Deepwater Horizon Alarm Found to be Inhibited For Sleep Reasons

by Amy Judd | July 23, 2010 at 12:02 pm

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An Alarm on the Deepwater Horizon Rig Was Found to Have Been Inhibited For Over a Year Before it Exploded on April 20

The Horizon's chief electronics technician Mike Williams testified on Friday that an alarm was set to 'inhibited' mode on the rig, which means that while the sensors for toxic and dangerous gases and fire are active and will let the computer system know, the computer will not then trigger a sounding alarm.

Williams said that supervisors on the rig were aware of the state of the alarm.

"When I discovered about a year ago it was inhibited, I inquired as to why it was inhibited, and the explanation I got is that ... they did not want people woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning due to false alarms," Williams said.

On the night of the fire that caused the Deepwater Horizon rig to explode, there were no alarms sounded or no lights seen on the towers where the visual alerts were located.

It is still unclear a this time if an expanding methane gas bubble escaped from well below the surface of the ocean, then shot up the rig through the seals and barriers before causing the explosion.

11 people died in the explosion that also caused the largest oil spill in United State's history.