Word: rig
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...There was a sharp, crackling sound followed by something that sounded like a muffled explosion." So recalled one of the numbed but fortunate few who were plucked from the icy North Sea last week after the worst oil rig disaster in the history of offshore drilling. Battered by towering 25-ft. waves and 55-knot winds, a mammoth floating dormitory housing 212 oil workers capsized and plunged into the sea, 100 miles west of the Norwegian coast...
...There was panic everywhere," said Gerry Stigen, 36, a Norwegian oil rig worker who managed to jump into the water and swim to another rig near by, where he was hoisted aboard. "Everything happened so fast, so suddenly." Emergency flares lit up the nighttime skies as British, German and Norwegian helicopters and a flotilla of ships rushed to the scene. Fighting heavy seas and winds, they struggled to rescue those who had clambered into lifeboats, clung desperately to heaving dinghies or plunged into the near freezing...
...blew an escalating, piercing whine. "Shit--oh--God--oh--shit," he said, "I jus' luv doin' this." The jet floated toward the runway, gushing Detroit's air in a screeching rumble. "Hold onto your seat boy, or it'll go right up your ass with the rest of the rig," he said with the deep blue lights of the runway shining in his eyes. He drew the throttle back. The lights turned a thinner blue, and the g's shot my head into its rest, as the Lear tore out of Michigan and ripped to 40,000 feet...
G.O.P. National Chairman Bill Brock calls the patronage approach "a blatant political effort to rig the count." Says he: "Allowing the political machine in Chicago to count the people in underpopulated districts is issuing a license to steal." Replies Barabba: "If there is an organized effort to rig the totals, our checking procedure will catch it." Perhaps. But, say Republicans, don't count...