chron.com: Where Houston lives
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¬ ¬ ¬*
SEARCH ON FOR 11 MISSING
AS OIL RIG INFERNO RAGES
THE BLAZE: Fire from offshore platform
THE RESCUE: Of 126 on board, 17 injured
so bright it could be seen 70 miles away
flown to hospitals, 3 in critical condition
STORY ON
PAGE C1
NFL DRAFT CENTRAL: Join
McClain for an 11:30 a.m.
chat today, then follow the
draft beginning at 6:30 p.m.
with pick-by-pick updates,
Twitter feeds and live
analysis. chron.com/texans
STAR
WHAT CAN
YOU DO?
This Earth
Day, rethink your
clothes, home,
electronics and
even makeup —
and don’t forget to
celebrate. SECTION E
U N I T E D S TAT E S C O A S T G UA R D
Fire boats encircle the Deepwater Horizon on Wednesday in an effort to control the boiling blaze
that erupted Tuesday night. The Coast Guard searched through the night for survivors. See more photos at chron.com
COORDINATED EFFORT:
Water-sewer rates to climb
30 percent over next 3 years
› Council acts to
end subsidy, help
maintain utilities
By BRADLEY OLSON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
The City Council on
Wednesday raised water and
sewer rates by nearly 30 percent on an average singlefamily household, among the
largest increases in Houston’s
history and one that places
the city’s rates at a higher
level than many major U.S.
municipalities.
The increases for single-
family homeowners will be
phased in over three years,
bringing the bill of an average
single-family household using 6,000 gallons of water a
month from $47 to $60 after
the rate hike is fully implemented.
An increase of about 12.5
percent will take effect June 1.
The rest of the hike will occur
in three equal increases, on
April 1, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
“I am absolutely convinced
that we did the right thing today for the citizens of today
and future generations in the
city of Houston,” said Mayor
Please see WATER, Page A16
COSTS ACROSS U.S.
Monthly water-sewer rates
in other major U.S. cities*:
San Antonio: )0
Miami: *+
Oakland: +*
Dallas: +-
Houston-Existing:
$47
Fort Worth:+/
Los Angeles: ,-
St. Petersburg: ,/
New Orleans: -'
Houston-After increase:
$60
Austin: --
San Diego: ()(
*For single-family homeowners
using 6,000 gallons a month; figures
were rounded and Houston increase
will be implemented over three years
Source: City of Houston rate study
For workers’ families,
‘prayers and waiting’
By JENNIFER LATSON,
PURVA PATEL
and LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
For relatives of workers
aboard the Transocean oil rig
that burst into flames on
Tuesday, the hours dragged
by as they awaited word from
loved ones.
By Wednesday evening,
some would be in a hotel in
Kenner, La., where this morning they were expecting to
By JAMES PINKERTON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Houston firefighters who
punched ventilation holes in
the roof of a burning resi-
dence worsened a winddriven blaze last spring that
killed two of their colleagues
during a “fast attack” response criticized for lacking
coordination, communication
INSIDE
WE RECYCLE
Business. . . . D1
Comics . . . . . .E6
Crossword . . .E5
Directory. . . . A2
Editorials . . . B8
Lottery . . . . . A2
Movies . . . . .F21
Obituaries. . . B5
Created on Adobe Document Server 2.0
Please see PROBE, Page A16
ALA.
The Deepwater Horizon is located in BP’s Macondo
Mobile
prospect, about 40 miles offshore Louisiana.
MISS.
TEXAS
Feds detail errors in fighting fatal fire
and basic knowledge of fire
dynamics, according to an
exhaustive investigation by
federal safety officials.
The federal report followed
a Texas Fire Marshal’s inquiry
into the fatal fire on Easter
Sunday morning last year on
Houston’s east side, but had
sharper criticism of the Houston Fire Department’s field
tactics and training.
The National Institute
of Occupational Safety and
Health listed eight key con-
Please see FAMILIES, Page A7
FIRE IN THE GULF
Houston
› 2 firefighters died in Easter ’09 blaze
greet those who survived.
Debi Nunley of Tyler awoke
to a ringing phone and a sinking feeling at 5:30 Wednesday
morning. She answered the
phone: “What is it?”
Her husband, who works
offshore on a different rig,
struggled to break the news
that their 24-year-old son,
Mark Nunley, was among
those missing.
