STEVE: Just opened up my book, started reading the first sentence in the paragraph when I heard what sounded like a freight train coming through my bedroom. I jumped out of the bed and then there was a thumping sound that consecutively got much faster. And with each thump I felt the rig actually shake.

Then there was an initial boom. The lights went out. MIKE: And there was a huge explosion.

REPORTER (over TV): The explosion rocked the rig about 10:00 Central Time, spraying flames in every direction. STEVE: Well, I saw fire from derrick leg to derrick leg. PROFESSOR: When you have oil and gas under pressure, underground, it erupts upwards.

RIG WORKER: It was extremely loud. It actually started sounding like a living thing. REPORTER (over TV): It's the sound of escaping gas feeding the fireball incinerating the Deepwater Horizon.

RIG WORKER: It's like you're almost waiting to die. There's people screaming. You feel the heat from the fire.

Scared to death, I figured this is my time, I'm gonna die. REPORTER (over TV): 126 people were on board at the time of the explosion. REPORTER (over TV): Some jumped more than 75 feet into the ocean.

CURRY: The Coast Guard is pressing its search today for 11 workers still missing. JAMES: I started to have a bad feeling when the sun came up. It got very precarious at that time.

Time was running out. (theme music plays). ♪ ♪ FRANK: Deepwater Horizon, a state of the art, semi-submersible, dynamically positioned by satellite drilling rig.

And Transocean rents Deepwater Horizon to the big oil companies at about a half-million dollars a day. Now, what the oil companies use Deepwater Horizon for is to drill the wells. They come out, they drill in really challenging environments, they find the oil, sometimes they set up the production well, then they go to the next job.

CHRIS: It is different than any other job. A lot of people when they first start out they try to compare it to construction, and it's a completely different thing. Being away from your family.

You know, something happens you can't just leave, it, it's all weather permitting. RIG WORKER: These are our charts, and this is our tracking of hurricane Ivan. Put a mark on that piece of paper where we's at.

CHRIS: Everybody out there gets kind of close, I mean as far as friendships and stuff like that. RIG WORKER: Are you gonna do some work now? CHRIS: Really I'm with them more than I am my own family most of the time.

RIG WORKER: All right, there's Yancy. CHRIS: It's a little different than being home because you know it is dangerous. You never know when the cables are gonna break or, or the equipment's gonna fail.

RIG WORKER: This is our subsea control panel, this is used to shut down any blowouts that come from the subsea floor. CHRIS: The guys you work with a lot of the time they do have your life in their hands. -Busted!

-We're workin'! -Yeah. ALWIN: That night was an amazingly calm night.

Very little wind, I mean it was just ideal. I just noted, uh, mentally that evening at sunset how, how pretty it was. I was tending to paperwork.

My mate, he noticed quite a bit of mud falling through the center of the rig. I stood up to see what, see what he was talking about and I turned around and that's when I noticed the, uh, mud raining down. So, I looked up out the side window, port side of the vessel, and I seen the mud come out.

When the mud comes out the top of the derrick, it's not good. RANDY: My room phone rang and the person at the other end of the, uh, line there opened up by saying, "We have a situation. " He said, "We have mud going to the crown.

" I was just horrified. I said, "Well, do y'all have it shut in? " He said, "Jason is shutting it in now.

" And he said, "Randy, we need your help," and I'll never forget that. And I said, "I'll be right there. " ALWIN: I contacted the Horizon bridge on the VHF radio and advised them of the mud coming down and asked them what the situation was.

With tension in his voice, he immediately advised me they was having trouble with the well. ANDREA: I came up to the bridge. At that time I felt a jolt.

Yancy came over and turned the CCTV over to the starboard side, and that's when I witnessed mud coming from the starboard side. CHRIS: When I woke up, I heard, like, a loud buzzing, Uh, I wasn't sure what it was and I just thought somebody was cleaning or something like that outside my room, so I just fell back asleep. MIKE: I heard a hissing noise, and, and a thump.

