Real Survival Stories - Leaping From a Burning Oil Rig: Piper Alpha Down

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

One of the biggest offshore disasters in history. In July 1988, a fire breaks out on the Piper Alpha - a vast oil rig in the North Sea. Those stationed on board are thrust into a hell on earth. As the conflagration grows around him, 29 year-old Joe Meanen must make a desperate decision. Stay patient and put his faith in the remote chance of rescue? Or take his survival into his own hands? A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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125 miles off the northeast coast of Scotland. The lights of an offshore drilling platform glimmer on the dark surface of the North Sea. Rising 200 feet above the waterline, the Piper Alpha is a towering steel behemoth, a bulky cubic construction of yellow painted girders, pipes and scaffolding. The sturdy rig is built to withstand the battering storms of a North Sea winter. But right now, the ocean is calm. The sky is a deep inky blue, the last residue of daylight glowing at the base of the horizon.

French sailors have a name for conditions like these, when the ocean is this tranquil and glassy. They call it la mer d'huile, sea of oil. Down in the rig's production modules, the air thrums with machinery. Inside this complex system of tubes and cylinders, powerful forces are contained and corralled. Highly pressurized hydrocarbons, sucked from the earth's crust, now captive within steel pipes. Given the combustible nature of oil and gas, every step of the extraction process must be strictly regulated, every step carefully overseen. But down in production module C, something is wrong. A safety relief valve, which prevents excessive pressure from building up within the pipework,

was removed for repairs earlier today. As such, the pump that controls the flow of liquefied gas through this pipe is shut down. But due to a combination of bad luck and human error, that pump has just been brought back online without its safety valve. As an oblivious technician activates the pump from the control room, thousands of gallons of liquefied gas begin to surge through the pipe. With the safety valve removed and the end of the pipe sealed off by a temporary steel cap, there's nowhere for the gas to go. It clacks at the end of the pipe, the pressure building and building, until, just before 10pm, the dam breaks.

Oily yellow jets spurt from a hairline crack around the seal. Within seconds, sea module is flooded with highly flammable liquid gas. From here, it only takes a tiny electrical spark. For divers doing maintenance work 50 feet underwater, the explosion comes as a flash of white light and a bang that punches through the silence of the deep. For the men working on board the support boats dotted around the platform, the dusk is briefly illuminated by a ring of pale blue flames

with a surge of blistering heat. For 29-year-old Joe Menon, relaxing and watching a film with colleagues on board the rig, the explosion is preceded by a series of deep tremors, followed by an ear-shattering blast. tremors, followed by an ear-shattering blast. You can actually feel the energy coming through the floor, actually coming through your seat. Then all of a sudden there was a huge explosion. The whole platform rocked back and forward. We actually didn't know what had happened. We just knew something horrendous had happened. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes?

If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode we meet offshore oil worker Joe Menem. In the summer of 1988, Joe is stationed on the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea. Since drilling began here in 1976, it has become one of the busiest rigs in the world, at one stage producing more than 300,000 barrels of crude oil every day, 10% of Britain's total usage. It's a hive of incessant industry, around-the-clock drilling operation

optimized for the relentless pursuit of profit, around the clock drilling operation optimized for the relentless pursuit of profit, whatever the cost. But on July the 6th 1988 a catastrophic fire breaks out on the platform and the 226 people stationed on board will be thrust into a hell on earth. As the conflagration grows around him Joe will have to make a terrifying decision. Stay patient and put his faith in the remote chance of rescue or take his survival into his own hands. Straight away, you know, you could realise that there's no chance any helicopters even

coming near this platform, never mind landing on the platform, because the smoke was so intense. I thought, well, that's it, I'm dead here. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiza podcast network, this is Real Survival Stories. It's 9.30 pm in the North Sea. Wednesday, July 6th, 1988. 125 miles northeast of Aberdeen, Scotland, the Piper Alpha is a metallic beast standing in the waves. The rig is so vast it has its own helipad, living quarters and even cinema room. Here a group of off-shift workers are watching a movie.