“From that point on it was
prayers and waiting, prayers
LA.
25 mi.
Gulf of
Mexico
New
Orleans
Port
Fourchon
Semisubmersible rig
The rig floats above the drill site
and is submerged by partially
filling hulls with water.
Rig
fire
Deepwater Horizon
Rig owner and operator:
Transocean Corp.
Leased to: BP, from 2007
to 2013
Year entered service: 2001
Rig type: semisubmersible
Max. water depth
capability: 10,000 feet
Max. drilling depth
capability: 30,000 feet
Drilling
deck
Mooring
lines
Hulls
Biloxi
Drilling riser
Sources: Transocean Corp.; Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary; rigzone.com
CHRONICLE
By MONICA HATCHER,
BRETT CLANTON
and TOM FOWLER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Rescue crews continued
scouring the waters of the
Gulf of Mexico deep into
Wednesday night, looking
for 11 workers missing after
an explosion and massive
fire engulfed an offshore rig
operating about 40 miles
off the Louisiana coast.
The families of those unaccounted for, meanwhile,
kept vigil around television
sets and phones for news,
including the 6-year old son
of Dale Burkeen, a crane
operator from Philadelphia,
Miss.
“The little boy is not doing well. We just told him
there was a fire on daddy’s
rig and he was missing, but
there were people looking
for him and we hoped they
would find him soon,” said
a woman who answered the
family’s phone and identified herself as Burkeen’s
aunt.
There were 126 crew
members aboard the semisubmersible rig, owned and
operated by Transocean,
who had only minutes to
abandon the platform bePlease see FIRE, Page A6
MORE INSIDE
HIGH-RISK JOB: More than
500 fires have been reported
on oil rigs since 2006, leading
to millions in fines. A look at the
history of oil rig fires in the Gulf.
PAGE A6
A6
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
FIRE IN THE GULF
¬¬¬
Thursday, April 22, 2010
GULF ACCIDENTS
509 blazes
have hit rigs
since 2006
› Attorneys for injured workers say
firms underreport platform incidents
By LISE OLSEN
and TERRI LANGFORD
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Nine major oil rig fires
have killed at least two people
and seriously injured 12 since
2006 in the Gulf of Mexico, a
lonely, high-risk drilling area
where workers stay for weeks
at a time, working 12-hour-aday shifts.
Those fires are among
509 recorded on oil platforms
in the Gulf since 2006, according to the U.S. Mineral
Management Services, which
monitors and collects platform data.
The Chronicle did not find
any fatal accidents involving
the drilling rig that caught fire
Tuesday night, the Deepwater
Horizon, or the company that
owns it, Transocean Ltd.
However, fire struck other
Transocean rigs in 2008 and
2009 and four of 19 accidents
recorded on Transocean platforms for the past four years
resulted in injuries to workers that required evacuation
to shore and caused $1.9 million in damage, according to
MMS accident reports.
The Houston Chronicle
counted 35 fatal Gulf of Mexico platform accidents since
2006, based on local news
reports and records.
The two deadliest Gulf
of Mexico fires occurred in
2008 and in January on two
oil rig platforms operated by
the Apache Corp. In those
two cases, one man died of
his burns, and another died
jumping into the Gulf to escape the fire.
$8.5 million in fines
Fires on Transocean’s other rigs did not involve injuries, according to government
reports. One 2008 fire began
after an O-ring was improperly installed on a fuel line,
causing fuel to leak onto a hot
engine surface. Another in
2009 started because of electrical equipment failure.
Most of the fatalities on
these hulking metal behemoths involved drowning,
diving accidents, helicopter
crashes or drilling equipment
mishaps.
Drilling companies have
been assessed at least $8.5
million in fines since 2005 by
the MMS, which also wears
another hat: The agency col-
lects royalties from the leases
it sells to oil companies it
monitors for safety.
In 2009, $11 billion in royalties was collected from offshore leases. According to the
MMS website, those royalties
are one of the federal government’s greatest sources of
non-tax revenue.
Attorneys who often represent off-shore workers in
injury cases said that accidents aboard Gulf of Mexico
oil platforms tend to be underreported.
“There is a big difference
between their actual incident/
injury rate and their selfreported (rate),” said attorney Michael Doyle of Doyle
Raizner in Houston, a firm
that specializes in offshore
injury cases.