Within seconds of that I start hearing beeping. And I'm hearing the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, it's, it's continuous. And I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, what, what's going on?

" And I'm trying to put all this together in my head as to the thump, the hissing, and now the beeps. I hear the engines start to rev, normal operating RPMs to way above what I'd ever heard it run before. And it's continuously, steadily rising.

And I knew then that we were having a problem. As I start to push back from my desk the computer monitor exploded in front of me. All the lights in my shop popped.

The light bulbs themselves physically popped. Now I know we're in trouble. I reached down to grab my door, and at the, simultaneously of grabbing the handle, the engine goes to a level that is higher than I can even describe it.

It's spinning so fast that. . .

it just, it stopped spinning, (explosion) and there was a huge explosion. That explosion blew the fire door that was between me and those spaces off the hinges. RANDY: It blew me probably 20 feet against a bulkhead, against a wall.

And I remember then that the lights went out. Power went out, I could hear everything deathly calm. CHRIS: Then I started trying to find my clothes in the dark.

I grabbed my boots, put them on. MIKE: I couldn't see anything, I couldn't breathe, there was no oxygen. I crawled across the floor, found the opening, made my way out.

Had a small pen flashlight in my pocket that I put in my mouth to try to, to see, I still couldn't see, I, I didn't know why I couldn't see, I just couldn't see anything. I made it to the next door by feel. And as I reached the next door I reached up and grabbed the handle for it, it then exploded.

RANDY: My next recollection was. . .

that I had a lot of debris on top of me. I tried two different times to get up. But whatever it was, it was a substantial weight.

And I told myself, "Either you get up, or you're gonna lay here and die. " MIKE: Crawling through the ECR, my arm wouldn't work, my left leg wouldn't work, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see. I knew I had to get outside to some fresh air.

I crawl across the bodies of, of at least two men. I don't know their condition. I'm trying to get them to respond, they're not responding, I assume they're dead and keep moving because I know that I'm in no condition to help them.

I can barely help myself at this point. So, I was tripping and falling, trying to make my way to the outside watertight door. I get about halfway across it and I can actually start to see light, a dim light so I, I'm, assume I'm headed in the right direction and I keep going towards the light.

Eventually I make my way outside. I've got my bearings, got my eyes cleaned out. There was no walkway, there were no handrails, and there was no stairwell left.

The wall, the handrail, the walkway, all those things were missing. They were completely blown off the back of the rig. One more step and I would've went in the water.

RANDY: So I open my cabin door, right leg was hung on something, I don't know what still, but I pulled it as hard as I could and it came free. I attempted to stand up. That was the wrong thing to do because I immediately stuck my head into smoke.

And with the, uh, training that we've all had on the rig I knew to stay low. I got on my hands and knees, so I was totally disoriented. I'd lost orientation on which way the doorway was.

And I remember just sitting there just trying to think which way is it. And then I felt something that felt like air, and I said to myself, that's the direction I need to go, that leads out. So, I had to crawl very slowly because that end of the living quarters was pretty well demolished, debris everywhere, but I made it to the doorway, and what I thought was air was actually methane.

And I could actually feel like droplets, it was moist on the side of my face. I continued to crawl down the hallway slowly and I put my hand on a body and it was Wyman Wheeler. MIKE: There's two lifeboats there on that lifeboat deck.

And from what I saw, what I heard, and what I felt, I seriously considered launching a lifeboat by myself because I knew that something really, really bad had happened and that it wasn't gonna get any better any time soon. I had an inclination that this was way worse than anyone could expect. And I thought about it for a second and I remembered that I had, you know, I have responsibilities.

Yeah, I have a emergency station to go to. The problem was my emergency station no longer existed. So, I made a decision to put my lifejacket on right there, and try to make my way to the bridge, which would be my secondary muster station.

I determined if I couldn't make it there, I was gonna come back and launch the lifeboat by myself. CHRIS: I'm on the fire team, so I was trying to get to my, my fire station. My main fire station is the one in the back of the rig.

