Did this woman kill those men on the oil rig?

[CoolBreeze]

Political correctness at it's finest?


In the final moments before the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 killing 11 men, the worker who monitored the oil rig's safety systems said she failed to immediately sound alarms when indicator lights warned her of the highest danger.

In testimony before a federal investigative panel in Metairie late Tuesday, Andrea Fleytas said she felt the rig jolt that evening and saw more than 10 magenta lights flash on her screen notifying her that the highest level of combustible gas had entered the rig's shaker house and drill shack, critical areas where the rig's drilling team was at work.

Everyone who was thought to be working in that area of the rig was killed. If the general alarm had sounded, it may have given them time to evacuate to safer areas.

Fleytas said she was trained to sound a general alarm any time more than one indicator light flashed, but didn't do so immediately in this case because she had never been trained to deal with such an overwhelming number of warnings.

"It was a lot to take in," Fleytas said, testifying by telephone from California. "There was a lot going on."

She said she eventually "went over and hit the alarms" after the first or two large explosions.

Members of the Marine Board investigative panel and lawyers for various parties of interest never asked Fleytas how much time passed between when the first high-gas indicators lit up and the explosion. But BP's chronology of events, based on rig data and employee interviews, estimated it was anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... n_dee.html