Injury rate higher?
Despite federal reporting requirements, Doyle said
companies have failed to
report off-shore injuries to
the U.S. Coast Guard, which
shares some enforcement authority with the MMS, in
about a third of the employee
cases he has handled.
“Often (company officials)
deny an injury no matter
what the doctors say,” he said.
“So the injury rate looks low,
but is not.”
Federal court records show
dozens of recent cases filed
nationwide against Transocean Inc and interrelated companies. But many of the injuries and death cases result in
undisclosed settlements, two
other attorneys who recently
represented workers in cases
against Transocean said.
Kurt Arnold, who has represented several clients in
recent cases against Transocean Offshore and specializes in maritime injury cases
said most of the workers live
together in small towns from
East Texas to all across Louisiana.
“Unfortunately, the rise
of incidents offshore are increasing as the exploration
for oil and gas increases,” Arnold said. “Many companies
talk about their safety record,
but the majority of accidents
are not reported or misclassified. Unlike on land, there is
little oversight.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
ÇÉÊÄË
G E R AL D H E R BE R T : A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S
SPREADING SLICK: In this aerial photo taken in the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La., a surface sheen shows
where oil from the burning Deepwater Horizon offshore rig was spreading Wednesday. No cause has been determined for the fire.
Crew aboard rig had only
moments to escape with lives
FIRE:
CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1
fore it was swallowed in fire,
according to company officials.
“This would have happened very, very rapidly,” said
Adrian Rose, vice president
of quality, health, safety and
environment for Transocean,
the largest drilling contractor
in the world, which is based
in Switzerland but keeps major offices in Houston.
Three people were critically injured among 17 who
were flown by air ambulance
to hospitals in New Orleans
and Mobile, Ala., for treatment after the fire broke out
around 10 p.m. Tuesday.
Flames were so bright that
flight paramedic Marc Creswell, wearing night vision
goggles, could see them from
70 miles away, despite the
black, billowing smoke.
“I’ve seen oilfield fires,
but this is the grandest scale
I’ve seen,” said Creswell, with
Lafayette-based Acadian Ambulance Service. “This was
the big show.”
P E T T Y O F F I C E R 3 R D C L AS S T O M AT KE S O N : U. S . C O A S T G UA R D /A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S
RUSH TO RESCUE: Emergency medical technicians rush to a waiting HH-60 rescue helicopter at the
Coast Guard Air Station in New Orleans on Wednesday. Of the 17 injured who were flown to hospitals in
New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., three were listed as critical.
HELP LINE
FOR FAMILIES
Transocean has set up a
phone number for family
members of the workers
onboard the drilling rig.
They may call (832) 5878554 for any updates or
information.
Under lease by BP
The semi-submersible rig
has been under lease by BP
since 2007. It had completed
cementing and casing of an
18,000-foot exploratory well,
Rose said, when a sudden and
abnormal pressure buildup
occurred in piping connecting the well to the rig. The
well depth includes the 5,000
feet of water in which the rig
was floating.
The U.S. Coast Guard
worked around the clock
Wednesday to extinguish the
blaze aboard the Deepwater
Horizon, which was listing as
much as 10 degrees.
As it did, questions quickly turned to the cause of the
blaze, one of the worst to
erupt in the Gulf in recent
memory.
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“Gas or oil got into the pipe
and as it came up through the
riser it expanded rapidly and
ignited,” Rose said.
While the incident appeared to resemble a blowout,
Rose cautioned that it was
far too early to determine the
exact cause. He said a formal
investigation would begin
only after the missing crew
members have been found
and other workers have been
reunited with their families.
As of late Wednesday,
however, the company was
still trying to stem the flow
of combustible oil and gas
at the seabed. The plan was
to deploy a submarine-like
robot, called a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to seal
off the well’s massive blowout
preventer sitting on the ocean
floor. Rose said those efforts
have been thwarted by the
raging fire, however.
While most of the hydrocarbons were being burned
off by the fire, a light sheen
could be seen on the surrounding waters, and seven
major oil spill response vessels were in route to the area,
said Rear Adm. Mary Landry,
commander of the 8th Coast
Guard District.
