Joe Meanen jumped 175ft from the burning Piper Alpha platform’s helideck – and survived.
The Glaswegian scaffolder, then 29, took two steps over the safety netting and dropped into the unknown.
Joe said: “I just did it without thinking. It was only after I jumped that I thought, ‘Oh f***’.”
Alongside others, who tragically didn’t make it, Joe was waiting for an air evacuation that never came, despite tannoy assurances.
As the blaze raged, it was too late to descend from the galley where men huddled waiting for helicopters.
He became one of the few left with the stark choice – stay and fry or jump and try.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the world’s worst offshore tragedy, which killed 167 men. Just 61 survived.
On the fateful night of July 6, 1988, Joe waited as others descended to sea level as fires and explosions caused by a gas leak sealed Piper Alpha’s fate.
Joe said: “What you were trained to do was stay. You were always told your first method of evacuation would be by helicopter.
“It was more the other boys who went against advice who got off.
“We hadn’t been outside and didn’t realise how bad it was.
“As it happened, there wouldn’t have been any chance of helicopters landing.
“But they were still telling us they were on their way. I think they’d just lost it.
“It wasn’t so much panic – it was their training and they were overwhelmed.”
Events like the Twin Towers terror attack in New York and the Grenfell disaster haunt Joe.
He pondered: “Can you imagine folk at Grenfell and 9/11 throwing themselves out? What possesses them to do that – desperation?”
“We were just lucky we got outside when we did and decided to jump.
“There was a crowd of us at the back door to the galley. There was about 14 and maybe eight or 10 of us left.
“There were four or five boys who decided to stay.”
After the first of the major explosions, Joe started climbing up a radio mast but slipped.
He said: “It was just panic. I was going up and I slipped and I thought, ‘That’s me, I’m dead here’.
“Something seemed to flick a switch. I remember everything I did from there.
“But it was as if something was pushing me so much to do that.
“There was certainly something that made me do it.”
He decided to jump.
Joe said: “I had tracksuit bottoms on and a polo shirt and trainers but they were soaking wet from the spray.
“That probably helped plus I had a decent head of hair then which was soaking as well.
“I ran over and had a look and saw water. I took my lifejacket off. There was safety netting around the helideck so I just stepped on the inside one, then the outside one and pushed myself away.”
Looking back, he said: “I might never have done it. Thinking rationally, was it a will to survive or some out-of-body thing?
“I hit the water at 60-70mph. I think I got my burns on the way just with the heat radiation.
“I grabbed part of a lifeboat and the lifejacket I’d thrown in.
“It was almost a flat calm and the way the water was running from south to north took me away from the platform.
“There were a lot of circumstances that worked for me instead of against.But you can’t analyse these things because you can’t work it out.
“As far as I’m concerned you’ve just got to accept it because if you don’t, I think that’s where the survivor’s guilt comes in.
“I felt I got a second chance, and you can’t let what happened take over your life – you’ve got to live.”
Joe gets frustrated seeing the same mistakes repeated in disasters – and no one ever brought to book.
He said: “Look at the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It’s those who got out early and didn’t listen to what they were told who survived.”
The ongoing inquiry into the tower block disaster in London last year has heard evidence about the “stay put’ fire policy.
On the night of the blaze, many residents were told to remain in their flats by emergency services.
But they became trapped as the flames raged out of control and thick poisonous smoke spread up the single narrow stairwell.
The inquiry the policy “substantially failed” less than 30 minutes after the first firefighters were on scene.
Some people ignored the advice and made it down the stairs to safety but 72 people died.
Joe said: “I don’t know if anyone’s ever spent time in jail after being found guilty for gross negligence. Especially in the North Sea where there are big money contracts – there needs to be somebody that’s responsible.
“It annoys me that at Grenfell, it’s likely no one will face charges because there are so many get-outs.
“There must be solicitors and legal firms making up the contracts to say, ‘Well, just in case anything
does happen, we’ll make it that complicated that nobody’s going to be held responsible’.
“I once asked our QC if anyone would be held responsible for Piper Alpha and taken to court and it went right over his head. There should be someone held accountable. It’s all to do with money, isn’t it?”
The Cullen Inquiry in the wake of Piper Alpha brought about a change of attitude offshore with new, safer working practices.
Joe said: “But only for the North Sea. A few weeks ago we heard there had been a few ‘close calls’ recently with gas escapes. It’s amazing how ‘close calls’ seem to happen when there’s a downturn in the oil prices.
“They turn a wee blind eye to the safety aspect of things.
“If you went through the history books, every time there’s been downturns, low oil prices, people paid off, valuable experience lost, there seems to be a spike in ‘close misses’.
“It’s like politicians. They turn round and tell you a bare-faced lie – that ‘safety’s the most important, it’s paramount’. Or as survivor Geoff Bollands said, ‘Safety always came first as long as it didn’t interrupt production’.”
Joe, 59, will be attending a special service at the Piper Alpha Memorial Garden in Aberdeen tonight, where the names of the dead will be read out.
The married father of two often makes his own quiet pilgrimage to the statue in Hazlehead Park.
He said: “I think it’s important. I was up at the memorial the other day and there’s a lot of people who never got to 30.
“Their ages are inscribed alongside their names. They never even made it to 30 and here we are, 30 years on.
“That’s a huge thing for me. How they’ve missed out and how their families have missed out – their kids, brothers and sisters.”
