Fire in the Night: 20 Years Since the Piper Alpha Disaster

The fire was visible 70 miles away as a distant flame on the horizon. The heat was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile. Flying at a height of 200 feet, the air crew saw that the flames extended high above the rotor blades. In the water surrounding the inferno, men's heads could be seen bobbing as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat. At the center stood the Piper Alpha oil platform, once the world's single largest oil producer. On July 6, 1988, its final day, it was ablaze with 226 men on board. Only 61 would survive. Adapted as an award-winning BBC documentary for the 25th anniversary of the disaster, Fire in the Night tells the devastating story of that summer evening.