This is making me retch as I type.......
One summer in the early 1990's I was working on a decrepit oil platform about 130 miles to the North East of Aberdeen as part of a crew that were bringing some of the knackered drilling equipment out of 'mothballs' prior to it being upgraded or written off, I forget. This rustbucket had been built in the mid 70's and now was in such a dangerous state that a whole new accommodation platform had been built alongside at huge expense seperated by a 100m long bridge, they'd condemned the office space due to it being built almost entirely of asbestos and the pipework was in such a state that we had to wear breathing apparatus escape sets at all times when on the old platform in case of a gas leak - the methane from below the sea around there comes up laced with a pretty high concentration of hydrogen sulphide mixed in - take a look here at what it can do to you:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide#Safety

It all sounds pretty horrific, but in fact this was an easy job, there were about eight of us, all on dayshift for three weeks. No-one was really hassling us, the sun, for once had been shining for the entire trip, most of the work was out on deck with the sea sparkling below and there was only the background noise of the generators as everything else was shut down for this period of work.

One day we had to test that the foam fire fighting system was working for one part of the platform that hadn't required covering for a couple of years. This consists of nozzles placed at various locations around the area that would pump foam into an area and (supposedly) buy a little time for everyone to escape and maybe suppress or contain any fire while the source of fuel is shut off.

Skinny Jimmy noticed that an important valve was closed and would need to be opened before we could proceed (Jimmy was not the luckiest man around - the trip before he'd fallen asleep in his cabin mid tug and was discovered still sat in the chair with the porn on, cock in hand by the Cabin Stewardess the following morning - naturally she called us all in to gather 'round before we woke him with a clap and cheer....six months later he somehow managed to twist his testicles around one another stepping down out of a shipping container, I can still hear the screams as we stretchered him up to the helideck).

I digress, sorry. The job shut down, Jimmy toddled off to fetch a large pipe wrench to assist with opening the rusty valve, comes back with it, attaches it to the valve and hangs off it with all of his seven stone wieght to get it turning.

The whole rusty four inch diameter pipe sheared off, jimmy falling to the deck and landing on his back as a couple of hundred gallons of FFFP (Film Forming Fluoroprotein Foam) concentrate washed over him. What's so bad about that? I hear you ask...foamy bubbles? Some sort of detergent base perhaps....? No, FFFP is a euphemism for slaughterhouse waste - blood if you will that's treated to stop it clotting and partially going off, in a nutshell it then mixes with a chemical that makes it foam up when mixed with water and gives you the nice foam blanket for blocking the oxygen to your fire. It's been superceded pretty much all over now by other stuff due to the risk of BSE 'prions' that might be in it.

So poor old Jimmy is getting covered in this, unable to get up as he's been winded by the fall, gasping for breath, its in his mouth, eyes, ears nose, clothing, everywhere as we all stand around gawping, not wanting to get too close (and giggling a bit)....it stinks, but there's a breeze blowing and mercifully the floor is steel grating and it's basically running to the sea a hundred feet below.

Except for one thing, the red hot generator exhausts are below too and a fair whack of it is landing on them so a huge cloud of *boke* boiling rotten *boke* years old blood flavoured *retch* steam comes floating up to envelope us all......Barfmongous, you could smell it for weeks.....
(Oil Slick, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 11:58, Reply)