Deepwater Horizon Alarm Intentionally Disabled...
Brett Michael Dykes:
Deepwater Horizon worker: Fire alarm was intentionally disabled before explosion: Testifying before a federal panel investigating the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Transocean employee Michael Williams said that an alarm designed to warn the crew if combustible gases were in danger of igniting was deliberately disabled.
"The general alarm was inhibited," Williams testified. He went on to say that when he alerted his superiors about the extreme safety hazard, he was told that the men running the rig did not want any alarms going off while everyone was trying to sleep during the night.
Williams also told the panel that the computers used to control drilling operations on the rig froze regularly, resulting in blank blue screens, a phenomenon he said he and fellow employees ominously labeled, "the blue screen of death."
Back in May, Williams -- who was the doomed rig's chief electronics technician -- sat down with CBS' "60 Minutes" to share his harrowing tale of survival after the Deepwater Horizon exploded into a giant fireball. You can watch it here.
