2 dead and 3 injured in
an explosion, fire at Oklahoma oil rig IN COALGATE; SURVIVED WORKERS RECALL EVENTS; SOURCE OF IGNITION STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION
Two Roughnecks were killed and 2 seriously burned overnight in
a drilling rig explosion in Coal County Oklahoma on a location 2 miles west of
Coalgate on Hwy 31 between Ada and Atoka.
The state Medical Examiner's office identified the dead as
26-year-old Gary Keenen of Ada and 27-year-old Kelsey Bellah of Tulsa.
Dan D
Rig#18 Fire
According to the Coalgate Police Chief, there was some kind of
an explosion and fire that happened around 11:54 PM Friday.
Sources close to the investigation are reporting the drilling
rig was Dan D Rig 18 drilling for Texas based Pablo Energy
Facebook posts state that one worker, a Yukon resident and father
of 4, has sustained second degree burns over 75% of his body. The condition of
the other worker is unknown at this time.
OSHA, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and the State Fire
Marshal’s office are on the scene conducting the investigation.
An unconfirmed report indicates that the fire might have been
caused by a space heater on the rig floor.
Please keep these families in your prayers. We will post
updated information as we receive it.
________________________________________________________________________
Associated Press – published Friday, December 19, 2014
COALGATE, Okla. (AP) — An explosion and fire early Friday
morning killed two people and injured three, two critically, at an oil rig in
southeastern Oklahoma.
The explosion occurred around 1 a.m. at the rig about 2 miles west of Coalgate in a remote area of rural Coal County about 100 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, said Sam Schafnitt, chief of operations for the state Fire Marshal's Office.
"It was a drilling rig in a rural area," Schafnitt said. He said the fire is out and the cause of the explosion is still under investigation.
Schafnitt said the explosion and fire occurred on the deck of the oil rig and that investigators from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration have arrived at the scene to help pinpoint the cause.
"We're just trying to put the puzzle pieces on the table and (are) looking at them," he said.
Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission that regulates the oil and gas industry, said no evacuations were required in the area and there were no reports that the explosion and fire caused environmental damage that would require subsequent cleanup.
The state Medical Examiner's Office identified the dead as Gary Keenen, 26, of Ada, and Kelsey Bellah, 27, of Tulsa. Schafnitt said the two critically injured people sustained burns and were airlifted to a burn unit in Oklahoma City. The third injured worker sustained burns on his hands, he said. Schafnitt did not identify the injured workers.
The rig is owned by Pablo Energy of Amarillo, Texas, which did not immediately respond to telephone calls seeking comment. Coal County Sheriff Bryan Jump also did not immediately respond to telephone calls seeking comment.
_______________________________________________________
Safe at home Injured oil rig worker Dewayne Keenan holds his daughter Aaliyah close after returning from the hospital where doctors tended his severely burned hands he suffered while saving coworkers in an oil rig fire near Coalgate Thursday, Dec. 18
December 28th, 2014
One day. One more day of work and Gary Keenan would have been off for a week. A week in which he was looking forward to time off from his hard-work job. A week that would have been filled with holiday cheer, spending time with loved ones and celebrating life. Instead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2014, would be Gary’s last day on earth.
The 26-year-old Arkansas native was killed in a fiery accident at his job on an oil/gas rig near Coalgate. A coworker was killed and two others critically injured. His early death has left his family and friends devastated, maybe none more so than Gary’s big brother by two years, Dewayne.
Dewayne Keenan was there that night and was injured as well. His hands were burned as he dragged coworkers engulfed in flames to safety. But his injured hands aren’t what’s hurting him right now. It’s the loss of his brother.
Dewayne doesn’t have nightmares when he sleeps. He awakens to a nightmare each day.
“The hardest times are in the morning when I wake up,” he said while holding back tears.
Dewayne and his wife Alexandrea are in the early stage of grief where they feel the loss again and again. They look through photos of good times they all had together. Alexandrea has taken dozens of pictures of fun times the family had in the last five or so months.
That’s when Gary moved to Ada to live with Dewayne and Alexandrea so he could work on the rig. Gary and Dewayne worked grueling 12-hour shifts, one week on, one week off in a job which is considered one of the hardest and most dangerous there is. When they had time off, they only wanted to have fun as a family.
There was the October trip to the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks. Gary, Dewayne, and Alexandrea, along with Dewayne and Alexandrea’s one-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, had a grand family outing. Dewayne and Alexandrea smile when they look at the pictures. Their eyes light up as they talk about fun-loving brother Gary and his antics. They laugh and giggle, but the happiness is fleeting as reality comes crashing down again. The smiles disappear and their eyes fill with tears as the disbelief returns. Their hearts are filled with sorrow.
