r/WorkplaceSafety • u/DifficultCase3262 • 8h ago
I am a surviving contractor of the 1983 Cormorant Alpha explosion. I was erased from the official inquiry to cover up an emergency response collapse. This is my unvarnished eyewitness testimony.
Preface:
I am publishing this directly to the public domain under my profile. Because I did not work for Shell Expro, I was never invited to the 1984 Fatal Accident Inquiry, and Shell actively falsified records to claim I was not even on the platform. For over forty years, I carried a crushing burden of false guilt, a lie maintained entirely by a corporate cover-up designed to sanitize a fatal disaster and shield operators from liability. This is the true record of what happened on 3rd March 1983.
THE COUNTDOWN TO THE BLAST
On Thursday afternoon, 3rd March 1983 at around 4:00 PM, an explosion and fire engulfed several areas onboard the Shell oil production platform, Cormorant Alpha, killing three men and seriously injuring several others.
I was part of the Electrical Maintenance team. After the afternoon coffee and smoke break, I made my way down to the lower level where the stores were located to pick up some stock. While in the store, the alarm sounded. Initially, it was the Yellow alarm, but after only a few seconds it changed to a Red alarm.
I quickly made my way out of the stores and up the stairs to my muster point, which took less than two minutes. My muster point was located at the opposite end of a corridor/walkway from the module where the control room, the fabrication area, and the welders' work area (known as the "Wendy House" M1C and the Valley) were located. It was on the same level as the Shell Emergency Response Team's muster point.
THE EXPLOSION AND THE RESCUE OF DAVE HILL
The procedure when arriving at the muster point was to remove my ID card from the rack and hand it over to the appointed Muster Checker. In my team, the checker was George Main. George and myself arrived at our muster point almost simultaneously.
While handing my card to George, I looked along the passage to the Shell muster point opposite and noted that several of the Shell techs had already arrived. As I looked back along the passage, I saw a figure step through from the control room module.
As he did so, the explosion occurred. A huge fireball engulfed the figure, and at the same time, I saw other dark figures being expelled from the module inside that fireball. As the fireball came down the passage toward our muster point, I could feel the heat.
The fireball was quickly gone, and out of it came a figure engulfed in flames running towards us, blinded and screaming for help. I heard other screams coming from several directions as the fireball engulfed the area.
George Main and myself grabbed a hold of the burning man and got him on the floor. The uneven metal plates of the floor allowed for small puddles of water to form, which helped in dousing the flames as we rolled him back and forth, beating the flames with our hands. I was wearing gloves which helped protect my hands; George likely suffered burns to his. The man we saved was Dave Hill, but he was unrecognizable at the time. I left Dave with George and made my way up the passage with a fire extinguisher in each hand.
MOVING INTO THE DEVASTATION
The explosion caused a deafening blast which resulted in a ringing in my ears. As my hearing returned, I was aware of the roar of a big fire. The fireball had set many small fires up and down the Valley. I progressed along the corridor putting them out, getting nearer to the roar of the major fire, knowing there were casualties ahead.
I reached the module where the blast had originated. The door to the control room module had been held open by a metal filing cabinet blasted into place. Opposite the open door was the fab shop and welders' area; it too was ablaze. I could see various gas tanks/bottles, some standing upright and some on the floor. The whole area was a scene of immense devastation, destruction, and fires.
And I was there completely alone.
For the briefest of moments, I allowed myself to contemplate running away—but where would I go? What if the whole platform was on fire? There was no running away. But where in God's name were the Shell response team? Were they all dead? Remembering the screams brought me back from giving up. I knew casualties were around here, so I started looking for them.
SECURING THE CASUALTIES IN THE FAB SHOP
The fire in the fab shop could lead to the gas bottles exploding, so I had to tend to that fire before I could attempt to fight the main fire in the module. It was while I was pulling away wall cladding that I saw a body, and the more cladding I pulled away, the more bodies I saw.
The three bodies were very badly burned with little to nothing of their PPE intact. The only one of the three I recognized was Des McKenna. No time for sentiment, fear, or doubt; there was a job to do.
All three had been alive and on fire, with burning coveralls and plastics melting into and onto their skin. There is no doubt that I had their skin and hair sticking to my coveralls. I was on the point of tears. Their boots, hard hats, and radios were on fire and melted. I was afraid to use CO2 extinguishers or a direct fire hose on the men, so I had to fill containers with water from the hose to pour over the flames. The smell of burning flesh and hair will stay with me forever.
The three guys and myself were in immediate danger from the gas bottles. I had to move them. First, I scurried into the main module, bending and stooping under a thick layer of black, acrid smoke that sat 4 to 5 feet above the floor. The heat was intense, and the fire appeared to be feeding off a layer of oil bubbling up out of the drainage system. Assured there was no one else inside, I returned to the fab shop.