This evening's entertainment is the comedy Caddyshack, and it's a popular choice. There's barely an empty seat in the house. In the audience, his round, amiable face creased with laughter is 29-year-old Joe Menon. Joe is a scaffolder. He and his colleagues are responsible for construction work and maintenance around the oil rig. It's a challenging job, but Joe's used to it.

He's worked on North Sea drilling platforms for the last six years, and he's grown accustomed to the hardships of life offshore, from the cramped conditions to the extreme weather. I went offshore for the first time in 1982. We just kind of got moved around the North Sea as, you know, contracts, new contracts were negotiated. No, we just moved around as we were needed, so that's just the nature of the job I was in. The idea of going where you're needed, of taking opportunities where you can get them, was nothing new to Joe when he started out. His father had been a construction worker, and in the late 1960s, he had moved the family from their Glasgow tenement to East Kilbride,

one of several new towns developed by the government to accommodate the growing population after World War II. My dad got a job up in East Kilbride because that's part of the criteria. Back then you had to work in the new town to get a house. And yeah, East Kilbride was great. It was out in the countryside. Had a good upbringing there. Loads of families with kids all about the same ages, you know, so yeah, it was good. While his childhood was a happy one, as he and his sister grew older, rising local crime rates became a cause of concern for their parents.

Unfortunately, back in that day, there was a lot of gang problems in Glasgow, East Kilbray, such like. And once you come into adulthood, you could have went in a few different directions. Some good, some not so good. When Joe was 17, his family moved again, this time to the village of Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen. And with the move came economic opportunity. A few years prior, petroleum had been discovered beneath the bedrock of the North Sea, and

the port town of Aberdeen had become Europe's oil capital. Joe's father was one of thousands of men who flocked to work off the northeast coast where lucrative wages beckoned. In the heady days of the mid-1970s, as big energy companies rushed to set up drilling operations in the North Sea, finding work offshore was as simple as turning up at the heliport. offshore was as simple as turning up at the heliport. They all joked like it was get to the heliport and get 200 pounds, you know, you pass go, you know, a bit like monopolies.

So yeah, absolutely. It was kind of that. Back then it was endless cash going through Aberdeen. Money was no object. After finishing school, Joe followed his father into the construction trade, with a view to finding employment in the booming oil and gas industry. For the first couple of years he stuck to working on land. The pay was lower, but the demands were less extreme.

Everyone knew offshore work was a different beast. But then, in 1981, his father died. In his early twenties, Joe suddenly found himself responsible for others beside himself. Yeah, I suppose it's just coming ahead of the family or whatever, you know, and just taking that bit of more responsibility when you're 20, 21, 22, 23, you know, moving forward. A year after his dad passed away, Joe went to work offshore for the first time. Despite years of hearing stories about life on the platforms, nothing could have prepared him for his first glimpse of a rig. It was like an island of steel rising from the waves.

Its very presence seemed to defy physics. My first experiences were a real eye-opener and oh how these things, you know, how they even hear the construction of them. They're sitting in the middle of the North Sea. Especially during the wintertime you've got some horrendous weather conditions. You've got 60 foot waves hitting the side of the platform. You've got 60, 70 mile an hour winds. Offshore work is not for the faint hearted. Joe spends his days operating machinery at perilous heights, scaling 200-foot scaffolds

to conduct maintenance work, often in the teeth of fierce North Sea gales. Extensive safety training minimizes the risk of accidents. But when you're working with flammable substances like oil and gas, there are some dangers that no amount of training can mitigate. Four years ago, in 1984, a ruptured gas riser on the Piper Alpha triggered a massive fire. Though no one was killed in the blaze, the accident raised serious questions about safety on the platform, and in particular the potentially catastrophic consequences of a prolonged high-pressure gas fire. An official memo advised various improvements to the existing safety protocols, but the recommendations were largely ignored by management, who

maintained that the threats were not serious enough to justify the expense. In any case, for Joe and his colleagues, the risks are like the bad weather and the isolation. Unfortunately, they are part of the job. We just got used to it. It was just a matter of course. And we probably should have been more aware, that was one of my regrets afterwards, should have been more aware of how dangerous the situation. Where I was working, I should have been more aware of that and taking that a lot more seriously. And I did. It's the night of July the 6th, 1988, back in the cinema room on the Piper Alpha. Joe crosses one leg over the other and chuckles at the movie.