• The nightmare
Dewayne is a derrick hand and he was down in the pits doing his job when the rig went up in flames. He said four other coworkers were above the platform and their job was to make connections to keep feeding pipe into the ground.
The sound of metal slamming against metal is loud and startling. Dewayne said it sometimes catches him off guard, causing him look up to make sure something hasn’t gone wrong. He said every time he heard the sound, he worried about Gary, who worked above.
“I was always real worried about him,” Dewayne said. “Anytime I’d hear that noise up there I just say a little prayer, ‘Lord, just watch them men up there.’ I’d pray throughout the night.”
But this time, it wasn’t just a loud noise.
“This time when I heard it, I turned around and looked and there was fire just rolling,” he said. “And it wasn’t a little fire, it was big. It already had the whole derrick smothered. It looked like a bon fire, a huge bon fire.”
Dewayne said what ignited was oil base. Oil base is a mud infused with diesel fuel used for lubrication during the drilling process. Dewayne believes it was a space heater that ignited the mud.
“That oil base is flammable,” Dewayne said. “For the last 72 hours they had me pumping three gallons of diesel per minute into that mud. When they broke that kelly to make a connection, that oil-based mud was flying right in their face by the hundreds of gallons with 3,000 pounds of pressure behind it.”
“It hit that oil-based mud and like a spring, the mud is coming out and the fire was coming with it,” Dewayne said. “In no time, it was a hell hole.”
When Dewayne came around and up to the platform, he saw coworker Matthew Thurman engulfed in flames.
“I grabbed him and rushed him downstairs and put him out,” Dewayne said.
Recent rains had left pools of water around the platform and that is where Dewayne pushed Thurman to douse the flames. He ran back up the stairs to find his brother and found another coworker, Mark Pittman, also engulfed in fire and screaming.
“It was like something out of a bad movie,” he said. “I had never seen anything like it in my life. It was horrible. I rushed him downstairs, rolled him around and put him out.”
Dewayne ran back upstairs and grabbed a pressure-washer hose and was fighting the fire when a coworker came along with a fire extinguisher.
“I asked him, ‘Have you seen my brother?! Have you seen my brother?!” Dewayne said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I just put him out.’ I said, ‘You just put him out? Well is he going to be all right? Is he OK? Is he going to live?’”
Dewayne said the coworker wouldn’t answer him.
Dewayne ran downstairs to where Gary’s charred body lay on the ground. He gave his brother CPR until paramedics arrived. He said he had them check his brother several times.
“I stayed there with him giving him CPR, pumping his chest until the medics got there,” Dewayne said. “They checked him, but I had them check him again and again and again. They kept telling me he was gone; it was too late.”
In shock, Dewayne got a blanket and covered his brother up. Once Gary’s body was placed in a hearse, Dewayne agreed to take an ambulance ride to a Coalgate hospital.
Brothers Dewayne, right, and his brother Gary stop for a photo at a local restaurant recently. Gary Keenan was killed on the rig during the fire.
• The family
Dewayne and Gary, along with sisters Melissa and Michelle, grew up in Paris, Arkansas. They were close.
“We did everything together,” he said.
When Dewayne was old enough, he set out on his own. He spent years working and eventually moved to Ada. Gary moved to Ada to live with Dewayne and Alexandrea so he could work.
“He wanted a job on the oil rigs,” Dewayne said. “He’s a hard worker. He’d go home to Arkansas on his days off and visit his friends and family. He was a real good family man: he had a lot of friends back home that he’d go check on.”
Dewayne said Gary would never slow down on the rig.
“No matter how tired he got, he would never drag his feet,” Dewayne said. “He didn’t want to disappoint me. He’d work hard for me and he’d work hard for those guys (at the rig).”
Dewayne said at the end of the day, there were no awards given and no pats on the back.
“You gotta fight for your job out there cause there is always another man willing to take it and wanting to take it. It’s never good enough out there roughnecking and so I just really appreciated his hard work,” he said.
He helped Gary get the job on the rig. Gary knew that although the work was hard, the pay was good and he wanted to make something of himself.
Gary and Alexandrea were friends before she and Dewayne met. Dewayne and Alexandrea fell in love and married, eventually having Aaliyah. Alexandrea said she and Gary were just like brother and sister and she misses him terribly.