And I could see it and I could see that nobody was there, and there was a bunch of smoke around it. I turned around to go back to the front of the rig. And that's when I saw the flames on the derrick.

And soon as I saw that I knew there was no way we were gonna put it out. We were just gonna get off of there, I was sure. That's when my panic set in.

I mean, that scared me absolutely to death, right then. I've never had a feeling like that. I mean, the lifeboats were probably gone, and I didn't know, I hadn't seen anybody until this point, I didn't know if I was the only person still on the rig or what.

Uh, that's all I kept thinking was, well, we're all dead. DUSTIN: I was relieved for the night. On the way home, I received a phone call.

They said, "We just had an oil rig explosion, you need to come back here as soon as possible, five minutes ago. " So I said, "Okay. I'm turning around right now.

" I said, "Just throw my, all my gear in the helicopter and I'll change en route. " Just ran right to the helicopter, hopped in, and off we went. JOHN: As soon as we took off I, I put my night vision goggles down and I could see this immense glow on the horizon.

It looked like I was flying to New York City. The glow was that immense and normally you, you might see a faint horizon or you see no horizon at all. And, uh, I, I told my crew, I said, "You guys, you see that light on the horizon?

That's where we're going to. " It sunk in right there that this is, this is real, this is the real thing. We don't know what we're gonna see when we get there but we know it's big.

RANDY: The next thing I recollect is I saw, like, a beam of light, like a flashlight bouncing, and I saw that to be Stan Carden. And about that time, Jimmy Harrel came out of his room. He told me he was in the shower when the explosion happened.

He had managed to find a pair of coveralls and put those on. And I said, "Jimmy, I've got Wyman down right here. " So, we asked him to go to the bow and get a stretcher.

We continued to remove this debris off of Wyman. I helped him up and I was gonna try to help walk him out, thinking that that might be quicker. He made a couple of steps with his arm around my shoulder and he was in pain, and then he said, "Set me down, set me down.

" So we set him back down and he said, "Y'all go on and save yourself. " You know, and I said, "No, we're not gonna leave you, we're not gonna leave you in here. " MIKE: Once I got on the bridge, I reported immediately to the captain that we have no propulsion, we have no power, and I said, "You need to understand, engine number three, for sure, has blown up.

We need to abandon ship now. " STEVE: I turned around, I didn't recognize who it was at the time because he was covered in blood. It was Mike Williams, Chief ET.

And I asked him, "What do you mean gone? " He said, "They've blown up. They're all gone, they've blown up.

" Upon looking at the screen there was still nothing. No engines starting, no thrusters running, nothing. We were still a dead ship.

Chris Pleasant, the subsea supervisor was standing at the BOP panel. I hollered out to Chris Pleasant, "Have you EDS'd? " He said he needed permission to EDS.

Somebody on the bridge hollered out he cannot EDS without the OIM's approval. I hollered out, "Can we EDS? " He said, "Yes, EDS, EDS.

" When I turned back to Chris, he was in the panel pushing a button. PLEASANT: You know, I hit the EDS and I seen it go to close and I was looking through that panel trying to see what was going on. After I saw that I had no hydraulics, I had no pressure in the system that allowed those functions to work, I knew it was time to leave.

STEVE: I hollered to Chris, "I need confirmation that we have EDS'd. " He said yes and he pointed at a light in the panel. PLEASANT: Steve Bertone, then he turns away and he said, "I'm going to the emergency generator room," like that.

And I said, "You need me to go with you. " And he didn't say nothing, but I looked out that door and I said, "I ain't going. " STEVE: When I left the bridge, I went to close the watertight door and Mike Williams pushed the door back and he, he said, "You're not going alone, chief.

" I said, "Well, come on. " Paul Meinhardt, the motorman, also fell in line and we ran towards the, uh, standby generator. As I was running I looked up at the derrick, and I could see nothing but flames, because I could see no equipment, whatsoever.