Given the intense nature of the job, offshore riggers work on a fortnightly rotation, two weeks at sea, two weeks on land, providing essential downtime. Joe's only got a couple of days left of this rotation. On Friday evening, he'll board the helicopter and fly back to the mainland. Unlike many of his colleagues, he doesn't have a wife or kids back home, but he's looking forward to the break all the same. Joe turns to the guys next to him, fellow Scaffs with whom he's looking forward to the break all the same. Joe turns to the guys next to him.

Fellow Scaffs with whom he's grown close over the years, and laughs along with the banter. I kind of got in with a good trow the fork and Scaffolders are kind of like that, you know, they'll look after each other. It was just camaraderie, you made the best of it. Everybody knew they were in the same situation. We all knew what we were doing and we were there for two weeks. So we just made the best of it and, you know, just kept going.

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But just then, a sound like rumbling thunder reverberates through the room. Joe looks away from the screen, his brow furrowed. About 40 minutes or so, 45 minutes into the movie, you could hear a successive flaring going on outside from the flare booms. It was that loud that drowned out the sound of the movie and a silence fell over the cinema. Flaring is a common occurrence on any oil rig, a means of burning off excess gas produced in the drilling process. But Joe has never heard it flare so violently, or for such an extended period.

It sounds like a turbojet engine, a thunderous flamethrower like Roar. Eventually the flaring stops. After exchanging a few tentative glances the men turn their attention back to the film. The noise started getting back up in the cinema again, you know, the laughter and all that. But then maybe a minute or so it started up again. Even more intense you can actually feel the energy coming through the floor, actually coming through your seat. Then all of a sudden there was a huge explosion. A volley of sonic waves rips through the floor. The ground jolts violently. Lights tumble

from their fixtures, metal panels fall from the ceiling, the projector screen crumples, and for a few surreal seconds the film is being shone onto a bare wall. Then the power goes out, and the cinema falls into darkness. After the initial blast, an eerie stillness has been left in its wake, a silence filled only by the deep, heavy breathing of the shaken men. Within maybe 10 to 15 seconds the emergency lighting came on. So it was a matter of, right lads, let's calm down here now, let's get in an orderly fashion and get back out into the main accommodation.

Joe joins the agitated crowds flooding the hallway up to the main accommodation block. The air is warm with smoke. Clearly there's a fire burning somewhere on the lower levels. So why are there no alarms? Joe listens out for an announcement over the tannoy, but nothing comes. There was no alarms went off. There was no tannoy went out. And that's really quite confusing. Nobody's got any information what's happening.

As more bodies fill the hallway, their progress up to the accommodation block slows. Joe cranes his neck to see past the jostling crowds. The stench of burning oil sears his throat and eyes, and tendrils of smoke now visibly drift through the gaps in the metal grill flooring. The air is becoming hot and scratchy to breathe. Up ahead, where the traffic is bottlenecked, panic is breaking out. People are running in different directions, crashing into each other in a narrow, dimly lit corridor.

With no announcements, it's unclear what the best course of action is. Joe decides to move away from the gaggle. He hurries down a flight of stairs that leads to the west side of the platform, where the lifeboats are located. He uses the handrails to steady himself as he descends the steps. The steel banisters are already warm to the touch. Joe's footsteps quicken, eager to reach the lifeboat station. But he never gets there. As I moved over to the west side of the platform, there was people coming back saying, there's

no chance you can't get out that way. The smoke and the heat is too extreme. Soot flecked faces passing him in the stairwell, their eyes red from the smoke, their hair singed from the heat of the flames. He spins around and follows them back upstairs. The main kind of consensus was most people were heading up to the galley area.

