In 1983, a tragic accident on the Byford Dolphin oil rig resulted in explosive decompression, immediately killing four saturation divers and critically injuring one other crew member. The rapid decompression occurred when a diving bell prematurely detached from its chamber as a result of unsealed chamber doorways. The incident revealed extreme flaws in security protocols and led to significant improvements in industrial diving operations and safety requirements worldwide. Saturation divers are professional deep-sea divers who descend to depths of 500 ft (152 meters) or more to service equipment on offshore oil rigs and undersea pipelines. But unlike most commercial divers, who do a few hours of work underwater and return to the floor, saturation divers will spend as much as 28 days on a single job, dwelling in a cramped high-strain chamber where they eat and BloodVitals SPO2 sleep between shifts. Pay is great for saturation divers - between $30,000 and Blood Vitals $45,000 a month - but it is intense work in an otherworldly and claustrophobic surroundings.
And it can be harmful. In 1983, four saturation divers and one crew member were killed in a ugly accident aboard a Norwegian-operated oil rig known as the Byford Dolphin. Life support technicians ensure the air mix in the hyperbaric chamber matches the air that the divers breathe underwater. The dive management group is answerable for BloodVitals SPO2 working the diving bell - which raises and BloodVitals SPO2 lowers on a crane - and BloodVitals SPO2 monitoring the divers as they work. There are even cooks who put together and serve meals to the males cooped up within the residing chambers. They help unspool and retract the "umbilical," the thick line of air supply tubes and communication wires that connect the divers to the surface. Up to now, tenders had different tasks that included docking the diving bell to the pressurized dwelling chambers. Phillip Newsum, an skilled business diver and govt director of the Association of Diving Contractors International.
On Nov. 5, 1983, an skilled tender named William Crammond was in the midst of a routine process aboard the Byford Dolphin, BloodVitals SPO2 a semi-submersible oil rig operating in the North Sea. The rig was equipped with two pressurized residing chambers, every holding two divers. Crammond had simply linked the diving bell to the living chambers and BloodVitals SPO2 safely deposited a pair of divers in chamber one. The opposite two divers were already resting in chamber two. That's when issues went horribly incorrect. Under normal circumstances, the diving bell wouldn't be detached from the dwelling chambers till the chamber doorways were safely sealed shut. The air pressure contained in the Byford Dolphin dwelling chambers immediately went from 9 atmospheres - the stress experienced while tons of of ft beneath the water - to 1 environment, the traditional air pressure on the floor. The explosive rush of air out of the chamber despatched the heavy diving bell flying, killing Crammond and critically injuring his fellow tender, Martin Saunders.
The destiny of the four saturation divers inside was far worse. Based on autopsy reviews, three of the males inside the chamber - Edwin Arthur Coward, Roy P. Lucas and Bjørn Giæver Bergersen - were essentially "boiled" from the inside when the nitrogen in their blood violently erupted into gasoline bubbles. The fourth diver, BloodVitals SPO2 Truls Hellevik, suffered the grizzliest loss of life. Hellevik was standing in front of the partially opened door to the living chamber when the strain was launched. His physique was sucked out through an opening so slender that it tore him open and ejected his inside organs onto the deck. As a diver descends, the burden of the water around them applies stress to each cell in their body. The stress even compresses molecules of gaseous nitrogen taken in by the lungs, BloodVitals monitor which causes the nitrogen fuel to dissolve into the bloodstream. The absorption of nitrogen itself is not the difficulty. The issue begins if a diver tries to ascend to the floor too quickly.
Think of it like shaking a 2-liter bottle of soda and opening the cap. The truth that there was no interlock on the locking mechanism was immediately apparent, BloodVitals home monitor and now the presence of applicable security interlocks on sat diving programs has perhaps the very best precedence of all safeguards," Bryan McGlinchy, diving manager on the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA), tells Energy Voice. "What you’ve obtained to do is consider the human being within the system and never put these individuals in a position where an understandable human error could lead to very severe consequences. Our security programs must be designed to be tolerant of human error. On top of dealing with the death of her husband, BloodVitals SPO2 Ruth Crammond additionally had to deal with the aftermath of the investigation. She also by no means believed the Norwegian authorities's findings due to the years of his years of diving experience. The Byford Dolphin was one of many worst oil subject disasters in history," Newsum says, "and it led to sweeping modifications in the North Sea and in business diving safety worldwide.