Landry also said a “massive” rescue effort included
three helicopters, a plane and
four Coast Guard cutters that
scoured a 900-square-mile
area. Overnight, the search
was scaled back to two cutters and early this morning
a broader search, including
aircraft, will resume.
Rose said 79 of the workers were Transocean employees. BP spokesman Daren
Beaudo said his firm had six
employees on board who have
been found safe. Halliburton
said it had four workers on
board and that all were accounted for. Evacuees from
other third-party firms were
still being identified.
The affiliations of the 11
missing remained unclear,
and Transocean declined to
release their names.
The firm is setting up bases in New Orleans and Port
Fourchon, La., where families
can get information and be
reunited with loved ones.
“Our greatest responsibility is the safety and well-being
of our crews,” Rose said. “The
ongoing care and support and
counseling of families is also
on our minds.”
In a recent fleet report,
Transocean said that Deep-
water Horizon entered service in 2001, can operate in
10,000 feet of water and drill
to a depth of 30,000 feet.
Last year, the rig drilled the
deepest oil and gas well ever
at BP’s Tiber discovery in the
Gulf of Mexico — to a depth of
35,050 feet — while operating
in 4,130 feet of water.
The Coast Guard’s Landry
said she believed the rig had
been inspected three times
since the beginning of the
year.
Transocean has 14 rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
The company employs about
18,500 people.
Rebuilding the same rig today would cost between $600
million and $700 million.
One of the worst in years
The incident on the Deepwater Horizon, which was
working on the Macondo
prospect for BP in a deepwater area known as Mississippi Canyon, appears to
be one of the worst offshore
fires in the Gulf in several
years. Major offshore fires
are relatively rare and can
be caused by any number of
events, from improper welding to blowouts of flammable
hydrocarbons.
The Coast Guard will try
to determine the cause of the
blaze with BP and the U.S.
Minerals Management Service, the Coast Guard said.
The incident is the latest
in a string of accidents at U.S.
oil and gas facilities that have
put the industry’s safety record in the spotlight.
Six people died during an
April 2 explosion and fire
at Tesoro’s Anacortes, Wash.,
refinery. Three workers were
injured at an April 14 fire at
Exxon Mobil’s Baton Rouge
refinery, and one worker died
April 19 in a crane accident
at Motiva Enterprises’ Port
Arthur refinery.
“Every time an incident
like this occurs, we ask ourselves what we can do better,” Jack Gerard, CEO of
the American Petroleum
Institute, an industry trade
group, told reporters in Houston Wednesday morning after
hearing about the Deepwater
Horizon fire. ”Among the oil
and gas industry, any injury
or fatality is too much.”
Chronicle reporter Jennifer Latson
contributed to this story.
[email protected]
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FIRE IN THE GULF
Thursday, April 22, 2010
FAMILIES:
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
A7
Waiting for buses of survivors to arrive
CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1
and waiting,” Debi Nunley
said. “The thing that goes
through your mind is ‘God
please help these men, and
my son especially.’ ”
A long 7½ hours later,
her husband called with word
that Mark had been found.
He didn’t have details, but it
didn’t matter. Mark was on
his way back via boat, and she
was grateful.
“I’m so thankful and
blessed,” she said. “We won’t
get to hear or see him until
10:30 or midnight, because
it’s a long boat ride.”
When he landed, she said,
her husband planned to be
there to greet him.
Aware of the risks
¬¬¬*
In Denham Springs, La.,
Kristin Hall hadn’t heard
about the rig fire when her
phone rang late Tuesday
night.
It was her husband, who
works on the rig for a Transocean contractor, calling on a
satellite phone to say that he
was OK.
His voice slightly breathless, he told her he had made
it off the rig without injury,
but that in the rush he had
left his wallet, keys and cell
phone behind.
Hall stayed awake the remainder of the night.
“Emotionally, it was a lot,”
she said.
The mother of three is
aware of the risks. Her husband, 36-year-old Robert
Splawn, has held oil field
positions for 10 years, the
last three of them mostly
offshore.
“It’s definitely a risk that
he takes when he goes out
there,” Hall said Wednesday
afternoon while she waited
for word that she could reunite with her husband. “He’s
told me before that they could
blow up. He really knows the
dangers.”
Splawn was on his ninth
day of a 14-day rotation as a
clerk aboard the rig when the
fire broke out.
