When the alarms are sounding
The smoke detector, tripped during meal preparation, is little more than an aggravation. For sure, trying to nap while several of them are “sounding” is futile, but there’s no call for panic. Not so, in the workplace, where alarms are there because they are necessary.
I have been lucky. No need to go and work in places where the money is easy, but so is the chance of disaster. For example, in the area of petroleum exploration… This evening, in keeping with the idea of alarms sounding, I sat back and watched the quasi-documentary Deepwater Horizon.
This is not a fun movie. No comedy. Just gritty (greasy) disaster. We’re coming up on the seventh anniversary of America’s biggest blowout (although there are some who want to try again). Made a hell of a mess, off the coast of Louisiana. I have no personal experience with the installations needed to bring crude up from the bottom of anywhere, so I’m relying on the producers to have got things right.
What struck me, right from the beginning of the movie, is how much infrastructure is in place to service the needs of the workers. The heliport, with multiple landing pads; better than NASA. The actual areas of a working rig (again, assuming the movie portrayed things realistically); dynamic. No place to go for a Sunday afternoon tour.
I liked the movie. It serves as a reminder to “the rest of us” just how much danger is involved in primary industries. Be it oil, gas, coal, whatever: if it burns, it also explodes.
