Heroes who defied death in the white-hot inferno

Tag : Floatation Suit
men.

More than an hour had passed since the "easy" evacuations of thenorth- west corner and since then James McNeill and his crew hadskirted the flames, dodged debris and narrowly escaped decapitationwhen a metal spike, hurled with the accuracy of a javelin at thehead of Charles Haffey, had missed by millimetres.

Haffey was not immune to injury as debris from a burning hose pipelanded on his bottom lip, painful but preferable to being smackedby a wooden plank (another obstacle he dodged with a well-timedduck).

The heat under the platform, where the flames rippled like areflection of the sea below, baked their faces and prompted McNeillto roll up the sleeves of his survival suit, no easy task given thetight seals.

Yet the crew's success as "fishers of men" was remarkable. Foralmost 90 minutes they plucked men from the waters and landed themon whatever supply vessel was nearest to hand, usually the Pit.They looked up as one man leapt from the helideck, spotted where helanded and were in place with outstretched hands as soon as hesurfaced from his long sink.

Among the most disturbing sights was a survivor floating on a pieceof debris wearing only the elasticated trim round what had been thewaistband of his underpants, which, along with every other stitch,had been blown or burned off. He was hauled onboard and McNeill sawthat the skin from his arm and hand had peeled off and was danglingdown like a lady's evening glove.

"Don't let him flake out," McNeill had shouted to Haffey. "Slap hisface, slap his face."

When rescued men were desperately cold they were placed up againstthe craft's engines and repeatedly questioned to keep them awake.Haffey spotted one of the luckiest survivors. He had already sunkdown a couple of times and had submerged once more when the craftreached the spot allowing Haffey to reach under the water and haulhim up by his hair.

During the night, doubt never once washed over McNeill, who wasfuelled by adrenaline, at the wheel of a craft he would laterdescribe as "the most beautiful boat". He felt unstoppable. As theHT24, the Silver Pit's fast rescue craft, was driven by water jetsand had no outboard engine or propeller to snag on debris, he wasable to leap over large chunks of material by throttling down andutilising them as aquatic ramps. At one point as they prepared togo into the platform on either the third or fourth rescue run,Haffey shouted above the fire's roar: "I hope God is looking afterus tonight."

McNeill shouted back: "Two good men looking after you tonight,Charlie. Him and I."



SOMETIME, possibly after 11:30pm, McNeill's luck simultaneouslygave out and yet held tight. The boat had just picked up three moresurvivors and was moving about 100 yards off the platform when hefelt a strong underwater rumble. He shouted at the crew to get downand lie with their full weight on top of the survivors to protectthem and as they did the entire craft was thrown into the air.

They had been sailing over a gas pipeline which had cracked, firinga bubble of high-pressured gas up and under the boat, splitting thehull beneath McNeill's feet. The pressurised gas shot up throughthe split and into McNeill's face, singeing off his lower eyelashes and burning the bags under his eyes, a sensation hedescribed as like "having hot sand thrown in your face".

A gas bubble expanding up through the sea displaces the water,reducing buoyancy and forming a hole into which a craft will drop.Why the craft didn't sink, McNeill never knew but, instead, hemanaged to force the throttle and the craft skipped on.

The engine, while still running, was losing power and the sea wasbeginning to seep through the splits in the hull and pool aroundMcNeill's boots. In a few minutes it had already risen above hisankles. The boat had come to rest about 60 feet from the platform.The crew could see the state of collapse. On previous rescue trips,the fire had run along the underside of the platform, thisunderside had collapsed, sinking down into the water, the highempty space replaced by a tangle of twisted metal. When McNeilllooked at the twin flares he thought he could see the metal meltand roll down the steel arms like lava. Then they spotted a hand.The crew glimpsed under the platform, partially obscured by smoke,what they believed was a hand, waving for attention. The man wasroughly 100 feet under the collapsing platform. It was a difficultand dangerous manoeuvre even if the craft was fully operational andthe odds dropped for a boat leaking and losing power. To reach thehand meant speeding round flaming debris, and between collapsingpipes and then, once he was onboard, they would have to navigatethe short corridor still clear of collapsed structure until theyshot out the other side of the platform.

McNeill turned to his men: "Well