It was solid flames. When we walked into the, uh, standby generator room, my thinking at that point was, what remaining fuel would be in the riser would burn away, and we were gonna need power as well as fire pumps. I hit the start button.

There was absolutely no turning over of the engine. At that point I said, "That's it, let's go back to the bridge. Uh, it's not gonna crank.

" MIKE: On our way back to the bridge is when I noticed, I believe it was lifeboat number one, had descended, and was motoring away. They had descended and disconnected from the rig. CHRIS: We went down to the life capsule deck.

Everybody was panicking. Some people were trying to stay calm and do what needed to be done, like the Chief Mate, Captain. So, they were trying to get the stuff handled the way they were trained and knew how to handle it.

Some people were jumping off, some people were holding people back from jumping off, they wouldn't let 'em. And then other people were screaming we've got to get out of here, we've got to get out of here. So I mean, there was a certain level of panic that everybody was in that made things a little more difficult in getting off the rig.

I got in the number two lifeboat, everybody was in there hollering and screaming, you know, "We gotta go. The derrick is fixin' to fall on us. " They finally got everybody in there and shut the door.

Then they released the lifeboat to, down to the water. MIKE: As we were making our way down the ladder way to get to the lifeboats, lifeboat number two descended. So now there are, the two forward lifeboats are both gone, they're both unavailable.

Once they go down there's no coming back up because we had no power. There was several minor explosions occurring, things are falling, you can hear stuff popping. RANDY: It seemed like an eternity, they came back with a stretcher.

We were able to get Wyman on that stretcher. When we got outside of the living quarters the first thing I observed was both of the main lifeboats had already been deployed and had left. I also looked to my left and I saw Captain Curt and a few of his crew starting to deploy a life raft.

And we continued down the walkway until we got to that life raft and we were able to catch the head part of the stretcher and assist getting Wyman into the life raft, and I think we actually fell, trying to, you know, get him into the life raft. But the main thing is Wyman was there. You know, he didn't get left behind.

STEVE: There was a lot of explosions still going on and immense heat. All the flames and heat from the rig floor were coming down the forward part of that deck as well as all the flames and the heat from under the rig that were meeting I guess in like a vortex or something right there at the life raft. But I can remember feeling the intense heat on my knees, and I also heard screaming "We're gonna die, we're gonna die.

" And I honestly thought that we were gonna cook right there. MIKE: I wasn't sure that the life raft was gonna survive. There was a crowd of folks there trying to get into this small opening.

There was so much heat coming up I thought for sure the life raft was gonna pop or melt and the people inside were gonna cook. REPORTER (over TV): Moments after the rig first exploded you can hear the roar. It's the sound of escaping gas, feeding the fireball, incinerating the Deepwater Horizon.

ALWIN: We was approximately 100 meters out. I gave the command to launch shortly after we've seen the first three guys jump off the rig. AL: I knew this was big, I've never seen flames that gigantic before, that huge.

This was like seeing hell on earth. STEVE: The next thing I knew the life raft was descending. When we touched the water I heard somebody holler out, where are the paddles?

I jumped out of the life raft, Chad Murray jumped out, was right behind me, and grabbed hold of the rope on the side of that life raft and started swimming, trying to pull the life raft away. I was swimming on my side, looking up at the rig. I would say 25, 30 feet above me there was a tremendous amount of smoke billowing out from under the rig.

YANCY: I asked the captain what about us. And he said I don't know about you, but I'm going to jump. So he actually jumped first.

I waited for a minute because when I looked over the life raft was basically right underneath me. So I waited for a minute so it could actually move out the way and, uh, I jumped. When I resurfaced I had the life raft was like 10 or 15 feet away from me.

So I swam to the life raft, and I seen the captain and a few other guys that were on the outside of the life raft. STEVE: As we're swimming trying to pull this life raft away from the rig I got to a point where I could see the helideck. I witnessed an individual running at full speed across the helideck, when he jumped off the end of the helideck he was still running.

