Word: pipering
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...first thing you do when you arrive on an offshore ((oil)) installation," the British author A. Alvarez wrote in a book on the subject in 1986, "is arrange how to get off it again in an emergency." For the 227 men aboard the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea last week, there was no time for such procedures...
Emergency precautions were of no use. There were lifeboats aboard the rig, but there was no time to use them. An emergency-support vessel, the Tharos, was permanently anchored nearby to help out in just such a catastrophe. It aimed its fire hoses at the Piper Alpha but was forced to turn away as the explosions continued. Twenty-eight ships, including a seven-unit NATO naval force led by the U.S. destroyer Hayler, quickly assembled to take part in a rescue mission, as did Royal Air Force reconnaissance planes and helicopters...
ABERDEEN, Scotland--Rescuers abandoned hope yesterday of finding more survivors of an explosion and towering fire that consumed the Piper Alpha platform and killed up to 166 people in the world's worst oil rig disaster...
Occidental Petroleum, owner of the Piper Alpha platform, said it believed a gas leak was to blame, but days or weeks would be needed to determine what caused and ignited it. Occidental said the three-quarters of the 649-foot-high rig was destroyed...
...number of men still missing and the dim prospects for finding them alive seem certain to make the Piper Alpha explosion the worst oil rig disaster ever, surpassing the 123 deaths when the Alexander L. Kielland platform capsized in Norway's North Sea waters in March...