THE NIGHT IGNITED THE SEA
A massive explosion. A desperate mayday message. And one survivor’s emotional redemption 30 years after the Piper Alpha tragedy in which167 of his workmates died
THE gentle thrum of heavy machinery and the low chatter of his colleagues were the only noises to distract Geoff Bollands as he settled into the familiar routine of night shift. Darkness was swallowing the failing summer light and in the control room Mr Bollands busied himself with monitoring the flow of oil through the giant North Sea rig’s pipeline. He was also counting down the hours until he could climb aboard a helicopter for a well-earned week onshore.
Little did he know it, but the clock was also ticking towards unimaginable disaster.
At 9.58pm on July 6, 1988, a massive explosion rocked Piper Alpha, buckling walls and collapsing ceilings. All the safety systems that relied upon electricity failed; lights, alarms, public address systems and automatic extinguishers, all rendered useless in an instant.
A series of blasts followed, tearing through the pipeline and raining fire on the installation 80 miles off the Aberdeenshire coast.
Mr Bollands was blown 20ft across the floor by the force of the initial blast, damaging a hip and gashing his thumb badly.
As his colleagues raced to deal with the blaze, the 40-year-old control room operator was prevented from following them by his injuries. They would ultimately help save his life.
‘I should have been one of the men donning breathing apparatus to reach the fire pump,’ he said.
‘But I couldn’t do it because of all the blood from my injury. I can only thank God. It was fate.
‘I used to pray that if an accident did happen I would be onshore – or on duty. Fortunately for me I was awake and working. It was the men off duty and asleep who had no chance.’
At 10.08pm, Wick Radio picked up the last of three mayday messages from Piper Alpha. It simply said: ‘We can’t talk any more – we’re on fire.’
It may be 30 years since the world’s worst offshore disaster, but the night when flames ignited the seas remain seared on Mr Bollands’ memory.
He has now set down his experiences in a book – entitled Baptism of Fire: Life, Death, and Piper Alpha – to coincide with the anniversary.
It is not meant as an exhaustive historical record, but rather a uniquely personal and ultimately uplifting account of how one man survived the disaster – and its aftermath – with renewed hope.
A man of deep Christian faith, his story is all the more remarkable as he was already having to cope with the unfathomable grief of having lost a child ten years earlier when he was at the very start of his offshore career.
Whether he was due a measure of good fortune, he accepts that his escape from the doomed rig seemed almost fated. Injuries prevented him remaining on deck and facing certain death, and favourable winds allowed him and 20 colleagues to dodge the choking smoke and flames as they scrambled down to a lower deck only 18ft from the water.
There they climbed down a rope before jumping into the sea to be picked up by rescue craft within five minutes.
From the relative safety of the boat, he watched as a second colossal explosion at 10.20pm sent a fireball blasting through a large section of the rig. The inferno soared 700ft into the sky. It was, he said, just like ‘something out of a disaster movie’.
‘I was maybe 70 yards away from the platform and the heat was intense, even then,’ he recalled.
‘The second explosion was the point of no return. You would never have thought that the pipeline would rupture within 20 minutes.
‘When it blew, my immediate thought was that everyone in the area had had it. The lads were jumping off the rope, falling off the rope, jumping over the side. Some were on fire. It was horrific.
‘You couldn’t hear the screams, though – you couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the escaping gas and the fire. It all seemed surreal, yet it was happening right there in front of my eyes. It all happened very quickly.’
Of the 228 men on board that night, dozens were either eating, relaxing or sleeping between shifts. In the rising heat and confusion, many had gathered in the canteen in the rig’s accommodation block waiting calmly to be rescued from the nearby helicopter landing deck. But rescue never came. By dawn, most would be dead.
AT 10.50pm, another explosion tore through the platform, scattering debris over 800 yards. Ships more than a mile away felt the vibrations.
As the last survivors were picked up, Piper Alpha began to collapse. Another violent explosion shook the platform as it entered its death throes. By 12.45am, virtually all of the 20,000-ton structure had gone, claimed by the sea.
Back on The Silver Pit, the oil rig’s dedicated stand-by vessel which was leading the rescue mission, Mr Bollands was shocked to learn that a colleague he thought was dead, an Orcadian named Erlend Grieve, had survived and was down in the ship’s hold.
‘I went down to see him and he was very badly burnt and in total agony. There was no pain relief on the ship and I told the coxswain he needed to be medevac-ed.’
Mr Bollands’ quiet insistence persuaded the coxswain to radio for a helicopter. It undoubtedly saved his friend’s life, although he instantly dismisses the suggestion as overly dramatic. ‘If he had sat on that boat all night he would not have made it, but I would hate for it to come out that I am some kind of hero. I saw my friend and a couple of other lads in absolute distress and I only did what anyone else would have done.’
Eric Brianchon, a badly-burnt French worker, was also evacuated from The Silver Pit to hospital, he notes, but died en route. In all, 167
lives were lost in the inferno, triggering international repercussions for the oil industry – never before had a platform been lost at sea.
The Cullen Inquiry into the tragedy blamed unsafe working practices and made 106 recommendations for change.
