Piper Alpha 25 years on

摘要

Whichever way it is viewed the Piper Alpha disaster was the result of plain incompetence. The litany of mistakes made and revealed by the public enquiry led by Lord Cullen makes astounding reading in today's climate. Routine maintenance on two condensate pumps went unfinished. A pressure safety valve was removed from Pump A leaving only Pump B safe to operate, a fact that was not passed on to the incoming shift. Meanwhile, the automatic fire-fighting system was put under manual control, its emergency seawater pumps shut down.