Hall feels lucky that she
got to hear her husband’s
voice — other families, she
knows, did not. But she will
be anxious until she sees him
again, she said.
She doesn’t think Splawn
will make a career change.
“I’m not going to be able to
talk him out of it,” she said.
“The money is too good.”
She takes comfort in
knowing that Splawn is welltrained and that rig fires are
relatively rare.
“Basically, you could die
driving an 18-wheeler down
the road just as easily,” she
said.
eyes away from the horrifying images on the screen. She
wondered how anyone could
have survived.
“I think the worst thing
is (our 9-year-old daughter)
looked at me this morning and
she said, ‘My daddy might not
come home,’ ” Moss said.
At about 1 p.m., the phone
rang. A Transocean representative told her he was safe
and on his way to shore in a
boat with other survivors.
Moss and relatives drove from
Jayess, Miss., to the hotel.
‘In his blood’
Jolted from sleep
In the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, families of
the Transocean rig workers
gathered at the Crowne Plaza
Hotel. Some drove hours to
get there.
Kristy Murray, 24, said her
brother, Chad Murray, 34, is
the rig’s chief electrician.
“Mama called me at 6:30
a.m. and told me that the rig
had blown up and we couldn’t
get hold of anybody,” she
said.
Murray said she tried to
reach her brother on Facebook, since he usually communicates by Internet when
he’s offshore, but he didn’t
respond.
In a panic, she and a friend
drove 3½ hours to Kenner
from central Louisiana.
Her brother’s 5-year-old
daughter, Maddy, was the last
one to talk to him, about 9
p.m. Tuesday.
“That’s his world,” said
family friend, Jessica Sharp,
28.
Chad Murray has been
working for Transocean for
five years, his sister said.
The last time he was home,
he joked that he might not go
back out to sea, Sharp said.
The pay and benefits were
good, but three-week-long
gigs at sea didn’t leave much
time for his little girl, Kristy
Murray said.
“And after this I doubt
BI L L Y S M I T H I I : H O U S T O N C H R O N I C L E
JOY: Carrol Moss and her 9-year-old daughter, Jasmyn, of Jayess, Miss., wait for husband and dad
Eugene Moss to arrive at shore on Wednesday. After hours of uncertainty and fear, the family found out
Eugene survived the oil rig fire in the Gulf. They drove from Mississippi to Kenner, La., to meet him.
very seriously he’ll set foot
back on a rig,” she said. “His
main concern is his 5-yearold daughter.” It was past
noon on Wednesday before
the Murray family got word
that Chad Murray was safe on
a boat.
Apparently he jumped
from the platform to the boat,
Kristy Murray said. “He was
one of the last ones off the rig
because he was helping everyone else. An injured survivor who had been airlifted
back to shore told them he’d
seen Murray get off the rig.
But conflicting reports that
he might have been taken to
a hospital for burns left his
loved ones in limbo.
“Everything is hearsay until we lay eyes on him and talk
to him,” his sister said.
Carrol Moss hadn’t slept
a wink since a 4 a.m. phone
call jolted her out of sleep to
the news that the offshore rig
where her husband worked
had gone up in flames.
Eugene Moss, a 37-yearold crane operator and father
of four, had been working
on the rig for a year, his wife
said. She turned on the TV
news and couldn’t peel her
Charity Wilson, 27, came
from Waynesboro, Miss., after her brother’s wife got a
4:30 a.m. phone call about
the accident.
Micah Burgess, 29, had
followed his father into the
business, Wilson said.
“He loves it,” she said.
“My daddy says it’s just in his
blood.”
Desperate for any shred of
information, the family kept
redialing the Transocean hot
line until someone finally was
able to tell them that Micah
Burgess was one of the lucky
ones. He was headed to Louisiana by boat with dozens of
other survivors.
His wife, Beth Burgess,
28, and Wilson sat on a curb
outside the hotel in Kenner on
Wednesday afternoon. They
stayed busy, answering cell
phone calls from anxious relatives and friends, and trying
to reassure themselves and
others that the nightmare was
almost over.
The bus carrying Micah
Burgess and other survivors
was scheduled to arrive at
the hotel sometime after midnight.
“I’m fine,”( said his weary
wife, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Just ready for him to be
here.”
Lindsay Wise reported from Louisiana.
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