“He was my brother too,” she said with tears in her eyes. “He was my best friend before I met my husband. We just became family. We had a good thing here.”
Dewayne said he was always tired in the mornings, but Gary was always upbeat.
“He’d yell out, ‘Good morning, bro!,’ trying to be funny morning guy,” Dewayne said. “You know, ain’t nobody trying to hear that (that early in the morning). I never thought I’d miss hearing that as much as I do.”
While growing up, the family attended Paris Christian Center Church in Arkansas. That is where Gary’s funeral services were held Friday. Dewayne lowered his brother into the ground and threw a handful of soil in as he said good-bye, for now.
• A better place
Dewayne said he and Gary had been praying for their grandfather the night of the fire.
“My grandfather, who is 92 years old, was in the hospital that night,” Dewayne said. “My brother came to me and said, ‘I think we need to say a prayer for our grandfather.’ I said, ‘Why, what’s going on?’ He said, ‘Granny just called me and told me he’s real sick and I think we need to pray for him.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s sit down and pray.’ So we said a prayer.”
Gary was still worried later on so Dewayne had another talk with him at about 10 p.m.
“We were talking about it again and I said, ‘Look, don’t stress on that,’ Dewayne said. “You know he’s 92 years old. His heart is right with God. We’re all going to be there. One day or another, we’re all going to be there. Just be glad to know he’s going to be there (Heaven). I thought I was preaching to him that night, but I honestly think God was preaching to me, knowing that I would be telling myself that in two hours.”
• What’s next
Dewayne continues to heal. He must visit a burn center every few days so doctors can monitor the burns on his hands. He has already had skin grafts. His hands are bandaged, as well as his leg where doctors took skin for the grafts.
He received breathing treatments after the fire due to heat and smoke he inhaled. Gary had a pickup he and Dewayne were going to fix up as a project vehicle. Dewayne is planning to restore the pickup as a memorial to his brother, once he recovers from his injuries.
Due to those injuries, Dewayne has been unable to work and the bills keep coming, the family said. A fund has been set up at gofundme.com to assist the family with donations (www.gofundme.com/j8h8yg).
Funds have also been setup to assist Dewayne’s injured coworkers, Matthew Thurman (www.gofundme.com/j3gn8k) and Mark Pittman (www.gofundme.com/Markpittman).
Both are recovering at Integris Baptist Burn Center in Oklahoma City. According to their fundraising pages, Mark Pittman was burned over 75 percent of his body and will spend about six months in the hospital. Matt Thurman was burned over 47 percent of his body and will spend two to three months in the hospital.
• The investigation
The investigation continues as to what ignited the fire that killed Gary Keenan as well as his coworker, 27-year-old Kelsey Bellah of Tulsa, according to Sam Schafnitt, chief of operations with the Oklahoma State Fire Marshal’s Office.
“What we’re looking at is, what was the ignition source?” Schafnitt said. “We’re still investigating. We have a couple of sources (we are looking at).”
He said they are working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the investigation.
Source: The Ada News
The explosion occurred around 1 a.m. at the rig about 2 miles west of Coalgate in a remote area of rural Coal County about 100 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, said Sam Schafnitt, chief of operations for the state Fire Marshal's Office.
"It was a drilling rig in a rural area," Schafnitt said. He said the fire is out and the cause of the explosion is still under investigation.
Schafnitt said the explosion and fire occurred on the deck of the oil rig and that investigators from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration have arrived at the scene to help pinpoint the cause.
"We're just trying to put the puzzle pieces on the table and (are) looking at them," he said.
Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission that regulates the oil and gas industry, said no evacuations were required in the area and there were no reports that the explosion and fire caused environmental damage that would require subsequent cleanup.
The state Medical Examiner's Office identified the dead as Gary Keenen, 26, of Ada, and Kelsey Bellah, 27, of Tulsa. Schafnitt said the two critically injured people sustained burns and were airlifted to a burn unit in Oklahoma City. The third injured worker sustained burns on his hands, he said. Schafnitt did not identify the injured workers.
The rig is owned by Pablo Energy of Amarillo, Texas, which did not immediately respond to telephone calls seeking comment. Coal County Sheriff Bryan Jump also did not immediately respond to telephone calls seeking comment.
_______________________________________________________
Oklahoma - Rig Fire Victim Recalls Explosion, Loss Of Brother
Safe at home Injured oil rig worker Dewayne Keenan holds his daughter Aaliyah close after returning from the hospital where doctors tended his severely burned hands he suffered while saving coworkers in an oil rig fire near Coalgate Thursday, Dec. 18
December 28th, 2014
One day. One more day of work and Gary Keenan would have been off for a week. A week in which he was looking forward to time off from his hard-work job. A week that would have been filled with holiday cheer, spending time with loved ones and celebrating life. Instead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2014, would be Gary’s last day on earth.