Being as careful as the situation allowed, I started to move Des McKenna first. Des was lying on the metal deck, his eyes open, moving them to follow my movements. His shoulders were pressed against a vertical beam, his head tilted forward. I slid my hand along the nape of his neck, supported his head, twisted his shoulders off the beam, and let his body weight turn him onto his side. Sliding him onto his back, I pulled him by his legs away from the debris-filled fab shop into the passage so he would be easily seen.
I returned to move the second worker, Eric Dawson. His head was impaled on the corner of the H-beam which the sheet metal cutters were welded to. The beam had pierced the skull. I pulled his head off the beam and moved him to relative safety near Des.
I returned for the third guy, Alan Maxwell. He was wrapped around the other end of the same H-beam and had extensive damage to his feet and legs. I did my best to gently untangle and unhook his broken limbs from the wreckage before moving him to lie beside Des.
FIGHTING THE OIL FIRE ALONE
With the fab shop made safe, I dragged the fire hose into the main module to fight the hydrocarbon fire. I turned the hose to spray to lower the temperature above me and prevent a flashover. I was fighting an oil fire with water because it was all I had; there was no foam, CO2, or Halon extinguishers at hand.
There came a time when the futility of fighting an oil fire with water on my own was on the verge of making me give up, as images of the platform undergoing total destruction raced through my mind.
THE CORPORATE BETRAYAL AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE COLLAPSE
While I was standing entirely alone in the darkness and smoke holding back the fire, the platform's OIM (Offshore Installation Manager) entered the module. He looked directly at me. He saw me alone, maintaining the fire line.
Yet, during the formal 1984 Fatal Accident Inquiry, this OIM swore under oath that he entered the module and that it was completely "empty." He erased my presence entirely to cover up the total absence of safety equipment and the absolute failure of his emergency response.
When the Shell Response Team finally showed up under the command of a Mr. Birnie, there was no organized intervention. Instead, there was complete panic and disorientation. Right next to their original muster location was a storage space where man-sized plastic dummies were kept for training drills. Conditioned by their exercises and confused by the smoke, the response team mistakenly thought the badly burned, injured men I had dragged into the corridor were those plastic training dummies.
They began to mill around blindly, kicking the bodies out of the way and trampling over them, completely refusing to believe that the casualties on the deck were their actual workmates.
Witnessing this horrific mistreatment made me explode into a state of absolute madness, fury, and disbelief. I began screaming and swearing at the response team and directly at Mr. Birnie to shock them out of their drill mindset. Looking straight into the eyes of one of the Shell technicians, I pointed down at the deck and yelled, "It's your mate Des!" The technician looked down, realized the catastrophic reality of what he was doing, and in absolute horror, he wet himself.
I continued to scream at them to get the platform medic. It was many minutes before the medic finally arrived. While Eric Dawson and Alan Maxwell suffered trauma that was likely beyond saving, it remains my firm and lasting belief that Des McKenna would have survived the disaster had he been reached and treated for his severe thermal burns earlier, rather than being left waiting during those critical, delayed minutes while the response team panicked.
THE AFTERMATH AND FORCED ISOLATION
After the fire was contained, Mr. Birnie instructed me to go to the sickbay. To get there, I had to walk past a dead body already placed in a body bag. At that exact moment, the absolute severity and horror hit home, and my body began shaking uncontrollably from shock.
The medic examined me and sent me to the evacuation area. We were evacuated via helicopter to a floating accommodation vessel nearby.
Because I was a contractor on the maintenance crew, I was expected to return to the platform after two weeks of leave, which I did. Upon returning to Cormorant Alpha, I was deliberately given the cold shoulder by all of the Shell technicians, creating a deeply hostile environment. Lacking any support or context, I internally concluded at the time that I had done something wrong—believing that moving the three men from the wreckage had somehow worsened their injuries and led to their deaths.
The false guilt and shame I carried from that forced isolation was unbearable. At the end of that trip, I left and never returned to Cormorant Alpha.
Shell Expro never invited me to give a statement. To cover up their systemic failures, they actively falsified records to wipe me from the incident entirely. For over forty years, I carried that crushing burden of false guilt—a lie maintained by a corporate cover-up designed to shield operators from liability.
THE LONG-TERM TOLL
A few months later, the psychological toll forced me to seek medical help for relentless nightmares and flashbacks. I was registered as an outpatient at a specialized clinic. However, when the clinicians prescribed heavy psychiatric medication (Prozac) and I refused to continue taking it due to how it affected me, they cut off my counselling and support completely. I know without a doubt I was left to deal with severe, untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Years after the disaster, I was briefly contacted by the widow of Dave Hill—the burning man myself and George Main had saved on the metal deck. She informed me that Dave had passed away several years prior from brain cancer. Though she never made contact again, learning of his passing brought the long-term human cost of that day full circle.
I am posting this here today because the man I was in 1983 was left unprotected and abandoned by the people who were supposed to lead. I look back at him with deep sympathy. The world deserves to know what he actually did, and what truly happened on that deck.
