Deepwater Horizon on fire and sinking

[LTZ470]

Sad, but interesting shots the camera and EXIF is with the photo...

[LTZ470]

Down for the count...

[LTZ470]

More with vessels at night...

[penolta]

Superb documentation (with quite a variety of cameras). How is it you were on the scene (assuming these are all yours)? It must have been quite an experience.

[Hards80]

yea. these are amazing and powerfully sad documentary shots.

that was quite an experience, how was it you were able to be at this place?

[Mark1616]

Stunning, sad........ all rolled into one. Did any of you guys send these in to the papers etc? Not sure the easiest way now as the global company I used to use was taken over by Getty, but it's always worth a try when you have shots that others won't likely have taken. Could be a bit late now depending on the time scale.

From some other shots I believe that LTZ470 works on the rigs so would guess these were taken from a neighbouring platform.

[lomitamike]

Those are absolutley amazing shots.

[LTZ470]

The shots are from various oilfield hands, boat capt's and seaman aboard the vessels in the Gulf of Mexico...

Sorry for not responding...this rig was designed by Reading and Bates many years ago and was only a sketch of a dream in early 1990's...I saw the sketch then...when it was built my oldest brother was with it from Korea to 2008 when he died of heart disease...the crew that got killed when it the explosion took place was my brothers crew...one of the guy's is from my home town in Louisiana and was a very good man...if my brother had still been alive he would have been there when this happened so we just never know as all sorts of unforeseen occurrences can happen...

These pictures were being sent to me by other oilfield workers that wanted to keep me updated...my younger brother was 30 miles away and watching it burn and sink...I was just posting them as I recieved them to allow others to see what an oilfield blowout looks like this was a catastrophic failure and they had about 2 seconds to respond and it takes us that long to even think...it ignited and killed them or took all the oxygen away before they could get out...

Yes I work on these and have dealt with the high pressure that they were dealing with many times...it has happened to me several times that the wells would start blowing same as this, but never ignited and we got the well closed in with the Blowout Prevention Equipment and then brought it back under control...

It's never easy, and the Good Lord has watched over me for 30 yrs in the oil industry...

I work in Calabar, Nigeria, West Africa now and have been for 15 yrs, I haven't worked in the Gulf of Mexico for 24 yrs now...but I have worked in Malaysia, Indonesia, Italy, Sicily, North Sea UK Sector, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and the Gulf of Mexico...retired from Reading and Bates 17 yrs, retired Exxonmobil 9 yrs, Consulting for past 4 yrs in West Africa....