The 26-year-old Arkansas native was killed in a fiery accident at his job on an oil/gas rig near Coalgate. A coworker was killed and two others critically injured. His early death has left his family and friends devastated, maybe none more so than Gary’s big brother by two years, Dewayne.
Dewayne Keenan was there that night and was injured as well. His hands were burned as he dragged coworkers engulfed in flames to safety. But his injured hands aren’t what’s hurting him right now. It’s the loss of his brother.
Dewayne doesn’t have nightmares when he sleeps. He awakens to a nightmare each day.
“The hardest times are in the morning when I wake up,” he said while holding back tears.
Dewayne and his wife Alexandrea are in the early stage of grief where they feel the loss again and again. They look through photos of good times they all had together. Alexandrea has taken dozens of pictures of fun times the family had in the last five or so months.
That’s when Gary moved to Ada to live with Dewayne and Alexandrea so he could work on the rig. Gary and Dewayne worked grueling 12-hour shifts, one week on, one week off in a job which is considered one of the hardest and most dangerous there is. When they had time off, they only wanted to have fun as a family.
There was the October trip to the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks. Gary, Dewayne, and Alexandrea, along with Dewayne and Alexandrea’s one-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, had a grand family outing. Dewayne and Alexandrea smile when they look at the pictures. Their eyes light up as they talk about fun-loving brother Gary and his antics. They laugh and giggle, but the happiness is fleeting as reality comes crashing down again. The smiles disappear and their eyes fill with tears as the disbelief returns. Their hearts are filled with sorrow.
• The nightmare
Dewayne is a derrick hand and he was down in the pits doing his job when the rig went up in flames. He said four other coworkers were above the platform and their job was to make connections to keep feeding pipe into the ground.
The sound of metal slamming against metal is loud and startling. Dewayne said it sometimes catches him off guard, causing him look up to make sure something hasn’t gone wrong. He said every time he heard the sound, he worried about Gary, who worked above.
“I was always real worried about him,” Dewayne said. “Anytime I’d hear that noise up there I just say a little prayer, ‘Lord, just watch them men up there.’ I’d pray throughout the night.”
But this time, it wasn’t just a loud noise.
“This time when I heard it, I turned around and looked and there was fire just rolling,” he said. “And it wasn’t a little fire, it was big. It already had the whole derrick smothered. It looked like a bon fire, a huge bon fire.”
Dewayne said what ignited was oil base. Oil base is a mud infused with diesel fuel used for lubrication during the drilling process. Dewayne believes it was a space heater that ignited the mud.
“That oil base is flammable,” Dewayne said. “For the last 72 hours they had me pumping three gallons of diesel per minute into that mud. When they broke that kelly to make a connection, that oil-based mud was flying right in their face by the hundreds of gallons with 3,000 pounds of pressure behind it.”
“It hit that oil-based mud and like a spring, the mud is coming out and the fire was coming with it,” Dewayne said. “In no time, it was a hell hole.”
When Dewayne came around and up to the platform, he saw coworker Matthew Thurman engulfed in flames.
“I grabbed him and rushed him downstairs and put him out,” Dewayne said.
Recent rains had left pools of water around the platform and that is where Dewayne pushed Thurman to douse the flames. He ran back up the stairs to find his brother and found another coworker, Mark Pittman, also engulfed in fire and screaming.
“It was like something out of a bad movie,” he said. “I had never seen anything like it in my life. It was horrible. I rushed him downstairs, rolled him around and put him out.”
Dewayne ran back upstairs and grabbed a pressure-washer hose and was fighting the fire when a coworker came along with a fire extinguisher.
“I asked him, ‘Have you seen my brother?! Have you seen my brother?!” Dewayne said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I just put him out.’ I said, ‘You just put him out? Well is he going to be all right? Is he OK? Is he going to live?’”
Dewayne said the coworker wouldn’t answer him.
Dewayne ran downstairs to where Gary’s charred body lay on the ground. He gave his brother CPR until paramedics arrived. He said he had them check his brother several times.
“I stayed there with him giving him CPR, pumping his chest until the medics got there,” Dewayne said. “They checked him, but I had them check him again and again and again. They kept telling me he was gone; it was too late.”
