him 15 feet to the steel deck.

He got up again and ran, feeling his way along the deck rail around the port side toward the lifeboats.

Hanging off the side of the rig and covered, the boats could hold up to 50 people each. Some couldn’t wait any longer, and jumped.

It was 80 feet to the water. A person falling from that height would take about 2.25 seconds to hit the water and experience about 20 Gs — roughly the same force as a car hitting a brick wall at 55 mph.

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The 260-foot Damon B. Bankston, a black-hulled cargo vessel, was tethered to the Deepwater Horizon. That day, it had been pumping drilling mud from the rig for use at the next job.

The first explosion threw Seaman Elton Johnson of Bunkie, La., about seven feet into an engine-room door, temporarily knocking him unconscious. When he came to, he staggered to the deck and looked over the rail to see people floating in the water.

Like the rest of the crew, Johnson began fishing out survivors.

On the Deepwater Horizon, deck pusher Bill Johnson, supervising operations on the deck, worked his way across the rig, acrid smoke burning his lungs. He ushered two members of his crew into a lifeboat and shoved off, but there was one man missing.

Crane operator Aaron Dale Burkeen of Philadelphia, Miss., had relieved Sandell for dinner.

The 37-year-old father of two had just recently received his 10-year certificate. April 20 was his and wife Rhonda’s eighth wedding anniversary; his birthday was four days away.

When the first concussion hit, he began lowering his crane’s 150-foot boom into its cradle and locking it down. He got it to about a 30-degree angle when he decided to make a run for it.

He was about halfway down the spiral staircase when a massive explosion occurred. Bill Johnson — who was not just Burkeen’s direct supervisor, but also one of his best friends — watched helplessly from the rocking boat as the whole starboard side of the rig erupted in a cloud of smoke and flame.

Burkeen just vanished.