The galley area was a designated safe area. It was fireproof and it had a positive airflow. The galley is the canteen and kitchen area where the workers have their meals. Joe pushes forward, moving with a crush of bodies. Joe pushes forward, moving with a crush of bodies. In the smoky haze, the men walk in single file, their chins pressed into their chests. They grip the shoulder of the man in front with one hand and cover their mouths with the other. The galley is located near the top of the platform, just below the heli deck.

It's the place they've been told to go to in the event of an emergency. Joe ascends a flight of stairs and emerges into the crowded galley. There must be over a hundred men packed in here. They're all huddled together in groups of three or four, throwing frightened glances at the windows where the fire's radiance has turned the surface of the sea into liquid gold. Joe scans the room, but he doesn't recognize any of the faces staring back at him. All of a sudden the door on the right hand side of me burst open, and this guy came in and shouted, is there anybody here from Bodens?

And Bodens was the actual drilling crew. You know, they done all the drilling for the oil on the platform. And somebody recognized his voice and shouted, we're over here Mark, get yourself over here. So he went away, he headed over there. I thought, well that's a good idea, so I shouted out, is there any scaffolders here? he carried over there. I thought, oh that's a good idea, so I should have to doubt, is there any scaffolders here?

After a pause, there's an answering cry from the far side of the galley. Joe picks his way through the bodies over to where the scaffolders are gathered. He nods grimly at his colleagues, glad to be reunited with some familiar faces. Around the room, a few angry voices start to rise. There's a handful of management personnel up here in the galley, each encircled by dozens of frightened, incensed workers, all demanding answers. One of our senior managers on the platform shouted that being a Mayday sent out, which there had been from the radio room just after the first explosion, and there should be helicopters here within the next half an hour to come and rescue us.

So just stay where you are, guys. The management staff urge patience and appeal to protocol. But it's clear from their disturbed expressions that this is uncharted territory for them too. Thick clouds of acrid smoke now fill the galley. To escape the fumes, some men lie face down or shelter beneath the long formica tables. A few of the scaffolders have taken wet rags from the kitchen, holding them clamped over their mouths. They advise Joe to do the same. He runs over to the sink and picks

up a tea towel. But when he turns the tap, all he gets are a few drops. There was only dribbles of water coming out of it. Whether I had been not really realizing how bad the situation we were in or some kind of defensive thing in my mind, but when I realized, you know, when I turned on the tap and there was only dribbles of water coming out of it, I was thinking now we've got no power, we've got no water, we've got nothing to fight this fire with now. We're really in a bad situation. It's 10.15pm, a quarter of an hour since the explosion. The temperature in the galley is rising. Beyond the windows, angry flames flicker like forked tongues.

Joe stands in the corner with the scaffolders, their eyes darting from the windows to the floor, which is beginning to heat up beneath their feet. There have still been no announcements, no evacuation plan, even though it's become clear that this fire has not been contained and is steadily engulfing the entire platform. Among some men, the mood has turned dark, their outlook growing increasingly bleak. Some folks started to realize that there possibly would be a chance that we weren't going to get off at night.

And some of the guys were starting to get a bit worried, having some negative thoughts which we tried to say, no, no, that's not going to happen. Joe echoes the words of the senior staff. They just have to stay calm and follow orders. There are helicopters stationed on the support vessels for emergency evacuations. Fire protocol dictates that if the lifeboats can't be launched then an airlift will be arranged instead. But as the minutes pass and the tension rises,

the question on everybody's lips grows more urgent. Where are the helicopters? Things are getting desperate. The steel structure of the platform is starting to lose its strength, it's starting to bend, and therefore it was twisting the platform, there was windows breaking, there was glass breaking, there was windows getting smashed. When heated to over 800 degrees Celsius, the nature of steel changes. As the molecules expand, the metal becomes flexible, semi-molten. And with the inferno building throughout the platform, the structural integrity of the rig has started to fail.

