Fire on the Horizon (32 page)

Doug had survived, but the disaster that began on the Horizon was far from over for him. His future was engulfed by uncertainty. Eight months after his engine control room exploded, Doug still walked with a cane and struggled with extreme pain in his left knee as he considered undergoing yet another surgery, this one a knee replacement.

He was also dealing with the consequences of a post-concussion brain injury resulting from head trauma sustained in the blast. He needed special sunglasses for his eyes, which had become painfully light sensitive. His dog sat at his feet and whined because Doug could no longer take her for walks in the dog park like he used to. He didn’t move the same way. His muscles twitched and his hands often grew shaky. Out for a drive, he sometimes forgot where he was headed. He had to write things down to be sure to remember them, and set alarms on his iPhone so he wouldn’t forget to take his medications—Celebrex for the pain in his knee, something to help him sleep, and something else to help him wake up from the sleep medication.

Even with assistance, he rarely got a full night’s rest. He was plagued by nightmares, consistent with his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. They were queasy, grasping dreams that could start anywhere, but always ended in the same dark place. He and Meccah and Kirah might be on vacation when suddenly the hotel where they were staying became the rig, which always ended up exploding as Doug tried to lead his family safely through the flames, only to get bogged down, as if in quicksand. After sleepless, dream-plagued nights, Doug would try to speak, and begin to stutter.

Doug had a team of professionals to assist him. He saw a coun
selor who monitored his program of medicines, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and an orthopedist. It frustrated Doug that he couldn’t undergo group therapy with other rig survivors, a kind of therapy that has proved particularly valuable for PTSD victims. The problem was twofold: All his former rig mates were scattered across the country, and they all had lawyers who didn’t want them talking about what happened on the Horizon, however much it haunted them.

Doug had still been in a wheelchair in late May when he flew to Jackson, Mississippi, to participate in the Transocean-sponsored memorial service for the victims of the blowout. The company’s chief executive officer, Steven Newman, told the gathered crew and their families, “This is the one of the most difficult days for many of us here. But for the families of our eleven lost colleagues, this is just another of many difficult days.”

Country music star Trace Adkins, who had worked on an offshore rig as a young man, spoke via video link. “It was hard work, it was dangerous work,” he said. “But nobody expects it to end like this.”

A gospel choir sang hymns, an engraved ship’s bell rang eleven times to mark each victim’s death, and families were presented with one of the eleven bronze hard hats that ringed the stage.

In the space reserved for wheelchairs, Doug recognized Buddy Trahan, who had been critically injured and barely conscious the last time Doug had seen him, when they were both taken off the
Bankston
in a medevac helicopter. Doug wheeled over and bumped his chair against Buddy’s.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” Doug began.

“Of course I remember you,” Buddy said.

The solace Doug found in the company of his former rig mates that day has proved hard to hold on to.

“Not a day goes by that he doesn’t have some kind of traumatic memory,” Meccah said as 2010 came to a close. “He may get frustrated not being able to walk, or because he can’t remember something, and he gets angry or sad. We’ve come to realize this is not something that’s going to go away. We are just going to have to learn to live with it.”

Doug’s last day of full pay came in early December. Meccah helped him fill out the paperwork to start the disability pay. But as they understood the calculation, the disability benefits would deliver no more than 60 percent his salary. It was difficult to see how that would cover all their expenses.

Transocean and BP, though, were both recovering with surprising rapidity from the lows inflicted by investor reaction to the Horizon disaster. By the end of 2010, Transocean had recovered half the ground it had lost in the market, while BP had made up two-thirds of the decline in its stock price. But Doug would not share in that turn of fortune.

“At fifty-one, his career is gone,” Meccah said. “It’s hard to comprehend how our lives and Doug’s life have changed so much. We don’t know what the future is going to be like. We don’t know how much care and therapy Doug’s going to need.”

Meccah had to think about finding a job, which was difficult for both practical and emotional reasons, as she had chosen to be a stay-at-home mom for her daughter, Kirah, and hadn’t worked in years. Kirah was born as the Horizon was being built in Korea. She turned eleven in January. Doug has been in Kirah’s life since her birth, but decided in October, exactly six months after the blowout, to legally adopt her.

It was a rare moment of joy in a period marked by deep frustration. When the Browns’ freezer went on the fritz, Doug, a master mechanic who could field-strip refrigeration systems blindfolded,
fumbled fruitlessly in his kitchen as he tried to place a simple bolt in the proper hole. He couldn’t keep his hand steady.

Doug has filed a civil suit in the Horizon disaster, but as 2011 began, investigators were still picking over the rig’s bones, and it was impossible to predict when, or if, the legal system will ever grant Doug any compensation for his loss.

“Everything is up in the air,” Meccah said. “There’s no planning in our life.”

For former Horizon captain Curt Kuchta, life didn’t feel so much suspended as it did preserved in amber. Even eight months after the Horizon burned, Curt was still at home, still spending hours working with his lawyer to answer questions from government agencies and preparing to testify in a phalanx of legal proceedings. His attorney had instructed him not to read or watch news about the rig explosion or its aftermath, or get involved in any way with the media. Even posting to Facebook was discouraged. But even on full pay and physically uninjured, Curt had found recovering from the blowout difficult, especially around the holidays. The silver lining had been his ability to spend time with his children. He’d even traded in his Grady-White fishing boat for a kid-friendly runabout.