Just before he splashed into the water he was actually looking over at us. MIKE: In our training, they teach you to reach your hand around your life jacket, take one step off, look straight ahead, cross your legs, and fall. The problem with that is there's now a life raft down there at the bottom.

Maybe 90 feet, 100 feet. It's a long ways. So I took off running and I jumped.

I cleared the life raft by a pretty good ways. Once I hit the water, when I came back up I couldn't see anything again, because now I've got a new set of problems. Oil, hydraulic fluid, gasoline, diesel, whatever it is that's floating on the water is now burning my entire body.

I'm now covered in this sludge. I don't know what it is, it's burning I can't hardly breathe, but I could feel the heat from the fire underneath the vessel. At that point I started back stroking with the one arm and one leg that would work.

Until I remember feeling no pain, I remember feeling no heat, and thinking that that was it, I had died. Sometime later, something apparently woke me back up, a pop, or explosion, something. And I remember feeling the heat again, starting to feel the pain come back, thinking I've gotta swim, I've gotta swim and I started swimming again.

Then I heard something in the distance, I heard "Over here, over here. " I was thinking to myself what in the world can that be? Whatever it is I'm gonna go to it and just started swimming as hard as I could to get to it.

And then I felt something start lifting me out of the water. A small orange rescue craft had grabbed me, and flipped me over into the boat. At that point the guy said there's a raft in the water.

We proceeded to go towards the rig. Now we're close enough that I can feel the heat, I'm starting to feel the heat again, and I see the life raft and it's literally still under the rig. And I can see people outside of it.

We get up to 'em, throw 'em a line, they get tied on. YANCY: Then the fast rescue boat pulled us to the starboard side of the Bankston. The Bankston crew was throwing down Jacobs ladders to the lifeboats, to where people inside can get up on deck.

I seen Carl, the rig operator, he was taking muster. I asked him how many people we were missing. Come to find out it was 11.

JOHN: We're flying as close as a half mile, to a quarter of a mile, circling the rig, looking for survivors in the water. We smelled the smoke, we smelled the oil, the fumes. We felt the heat through the cockpit, we felt it in the helicopters, you know, through the windshields.

It really hits home and strikes you that hey, we're flying at 300 feet and the flames are higher than we are, probably up to 500 feet. AL: I was looking into this burning hulk of metal and it was like looking into the face of the devil. It was, it was like a living thing.

YANCY: They already had boats that were putting water on the rig. I don't know where they came from. They came out the wood work.

They were there in no time. The Coast Guard helicopters were flying around. AL: We were hovering about half a mile to the East of the burning rig.

Initially we got the word that we were to pick up a critically wounded victim so then we lowered our rescue swimmer to the Damon Bankston. COAST GUARD: Moving out swimmer, moving out swimmer. JOHN: The rescue swimmer, he's basically our paramedic, he's our assigned EMT, so he's the guy who knows the first aid.

COAST GUARD: Roger, hold position I'mma bring him down. Swimmer's just below the rail. Halfway down, 40 right, 40.

Okay swimmers on deck. STEVE: When the Coast Guard arrived, the rescue swimmer, he came in and he asked who's the critical. Buddy Trahan was the worst.

And at that point they brought in a gurney. I stepped to the backside of the bed to assist in getting Buddy on the gurney. As I rolled him he was screaming and hollering that his leg was hurt real bad, he had a severe laceration on his leg.

He also had a twisted and mangled lower-calf, his fingernails were gone, he had a hole in the side of his neck. And I looked back and Buddy's back was burnt from belt to head. Once we got him on the gurney they took him out.

DUSTIN: We went to carry him out after we strapped him in and the supply boat was full of big containers, so you really had no clear path to the back of the boat. So we were like, "How are we gonna get this guy out? " We actually had to lift him up over these containers and got him hoisted up to the helicopter.

AL: It's hard when you're departing a scene like that, to know that there's still 11 people missing. Our mission was to return to base with a critically injured victim, but it still felt bad to leave the scene. But that was the task we were given.