Suddenly the emergency lights blink out, and the room is plunged into blackness. Joe looks over at his colleagues, his friends. The fire through the glass illuminates their faces with a throbbing orange glow. After a pause, one of the Scaffs turns to the other with an ultimatum. Well, if we stay in here, guys, and anything else happens, we'll not be in a position to do anything for ourselves. Why don't we go outside and climb up onto the heli deck and see if we can see anything for ourselves? The plan is agreed.

Swiftly the scaffolders make their way through the galley towards the exit. As they go, Joe spots a group of guys he recognizes. He calls out to them. He says, are you guys not coming with us? And they look at each other and they say, no, we're being told to stay, we're just going to stay. He says, okay, good luck, cheers guys. Joe follows his co-workers through the double doors and onto the open deck.

Immediately, he is enveloped by a suffocating smog of sickly black smoke. A shimmering heat haze rises above the fire, which is spilled out beyond the lower decks and billowed up around the rig. Red flames coil around the guardrails. Joe looks up at the helideck and something terrifying becomes apparent. Straight away, you know, you could realize there's no chance any helicopter's even coming near this platform, never mind landing on the platform, because the smoke was so intense, thick black, oil-based smoke, fire. Even if they did get on the platform, you could imagine the panic there would have been, people trying to scramble to get on a helicopter, it would never have happened.

That's that then. No lifeboats, no helicopters. If they're going to escape the burning rig, they'll have to find another way. Looking to simplify? How about the simple sounds of neutral vodka soda with zero gram sugar per can for the next fifteen seconds. Neutral. Refreshingly simple. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. neutral, refreshingly simple. It's 10.20 pm in the North Sea. On board a support vessel stationed in the waves a short distance from the Piper Alpha, it's all hands to the pumps. Dubbed upon her launch as the most expensive fire engine in the world, MSV Tharos is desperately

needed right now. After the crew moves the vessel into position, the water cannon on deck splutters into life. A huge white jet erupts from the nozzle and arcs through the air, bridging the 75-meter gap between the Tharros and the platform. The men on board the support vessel watch tensely as water rains down on Piper, sizzling against the red-hot metal. The crew has never witnessed a blaze of this magnitude.

It's a horrifying sight, a ballooning fireball wreathed in dark grey smoke. The efforts of their water hosts feel futile. Meanwhile, on the top deck of the Piper Alpha, Joe and his fellow scaffolders make their way through a labyrinth of mesh walkways and access doors. After realizing that the smoke was preventing the rescue choppers from touching down on the helideck, they've decided to climb to higher ground. Somebody suggested let's go along to the radio room. The radio room was adjacent to the heli deck.

It was like a converted container. So we climbed up on the roof of that, because that was the highest point we could get to in that area. And this thick black smoke was coming over. And it was almost like, you know, if you're on the beach and you're watching the sea coming in and the waves, thick black smoke was coming in waves and every so often there'd be a gap in the waves, so you'd stand up and grab a breath of fresh air. Joe crouches on the roof of the radio room.

Through intermittent gaps in the smoke, he glimpses the dark blue evening sky. Maybe if a helicopter could hover above their new vantage point, it could drop a rope down with a harness and hoist the men to safety. That is, if they can see it through the smoke. Then, out of nowhere, a droplet of cold water lands on Joe's scalding skin. The Tharras is a support vessel that had a water cannon right at the top of one of the cranes and it was fanning back and forward on paper and it was catching us up on top of this radio room soaking our clothes and our hair. The Tharras' water cannon sprays across the eastern side of the platform. Some of the men fall to their knees and spread their arms wide, gratefully soaking themselves

in cooling water. But as Joe watches the jet slam against the metal framework, a new danger presents itself. They were that powerful, these water cannons. If they'd hit somebody on the platform, they would have... If they hadn't killed them, they would have severely injured them. It would be a cruelly ironic way to go. Staying on the exposed roof of the radio room is just too risky. Somebody suggested, right, why don't we go over to the west side of the platform, maybe

the Tharros could move a bit closer, we could climb onto the crane, climb down onto the Tharros, it was a desperate situation. Right now, any idea is better than staying put. They descend from the roof of the radio room and start heading west. Periodically, their route is blocked by some blazing obstruction, forcing them to find an alternative path. They turn back and pass beneath the shadow of the oil derrick, a vast crane-like structure that towers over the platform and is now lit up like a funeral pyre.