In shock, Dewayne got a blanket and covered his brother up. Once Gary’s body was placed in a hearse, Dewayne agreed to take an ambulance ride to a Coalgate hospital.
Brothers Dewayne, right, and his brother Gary stop for a photo at a local restaurant recently. Gary Keenan was killed on the rig during the fire.
• The family
Dewayne and Gary, along with sisters Melissa and Michelle, grew up in Paris, Arkansas. They were close.
“We did everything together,” he said.
When Dewayne was old enough, he set out on his own. He spent years working and eventually moved to Ada. Gary moved to Ada to live with Dewayne and Alexandrea so he could work.
“He wanted a job on the oil rigs,” Dewayne said. “He’s a hard worker. He’d go home to Arkansas on his days off and visit his friends and family. He was a real good family man: he had a lot of friends back home that he’d go check on.”
Dewayne said Gary would never slow down on the rig.
“No matter how tired he got, he would never drag his feet,” Dewayne said. “He didn’t want to disappoint me. He’d work hard for me and he’d work hard for those guys (at the rig).”
Dewayne said at the end of the day, there were no awards given and no pats on the back.
“You gotta fight for your job out there cause there is always another man willing to take it and wanting to take it. It’s never good enough out there roughnecking and so I just really appreciated his hard work,” he said.
He helped Gary get the job on the rig. Gary knew that although the work was hard, the pay was good and he wanted to make something of himself.
Gary and Alexandrea were friends before she and Dewayne met. Dewayne and Alexandrea fell in love and married, eventually having Aaliyah. Alexandrea said she and Gary were just like brother and sister and she misses him terribly.
“He was my brother too,” she said with tears in her eyes. “He was my best friend before I met my husband. We just became family. We had a good thing here.”
Dewayne said he was always tired in the mornings, but Gary was always upbeat.
“He’d yell out, ‘Good morning, bro!,’ trying to be funny morning guy,” Dewayne said. “You know, ain’t nobody trying to hear that (that early in the morning). I never thought I’d miss hearing that as much as I do.”
While growing up, the family attended Paris Christian Center Church in Arkansas. That is where Gary’s funeral services were held Friday. Dewayne lowered his brother into the ground and threw a handful of soil in as he said good-bye, for now.
• A better place
Dewayne said he and Gary had been praying for their grandfather the night of the fire.
“My grandfather, who is 92 years old, was in the hospital that night,” Dewayne said. “My brother came to me and said, ‘I think we need to say a prayer for our grandfather.’ I said, ‘Why, what’s going on?’ He said, ‘Granny just called me and told me he’s real sick and I think we need to pray for him.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s sit down and pray.’ So we said a prayer.”
Gary was still worried later on so Dewayne had another talk with him at about 10 p.m.
“We were talking about it again and I said, ‘Look, don’t stress on that,’ Dewayne said. “You know he’s 92 years old. His heart is right with God. We’re all going to be there. One day or another, we’re all going to be there. Just be glad to know he’s going to be there (Heaven). I thought I was preaching to him that night, but I honestly think God was preaching to me, knowing that I would be telling myself that in two hours.”
• What’s next
Dewayne continues to heal. He must visit a burn center every few days so doctors can monitor the burns on his hands. He has already had skin grafts. His hands are bandaged, as well as his leg where doctors took skin for the grafts.
He received breathing treatments after the fire due to heat and smoke he inhaled. Gary had a pickup he and Dewayne were going to fix up as a project vehicle. Dewayne is planning to restore the pickup as a memorial to his brother, once he recovers from his injuries.
Due to those injuries, Dewayne has been unable to work and the bills keep coming, the family said. A fund has been set up at gofundme.com to assist the family with donations (www.gofundme.com/j8h8yg).
Funds have also been setup to assist Dewayne’s injured coworkers, Matthew Thurman (www.gofundme.com/j3gn8k) and Mark Pittman (www.gofundme.com/Markpittman).
Both are recovering at Integris Baptist Burn Center in Oklahoma City. According to their fundraising pages, Mark Pittman was burned over 75 percent of his body and will spend about six months in the hospital. Matt Thurman was burned over 47 percent of his body and will spend two to three months in the hospital.
• The investigation
The investigation continues as to what ignited the fire that killed Gary Keenan as well as his coworker, 27-year-old Kelsey Bellah of Tulsa, according to Sam Schafnitt, chief of operations with the Oklahoma State Fire Marshal’s Office.
“What we’re looking at is, what was the ignition source?” Schafnitt said. “We’re still investigating. We have a couple of sources (we are looking at).”
He said they are working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the investigation.
Source: The Ada News
