Fire on the Horizon: The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster - Paperback

by Tom Shroder (Author), John Konrad (Author)

"A phenomenal feat of journalism. . . . I tore through it like a novel but with the queasy knowledge that the whole damn thing is true." --Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and War

Blending exclusive first-person interviews and penetrating investigative reporting, oil rig captain John Konrad and veteran Washington Post writer Tom Shroder give the definitive, white-knuckled account of the Deepwater Horizon explosion--as well as a riveting insider's view of the byzantine culture of offshore drilling that made the disaster inevitable. As the world continues to cope with the oil spill's grim aftermath--with environmental and economic consequences all the more dire in a region still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina--Konrad and Schroder's real-time account of the disaster shows us just where things went wrong, and points the way to a safer future for us all.

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A real-life thriller in the tradition of The Perfect Storm, Fire on the Horizon recounts the life of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig--from its construction in South Korea in the year 2000 to its journey around the world to its disastrous end.

On and off the rig, Fire on the Horizon reveals the particulars of a culture most of us have never known, from the small maritime colleges to Transocean's training schools and Houston headquarters, and culminates in the harrowing minute-by-minute account of the fateful day, April 20, 2010, when the half-billion-dollar rig blew up, taking the lives of eleven people and leaving an unprecedented swath of natural destruction in its fiery wake.