Joe wipes a curtain of sweat from his brow, which is when there is another almighty bang as a second massive explosion rips through the night. We actually didn't know what had happened. You just knew something horrendous had happened. A high-pressure gas pipeline has just ruptured, instantly releasing the equivalent of the entire annual gas consumption of the UK. A colossal fireball surges into the sky, wrapping the rig and the men on board in a canopy of superheated air. For Joe, the shock of the blast jolts him into a strange kind of clarity. Quickly, he runs to the radio mast and starts clambering up, away from his colleagues who scatter in the wake of the explosion.

I don't think it was panic. It didn't feel like panic. I knew what doing. It was a silly thing it was doing, because it was going nowhere. The sky above him glows with a pale red twilight. Below, the screams of wounded men merge with the roar and crackle of the flames. Joe climbs and climbs, the metal scorching his hands, gripped by an instinct that tells him to go higher, away from the bonfire of steel burning below But then

his foot slips Instinctively closes his fingers around the bar as his feet thrash in midair Just at that point I thought well, that's it. I'm dead here Joe wraps his forearms around the horizontal strut and holds on tight. Intense heat pulsates from below, melting the rubber soles of his flailing trainers. 30-meter walls of flame now encircle the platform, a ring of fire fed by over 50 million cubic meters of gas. By this stage, scores of men have already tragically perished in the blaze or drowned in their bid to escape. And as Joe dangles from the mast, it seems his

fate is also sealed. But even in the face of this impossible situation, he refuses to give up. Something keeps him fighting. My dad died in 1981 and he actually worked on Peter Alfort as well. I don't know if it was maybe something to do with that, that gave me the will to survive because that would have just destroyed my mum. You know, it was only my mum and sister left then, you know, so I dare say there must have been a bit of my dad's character in me as well, you know.

Possibly because he had passed away by that time and he gave me that extra emphasis, inspiration to survive. gave me that extra emphasis, inspiration to survive. With gritted teeth, Joe lifts his foot back onto the rung of the radio mast. Greater clarity takes over and he starts to descend the ladder again. It was like somebody flicking a switch, you know, on a light switch on or something, and sort of

just took over what I was doing. I'd say whether it was a walk to survive or some higher being looking after me. I came down the ladder to the level below the heli deck, run along to the access stairs that would take you back up onto the heli deck, run over to the north side of the platform, had a look over, that huge explosion had cleared all the thick black smoke away so you could actually see down to the sea. Joe peers over the edge of the helideck. It's 175 feet to the water below. In his safety training, Joe was warned that jumping into the sea from higher than just

30 feet can be fatal. This is almost six times that. Hitting the water from such a height will be like landing on concrete. But what choice does he have? The inferno is building around him, the air scorching his lungs with each breath. It's now or never. Took a few steps back, and there's this safety net that goes round the heli decks. Look, and they've got metal supports for the safety net.

I knew I could use that to try to propel myself away from the platform. I knew exactly what I was doing, but it was almost like an outer body experience watching yourself doing what you're doing. Joe plants his foot on the metal rim of the helideck. The life jacket he's wearing could break his neck on impact with the water, so he removes it and throws it over the edge. it and throws it over the edge. In the next instant, he drives his foot down and propels himself forward over the rim of the helideck, beyond the safety netting and into the darkness beyond. For a split second, it's as if he's suspended in space. Then gravity takes hold and he drops like a stone.