JESSICA: It began with a powerful explosion, a column of flames shooting into the night sky over the Gulf of Mexico. The oil rig still burning and could topple into the water at any moment. MARY: The source of that fire is predominantly coming from the well head itself.

It's crude oil that is leeching from this wellhead. And as long as that crude is leeching we're gonna continue to see that fire. YANCY: After the helicopter left, and it was like, with the wounded, it was like everything just kind of like fell in place.

Finally able to start calming down. CHRIS: And we sat there pretty much watched the rig burn for six or seven hours. That's something I'll never forget.

The images just burned in my head, I'll never forget. Knowing that, after we took the muster and stuff we figured out, you know, we were missing 11 guys. And, most of us, we assumed they were, they were on the rig, we didn't know, and that was pretty tough not knowing.

DUSTIN: I went home that morning and turned on the news and then you find out well there's still 11 people missing, it's like "Oh. " It's like, "Man, I hope they made, I just hope they made it off. " CURRY: In the news, the Coast Guard is pressing its search today for 11 workers still missing on a burning oil drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana.

Fireboats are struggling to put out flames triggered by the explosion on Tuesday night. CHRIS: When we left from the rig, we rode for probably a good four hours to another platform. The guys on that platform, they sent down a bag with some cigarettes, and some snuff, and stuff, and some clothes.

JEFFREY: The survivors who were not injured are now making their way to shore. They will be arriving here in port later this evening. The search for the missing will continue through the night.

RON: A pair of Coast Guard cutters stayed out in the gulf all night looking for these missing workers. They will be joined a little bit later by one of these choppers, which is set to leave at first light here. And as you can imagine, the longer this search and rescue mission goes without resolution, the more fear and concern grow.

CHRIS: When we got off the boat they brought around three or four pre-paid cellphones. They were passing those around, everybody was passing them, talking to their families for about 30 seconds just letting them know they were off the boat. That was the first time I got to talk to my wife.

From there we rode to New Orleans to the Crowne Plaza. We went in the back of it, because they told us there were so many lawyers and media out front, they were making us go in the back, and all our families were waiting, and that was the first time I got to see my wife. And she ran up smiling, and then by the time she got her arms around my neck she just burst out in tears, both of us did.

JAMES: We were on site about midnight, so we were only on site in a relatively short period of time. I started to have a bad feeling when the sun came up and we could get a more accurate assessment of the extent of the damage onboard the oil rig. You could see the derrick leaning over on the crane and you could actually see what used to be incredibly stout steel sagging like a clothesline.

It got very precarious at that time and we were all very, very concerned that time was running out. But at around 10:00, we could see the starboard corner starting to slowly drop into the sea. The loud groans coming out of this vessel, as she broke up, was becoming much more pronounced.

We started to back off, a thick sheen of brown emulsified oil still on fire behind. I think unfortunately for us we were fighting a losing battle from the start. But you still feel a tremendous loss, you still feel a tremendous sense of failure.

My thinking immediately shifted to that of the people onboard. You're there to help the loved ones of those people that may be missing come to some sense of closure. It was quite a silence on the bridge, and I know we were all thinking the same thing.

You feel the loss, you feel the failure, you feel it deep. And it settles in more and more as time goes by and as the adrenaline subsides. You know, I'm still going over things in my mind.

REPORTER (over TV): There were 126 crewmembers on board the rig. Eleven of the workers never had a chance, they were killed in the explosion, their bodies never recovered. KEITH: These guys on the Deepwater are the fighter pilots of our profession.

They are the rock stars. Only the very best of the best work on the Deepwater. And they don't accept anything less.

RANDY: The Horizon was an exemplary rig with excellent personnel. They paid the ultimate price, they gave their life, to try to minimize the damage that was done to people, property, environment. And I hope at least that message is clear, that they paid the ultimate price.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.

Deepwater Horizon In Their Own Words (Full Episode) | In Their Own Words