Harrowing story of deep sea divers ripped apart in 0.1 seconds after being sucked through tiny hole
It’s been more than four decades since the Byford Dolphin incident took place in the North Sea, and some still consider it one of the worst accidents in modern history.
Between 1977 and 2004, the Frigg Gas Field was ranked as the world’s largest offshore gas field, according to Inustriminne.
Situated in the Norwegian perimeters of the North Sea, the area has played host to some terrifying events, including the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster and the chilling Byford Dolphin accident, which caused five fatalities.
The latter incident took place when six men were ‘saturation diving’ on November 5, 1983.
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Now, if you’re not a diving specialist or a construction expert, then you may have never heard of the term 'saturation diving' before.
Essentially, it's a diving technique where divers breathe a mixture of inert gases to stay at extreme depths for extended periods while performing underwater construction and maintenance work.
During these lengthy periods - which can last for up to 28 days - the team are forced to live in decompression chambers.
These work to gradually reduce pressure and eliminate any gases which may be trapped inside.
In November 1983, Edwin Arthur Coward, 35, Roy P. Lucas, 38, Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, 29, and Truls Hellevik, 34, were four men on one of these underwater jobs.
They were assisted by dive tenders William Crammond, 32, and Martin Saunders.
Because they worked at extreme depths for a long period of time, the team breathed pressurised air so that dissolved nitrogen in their bloodstream could be removed.
The dozen men had been living in a pressurised facility, which included living quarters, while they used a diving bell - which was separate from the other units and sealed off - to transport themselves to their required depth to work.
Resurfacing after diving to the bowels of the ocean comes with a lot of risks, as rising too quickly can cause the nitrogen to form bubbles in the body, a condition commonly called 'the bends’.
It would take them days to reach the surface if they used the same technique to decompress as recreational divers, so the entire maintenance mission basically hinges on the diving bell.
"By staying compressed, they can work out there for as long as they need to, and when you bring them back up, you don't need to worry about decompression," Phillip Newsum, an experienced commercial diver and executive director of the Association of Diving Contractors International, told How Stuff Works.
But when this contraption isn't used correctly, it can be an automatic 'death sentence'.
While some of the crew were returning from a dive, the diving bell was fatally released too soon, before the doors were closed.
This meant that both chambers, including their living quarters, were instantly decompressed.
The protocol was for the diving bell to detach when the chamber doors were safely sealed shut, but as they did not close, it created an 'explosive decompression' instead.
The area in which the crew were housed went from nine atmospheres down to one - the normal surface air pressure - in a split second, sending air rushing out of the chamber system and leaving the bell swinging.
Crammond was killed after being hit by the dive bell as it flew away, while fellow dive tender Saunders was seriously injured after being struck by it.
But for divers Coward, Lucas and Bergersen, they faced an even worse fate.
For three of them, the rapid depressurisation created huge bubbles their bloodstream – like a supercharged version of ‘the bends’ – basically boiling them from the inside out.
Hellevik unfortunately suffered the most gruesome passing out of all of them, though.
He was standing in front of the partially opened door to the living chamber when the deadly error was made and the pressure was released, resulting in his body being sucked through a frighteningly small hole.
Hellevik's entire skeleton was forced through a 60cm gap, meaning his body was 'fragmented' as the internal organs in his chest and abdomen were expelled by the pressure and strewn around the pod.
Investigators found parts of him as far as ten metres away from the site of the accident.
The catastrophic Byford Dolphin accident was later attributed to an engineering failure and an outdated diving system.
Saunders was the sole survivor but was left in a critical condition.
In 2009, the son of British diver Roy Lucas, who died during the accident, received a six-figure sum from the Norwegian government, alongside his two sisters.
It was capstone of a years-long fight for justice for Stephen Lucas, who said: “We’ve never even received an apology and that’s disgusting. It was December that we were told we did not meet the criteria for compensation.
"It was then that my sister contacted a solicitor and when push came to shove the Norwegian government decided to review the case.
“We ended up receiving a majority vote and now we are being granted the compensation. But it doesn’t matter because no amount of money will be enough."
The siblings were just children at the time of their father’s death, and they lost him just a month before they were set to see him for the first time since he had separated from their mother Frances eight years before.
A legal loophole made it difficult for the family to receive compensation, since Roy was a British citizen, and not registered under the Norwegian insurance scheme.
NDSA spokesperson Tom Wingen made clear it should never have taken this long for Roy’s family to receive compensation: “You can’t really call this a success – this family are getting part of what they were due many years ago.
“This family have had an incredibly tough life. If they had received the compensation or the benefits that they were legally entitled to at the time of their father’s death, their childhood would have been substantially improved.”
Topics: World News, History
Ella Scott