And it was only at that point, when I came back to myself, the first thought came into my head was, what leap have I done? Joe tumbles through the night air, a tiny speck silhouetted against the flames. The wind roars in his ears as the oil-slicked water charges up to meet him. I didn't really know what was going to happen next. I was just throwing myself into a black hole, basically. Joe is almost horizontal as he hits the sea, his left side breaking the surface first. His body plummets down 20 feet, disappearing into a cold, black abyss. He looks up. Beautiful shapes dance on the surface, flickering lights

of pink and orange. He starts kicking and crawling upwards, resisting the urge to breathe in seawater. Seconds later, Joe's head breaks the water line. He gulps down the hot, smoky air and starts looking around for something to hold onto. There was a lot of debris, there was a lot of floating objects in the water, there were some bodies in the water also. And I was just very fortunate that I never landed on any parts of debris that was in the water or any parts of the platform that be sticking out on their way down. I don't know, it's quite scary.

From what he can tell, he's relatively unharmed. And in another unbelievable stroke of luck, Joe's life jacket has landed just a few feet away from him. He swims over to it and zips himself into the flotation device. All the lifeboats were stationed at the north end of the platform. And at least one of them had blown off in that second explosion. And part of the roof of one of them was floating in the water next to me. I managed to grab a hold of that as well.

I started to propel myself away from the platform. Pete radiates against the back of his head as he kicks his legs and swims away from the platform. He spots the half-destroyed shell of a lifeboat nearby and makes for it. Clambering on board the damaged vessel, Joe stops and steadies himself before staring back at the devastation behind him. I looked back at the platform as trying to just remember what I was witnessing. And one thought in my head was if there's anybody left on that platform, they've got no chance they're gone. So I was sitting there, looked down at my hands and arms because I only had a short sleeve t-shirt on and had these huge blisters on my hands and

arms and I couldn't figure out how that had happened. In the chaos, his arms and hands have become badly burned, but given the shock, the pain right now is minimal. The giant blisters on his limbs glow red, and Joe takes a few moments to catch his breath. Until, eventually, the sound of an approaching motor cuts through the crackle of the flames. He looks over his shoulder. It's a lifeboat. He came over, asked me if there was anybody else in the lifeboat. I said no, got me into the fast rescue craft, lay me along the side of the fast rescue craft. That's kind of when my injuries started taking effect on me.

So I was in the nuclear consciousness then for the next 40 minutes or so. So I was in the Neuro-Consciousness then for the next 40 minutes or so. For a while, everything is a haze, a collection of random images. Arriving on board the Tharros, being stretchered through to a hospital area, medics buzzing around him. And then, an hour or so later, there's the roar of helicopter propellers and the smell of diesel as Joe and some of the other survivors are flown back to the mainland. When they finally reach Aberdeen and the helicopter skids on the concrete of the hospital roof, it confirms something that not so long ago seemed impossible. He's going to live.

When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back to tell us we'll be okay, to remind us of our ability to believe. Because their belief in us transfers to self-belief and reminds us of all that we're capable of. We all need someone to make us believe. Hashtag, you got this. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan.

You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. It's the following morning. Joe lies in this hospital bed, his arms and hands swaddled in thick bandages. He's sharing this ward with a dozen or so fellow survivors, some far more severely burned than he is.

Earlier, the doctors were able to explain how Joe sustained the blistering on his hands and arms. They said, well, we're 100% sure your burns occurred when you jumped off the platform. Just at five or six seconds exposed to the heat, the temperatures were so extreme on the platform. It was just the reason for my head burns was heat radiation from the temperatures on the platform. That was the reason for when I sat in a lifeboat and looked down at my hands and arms, and I could see these huge blisters on my hands and arms, and I couldn't figure out how that had happened.

That was the reason it happened during the fall. Aside from the burns and bruises, Joe has avoided any more serious injuries. After a day in the burns unit, he's wheeled into the main ward, where more survivors are sitting up in bed. They greet him with solemn smiles and words of solidarity. For the next few days, the patients help each other process their shared ordeal. It's amazing how quickly you know the rehabilitation kicks in and myself and the guy Roy Carey, who Roy was very badly burnt on his head and his face and his hands. We got into the main ward where there was some other people and some other survivors from that night and the camera added it was quite good.