The starting point was a small gas leak traced to a loosely fitted metal disc on a valve that had been removed for a routine safety check. Workers later inadvertently started the pump attached to the valve, unaware it was not safe to use.
The inquiry would later identify a flawed Permit to Work system as the most significant culprit in the tragedy.
Only 61 men escaped, but surviving the devastation of Piper Alpha merely opened a harrowing new chapter for many. Physical wounds would heal but the mental scars proved more resistant to treatment. Consumed by nightmares, panic attacks and the overwhelming guilt of being among the ‘lucky ones’, some survivors sadly succumbed to their inner demons.
The traumatic impact on Mr Bollands, relatively unscathed by the firestorm, fostered dark thoughts which wrought havoc on his mind, almost destroyed his marriage and ended his career offshore.
Yet by his own admission, he was largely oblivious to the harm he was doing.
After a tearful reunion with his wife, Chris, at the Skean Dhu Hotel in Dyce, they returned home.
Mrs Bolland, a district nurse, could see he was living on a hair-trigger and tried to shield him from stress. It was only while researching this book that she told him about the hate mail.
‘I never knew that we received hate mail after the disaster. She kept it from me and gave it to the police,’ he said. ‘The comments were things like why did I survive when others didn’t. But I just did, didn’t I? I had no control over that.
‘We’ve no idea who it came from; most of the people I have met since have been very understanding, even those who lost relatives.’
HIS wife will not speak about Piper Alpha to this day. He said: ‘If we’re out somewhere and someone brings the subject up, she just walks off. It brings back bad memories for her.’
Little surprise as, for four years, his family watched him slowly unravel as he refused to accept counselling to alleviate the increasing signs he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
He became listless and would stare for hours through the windows overlooking the back garden of their bungalow.
Then there were the mood swings, by turns withdrawn and quick-tempered. To the outside world, the Bollands appeared to have a comfortable life at their smart bungalow in the Middlesbrough suburb of Nunthorpe.
But behind closed doors, Mrs Bollands and their children, Rachel, 15, Hannah, seven, and sixyear-old Paul, were treading on eggshells, too scared of lighting the blue touchpaper to confront Mr Bollands’ erratic behaviour.
‘I thought I was OK afterwards, but my family told me how difficult I’d been,’ he said.
One example of his state of mind came when a Tannoy went off suddenly during a trip to B&Q, causing him to panic and drag his wife out of the store.
His daughter Rachel said: ‘Dad was a lost soul for about four years; Mum says he would disappear for hours and no one would know where he had gone.
‘He would wander from room to room staring out of the windows. He was sometimes angry, sometimes vague. He refused to go to the doctor but fortunately my Mum did for support.
‘Throughout this time, it was my Mum who held our family together. Piper Alpha affected every one of us in various ways, both mentally and physically. Without Mum and her faith in God, I am not sure we would all be where we are now.’
Even her sister, Hannah, was not immune to the fall-out. She recalls: ‘One day, a girl at school told me, “You only live in that house because of what happened to your Dad” even though we’d moved there a few months before it happened.’
WHILE Mr Bolland refused to seek professional help, he has always talked about what happened, sharing his experiences with oil workers as far afield as Canada, Australia, Norway, Holland and France.
‘From the moment I got off the rig, I have been grateful and thank God that I did. I always found talking about it helped me, though I know others find it very difficult.
‘I never felt a sense of guilt at having survived, though. I felt relief then despondency as I watched the rig destroy itself. When I saw the accommodation block slip into the sea I just felt disbelief that so many people I knew would be in it.’
He would never return to the rigs. He decided he could not face it and handed in his notice.
It left his life offshore bookended by tragedy. His young son, Daniel, died suddenly of viral pneumonia on Christmas Day, 1978, during his first trip offshore. Mr Bollands was unable to get back home in time to see his son before the end.
That has only deepened his loss, one he has always felt more keenly than Piper Alpha.
‘That is something that still upsets me now. Both were tragedies but Daniel’s death was far more personal. Only people who have lost a young child will be able to understand how I felt in that moment.’
The fact that he came through both catastrophes, he argues, highlights the enormous debt he owes his wife. ‘She has helped me cope, she’s a remarkable woman. We will have been married 48 years in September. Life goes on and you cannot change what happened. You can get a little bitter about things, but you’ve got to get over that or else it’ll destroy you. Bitterness is corrosive.’
Occidental Petroleum, Piper Alpha’s operating company, paid millions in compensation to victims’ families but no criminal charges were ever brought.
Mr Bolland used his payout to retrain as a financial adviser and now runs his own firm, employing 17 staff, including his daughter Hannah and son Paul.
His life rebuilt, he plans to attend a service of remembrance in Aberdeen to mark the 30th anniversary. The names of those who perished will be read aloud at the service, which will start at 7pm next Friday at the Memorial Garden in Hazlehead Park.
‘I’m going up for the 30th,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to see other survivors and it is important we never forget what happened. But my story shows there is hope too, that whatever traumatic circumstances we might experience, life does go on and positive lessons can be learned.’
Baptism of Fire: Life, Death and Piper Alpha, by Geoff Bollands, is published by Troubadour, priced £11.99.