Life after Deepwater Horizon: the hidden toll of surviving disaster on an oil rig

When the drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in 2010, Stephen Stone escaped with his life. But in the years that followed, he came to feel deeply betrayed by the industry he had once trusted

On the morning of 21 April 2010, Sara Lattis Stone began frantically calling the burn units of various hospitals in Alabama and Louisiana. She was searching for news about her husband, Stephen, who worked on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico where a massive explosion had occurred. The blast took place the day before Stephen was scheduled to return home from his latest three-week hitch on the rig, a semisubmersible floating unit called the Deepwater Horizon.

In the hours after a spokesperson from Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon, called to tell her that an incident" had required the rig to be evacuated, Sara veered between panic and denial. One minute, she was telling herself that Stephen was fine. The next, she was convinced that she would never see him again. On Facebook, she came across frightening messages - the water's on fire!", the rig is burning" - posted by the spouses of other workers. At one point, Sara got on the phone with one of them, a woman who had her TV tuned to the same channel that she was watching, which was airing live coverage of the blowout. As they peered at the screen, they heard the same update, describing the blast as a catastrophic accident and raising the possibility that no one on the rig had survived. The news made them drop their phones and scream.