Saint Germaine Oil accident report
From NexusWiki
By the mid-60's, state-owned Saint Germaine Oil (SGO) was long known to be less than transparent in its operation. Though its dealings opened up slightly after the Second Democratic Uprising, a culture of cronyism and secrecy continued. As Parliament began steps toward relinquishing state control and opening production to commercial bidders, worries grew that the shady reputation would lead to under-valued offers. Thus, a major public push was made to make the case that SGO was run under modern business and stringent safety practices and that the nascent democracy could support a pro-market environment. Nonetheless, some old habits remained. In 1986 a handwritten note on SGO letterhead was uncovered in an old company archive. It is dated 4 June 1967, two months before bidding for SGO was officially opened (eventually won by Webster Oil), and seems to concern a incident that the June 8th edition of the island newspaper reported as, "a safely drill last week to ensure efficient evacuation systems on the [West] platform." The note caused some embarrassment among former SGO officials but quickly faded from public consciousness:
CONFIDENTIAL
4-6-67
Ron,
We are just about to wrap up investigating west-tip. I'd like to give you a run down before the meeting Mon. Structural damage is minimal and mostly cosmetic but we might have to replace a few beams. The fire did not spread beyond a couple of rooms in the North housing structure. We can't find one clear source but I think we are safe from from any design liabilities down the road. Whatever it was it burnt fast and seemed to leave only smoldering ashes by the time the fire team got over there.
We did have too much confusion within the crew regarding firefighting and evacuation steps. We are very fortunate -- this could have been bad. I've tracked down the reason for those false initial radio calls of fatalities. It seems a roustabout was the fist witness of the fire and thought (and still thinks) he saw a man "burning alive" in the fire. The second witness who was sleeping in the neighboring cabin claims he was woken by the "flames pointing into his room and speaking things". As you know, all are accounted for and uninjured so we clearly have a case of adrenaline mixed with optical illusions in the night.
The crew of the west-tip were all foreign nationals who show no interest in returning to SGO, or the Caribbean for that matter. This may actually be a blessing. I'm thinking we should ask Tom about claiming this as fire drill. I hope we can get on the page about this.
James
