Survivor of rig explosion describes his journey to safety

The best news—the only good news—to  come out of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon tragedy so far is that 115 out of 126 workers survived.

One of them, Jim Ingram of Tylertown, Mississippi, gave an account of his flight to safety to the New Orleans Times Picayune.


At 10:00 p.m. Tuesday, Ingram was about to leave his office to go to bed when the lights blacked out. Then there was a loud thud like he described as sounding “like a crane operator that would have landed a load."

When a second thud came, he knew something wasn’t right.

The alarm sounded. Workers headed to the fiberglass lifeboats and were lowered into the Gulf of Mexico. From there they went on a 45 minute ride to a supply boat provided by BP to pick up survivors.

By the time the survivors made it into a police-escorted van, over 30 hours had passed.

After his harrowing experience, all Ingram wants is to rest with his family.

"After I get to sleep, everything will be all right," he said.

Read more here…

Source: New Orleans Times Picayune