By now the Piper Alpha disaster has become international news. One day the patients in the main ward receive something that lifts their spirits enormously. A great uplifting thing for us when we were in the hospital, I found it especially uplifting anyway, was we got these cards and letters and messages from school children from all over the world. England, Wales, Ireland, Australia, Canada, America, New Zealand. I found that really heart-lifting. After a couple of weeks, Joe is discharged from hospital. He returns home for further rest and recuperation. And while many of his fellow survivors struggle with PTSD in the months that follow, Joe appears largely unaffected.

I was absolutely just so happy to be alive. I just couldn't believe what I'd come through and I was just so happy and I just thought everything was fine. I thought everything was okay until the Christmas day of 1988. I'd been out the night before, I'd got up in the morning, I was in my own flat and I just switched on the tv in that morning and then all of a sudden I was overcome with grief. on the TV that morning and then all of a sudden I was overcome with grief. All I could do was think about that night and all the people, all the families, this was going to be their first Christmas without their loved ones that never survived that night. I was overwhelmed with grief and I just sat there and cried. It seemed like an hour, it could only have been,

it could have been half an hour, it could have been 15 minutes, I can't remember. I was overcome and I was like howling with grief that day. But I don't think that was a bad thing either actually. It was quite a good thing to get it out, you know. But yeah, it does catch up with everybody at different stages and different times. And I mean, sometimes when you're least expecting it as well. Of the 226 people stationed on the Piper Alpha at the time of the fire, only 61 survived. It is the worst offshore disaster in history. The 60 or so men that were working that night, 63% of them survived.

Out of the other 160 or so men that were off shift that night, it was only 13% of them survived. So if you were outside and you were working, and you were maybe down in the lower levels, you had more of a chance to survive. But the people that stayed inside that were off shift, unfortunately, didn't give themselves much of a chance to survive. An official inquiry is launched into the cause of the initial explosion. It is determined that the first domino to fall was a gas leak in one of the production modules.

The escaped fuel was then ignited by an electrostatic spark, the cause of which is still unknown. In the resulting explosion, pieces of flying debris damaged the firewalls separating the production modules, thus allowing the fire to spread and more pipes to overheat than rupture. It was a catastrophic chain reaction that cost 167 lives. The company that operates the platform, Occidental Petroleum, is found liable for damages and ordered to pay compensation to the survivors and to the families of the dead.

Ultimately it becomes evident that safety conditions aboard the platform were indeed lacking. Following the disaster, Joe never goes back to work offshore, but he remains a vocal advocate for offshore worker welfare. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a range of new emergency protocols are introduced to make the work safer. These changes are largely the result of efforts from Joe and other survivors of the Piper Alpha disaster, who spend the years after the accident raising awareness of what happened. It's hugely different, the oil industry now, safety-wise, mostly in the North Sea. Just that experience and the feedback I've got, it's really been rewarding, that's the right word.

It makes me feel quite proud and it makes me feel as if I'm maybe doing something for that 167 guys that never made it that night. That gives me a little bit of a feeling that I'm making a difference, hopefully. Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Justine Barwick, a 47-year-old care worker from Australia. Justine loves the Queensland coast and takes regular trips there to enjoy long, relaxing holidays with her friends and family. But one day, swimming in waters she's safely explored hundreds of times before, things take a sudden and shocking turn. Out of nowhere, Justine faces a monstrous attack, a fight in the waves, and a life-threatening injury.

With major trauma to her main artery, the life is literally draining from her. The countdown has started. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen to Justine's story right now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiza Plus. Click the link in the episode description. Uvacane, now playing. I'm not going back to university to be your friend. I'm going so I can get Uber One for students. It saves you on Uber and Uber Eats. I'm there for $0 delivery fee on cheeseburgers,

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