From time to time he’d spoken with Transocean’s marine manager, in charge of the nautical side of the company’s rig operations. As 2011 dawned, Curt hoped to be returning to work; if not in the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere else would have to do.

Dave Young recovered from his boat racing mishap, a healing in some ways easier than getting over the nightmares and sleeplessness that had plagued him since his narrow escape from the burning
rig. It helped to be able to spend time enjoying his family, and to finish building a new boat with some design wrinkles Alyssa knew he’d soon put to the test, however much she hoped he wouldn’t.

But Dave needed the stimulation of his profession, and he had more than a few friends on Transocean rigs eager to have him back. Matt Michalski, Dave’s former college classmate and captain of the Development Driller II, which had drilled one of the relief wells, requested that Dave be assigned to be his chief mate. Michalski says company managers told him they thought that might be rushing things. They wanted Dave to make a more gradual reentry to life offshore.

In the fall, Dave returned to work in Transocean’s Houston headquarters. Living in a nearby hotel for three weeks at a stretch, as if he were on a rig, he clocked in nine to five, assisting the marine superintendents, shuffling paper, making calls, filling out forms, and commuting to the office like a white-collar worker.

Dave hated it but didn’t complain. Instead, on his second hitch, he talked his way back into the Gulf, at least sporadically, choppering out to various rigs to audit maritime equipment and procedures—ensuring their safety—while he waited for a permanent assignment on a new rig.

Dave didn’t know how he’d ever get over the loss of Jason and his other friends on the rig floor. He no longer was sure where he would end up himself. Not much about his professional future was crystal clear now, except maybe for one thing: Dave had no plans to sue anybody.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In many ways this book was a group project and could never have been completed without the generous assistance of so many. We are especially indebted to those who had sailed on the Deepwater Horizon and their families for sharing often painful memories with us—Dave and Alyssa Young, Doug Brown, Curt Kuchta, Marcel Muise, Janet Woodson, Roger Burkeen, Rhonda Burkeen, Rebecca Wheeler, John Allen, and Huston Funk. The technological complexities of deepwater drilling in general and the Macondo well in particular presented a steep learning curve that could not have been scaled without the unstinting tutelage of Paul Parsons and Robert Almeida. Thanks, too, to oil field veterans Richard Robson, Matt Michalski, Peter Mello, and Alwin Landry for invaluable perspective. We were incredibly fortunate to have reporting assistance from two of the best in the business, Bill Rose and April Witt, and the keen reading eyes of Gene Weingarten and Lisa Shroder. We also benefited from the excellent reportage of the nation’s newspapers, especially that of
The Washington Post
,
The New York Times,
and
The New Orleans Times-Picayune,
and Tom Junod of
Esquire
magazine.

Our gratitude goes to Gail Ross and Howard Yoon, for agenting, as well as hand-holding and tear-drying; and to our editors, David Hirshey and Barry Harbaugh, for guiding us through the shoals.

John Konrad would like add personal thanks to: his wife, Cindy, and Jack and Eleanor—for getting him through long nights writing and months spent offshore; Marcia, Jack, Maggie, Andrew, JD, Mairead, and his extended family for believing when writing a book seemed like the last thing he could accomplish; Mike Schuler and Tim Konrad for running gCaptain in his absence; Thad Fendley, Lee Freeman, Steve and Rachel Gordon, and the gCaptain.com forum members who answered so many of our questions; LCDR Tony Russell and ADM Thad Allen for providing U.S. Coast Guard access; Captain Dan Sheehan, for giving him the time to write; Richard DuMoulin, for his advice and support and introducing him to the wonders of life at sea; David, Lew, Steve, Dan, Eric, Wolf, Oscar, Ben, and countless other friends at Transocean and BP; the crews of the Spirit, Deep Seas, Ascension, and, especially, the D534, who welcomed him offshore and taught him all that he knows. And the crew of the
Bankston
and Coast Guard rescue teams who saved so many friends that day.

About the Authors

JOHN KONRAD
is a veteran oil rig captain; a former employee of the Deepwater Horizon’s owner, Transocean; and the founder of the world’s leading maritime blog, gCaptain.com. A graduate of SUNY Maritime College, he lives in Morro Bay, California.

TOM SHRODER
was an editor and writer at
The Washington Post
from 1999 to 2009. Under his stewardship,
The Washington Post Magazine
won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in both 2008 and 2010. He is the author of the nonfiction bestseller
Old Souls
. He lives in Vienna, Virginia.

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Credits

Photograph of John Konrad by Charlotte Rushton

Photograph of Tom Shroder by Emily Shroder

Jacket photograph © Steadfast TV

Jacket design by Anthony Morais

Copyright

FIRE ON THE HORIZON.
Copyright © 2011 by John Konrad and Tom Shroder. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Konrad, John.

Fire on the horizon : the untold story of the Gulf oil disaster / by John Konrad and Tom Shroder.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-06-206300-7

1. BP Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill, 2010. 2. Underwater explosions—Mexico, Gulf of. 3. Offshore oil well drilling—Mexico, Gulf of. 4. Petroleum industry and trade—Accidents—Mexico, Gulf of. I. Shroder, Tom. II. Title.

HD7269.P42M615    2011

363.119622338190916364—dc22

2010051657

EPub Edition © February 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-206302-1

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