Two Fishermen Share Their Account After Gulf of Mexico Rig Explosion

In a WGNO ABC26 News exclusive, two fishermen, who were some of the first to pull Transocean rig explosion survivors out of the water, shared their stories.

“About 9:45 PM we saw what appeared to be kind of a fire on the rig then we heard a big explosion about 20 seconds later,” said lifelong fisherman, Scott Russell.  The other fisherman who witnessed the Gulf of Mexico rig accident, Bradley Shivers, added, “It sounds like sonic booms coming across, if ever hear a jet, sonic boom.  I mean just rumbling, 17, 18 miles away, its pretty frightening to hear that sound from that distance.”

Both men said that they thought they had encountered just about everything on the ocean, until they witnessed the rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last week.  It is presumed that 11 people lost their lives in that blast and many more were injured.

According to the two fishermen, within 25 minutes of the deadly blast, they started discovering people in the water who were clinging on to life rafts.  Russell described the scene as chaotic and said, “there were some people hollering, some people just in shock and couldn’t say anything.”

Russell and Shivers stayed around the scene until about 3:30 AM.  They were waiting until every single person was rescued from the water before they returned to what they had been doing prior to the explosion – fishing for tuna.