Katrina

[AV8]

 

Any body out there flying in the GOM durring Katrina? what are the proceedures for evacuation of the platforms durring hurricanes? Once there is a hurricane warning is there a manditory evacuation of all employees or do some stay on the platforms? Just curious.

[glennahall]

/bump... I'm curious about that too.

[Oil Pilot]

Most of the oil companies are fairly proactive when it comes to evacuations these days. During Katrina and Rita, a lot of them tried to push things to the last minute and there just aren't enough helicopters for everyone to do that.

 

When a named storm enters the gulf, depending on it's path, they will generally start evacuations. You have some critical personnel who will stay on the platform as long as they can, but they too will generally evacuate depending on the severity of the storm. Both Gustav and Ike last year caused evacuations and both of them resulted in some platforms being completely destroyed. No one wants to chance staying on a platform when the named storms have shown time and time again that they can cause an entire platform to disappear.

 

I don't remember the exact timeline, but generally everyone should be evacuated 24-36 hours prior to the storm's arrival. Once everyone is evacuated off of the platforms, the helicopter companies pack things up and head north with the helicopters and don't return until the storm has passed.

[Gomer Pylot]

I've had companies try to get us to evacuate rigs when the eye was almost on them. Some companies love profits too much to worry about their employees. Most start evacuations fairly early now, though, because they know there aren't enough helicopters in the entire country to evacuate everyone in a day or even two. With the big deepwater platforms now working, some of them have several hundred people on them all the time, and it takes several days to get everyone off. A major hurricane can completely destroy these floating rigs, and it's foolish to try to keep people on them during one.