Whiddy Island Disaster

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The Betelgeuse was a French oil tanker, which exploded on January 8, 1979 at Irish oil terminal Whiddy Iceland. Here, 50 crew members and workers were killed.

History

On 8 January 1979, the French tanker Betelgeuse put out its existing 74,000 tonnes of Arabian heavy crude oil and 40,000 tonnes of Arabian light crude oil cargo at the terminal Whiddy Iceland Gulf Oil in southwest Ireland Bantry Bay. As there are approximately 40,000 tons of oil were on board the tanker exploded and burned out then. Due to the explosion in which the tanker broke in two and sank, all 42 in service at the time of explosion on the ship crew and seven employees of the oil terminals and a pilot died. During the next major fire remaining in the tanker of 40,000 tons of crude oil flowed into the Bantry Bay. Both the Jetty and the terminal were badly damaged, the 18 storage tanks were undamaged.

The investigation of the accident revealed serious deficiencies on the state of maintenance of the supertanker. Cause of the fire were rubbing together steel plates of the hull of the tanker.

The two parts of the wreck were lifted in 1980 by the Dutch salvage company Smit and scrapped in Bilbao and Valencia.