Betelgeuse Incident - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

The incident became known variously as "the Betelgeuse incident", "the Betelgeuse disaster" or "the Whiddy Island disaster". Gulf and Total executives commonly referred to "the Betelgeuse incident". Military and civilian personnel were mobilised from all over Ireland to deal with it. The incident was the subject of agonised debate in the Dáil. One TD noted that there had been earlier incidents at the Whiddy Island terminal and questioned whether Gulf's status as a major employer had made the authorities reluctant to enforce a rigorous inspection regime.

The Irish government appointed a tribunal to investigate the incident, presided over by Justice Declan Costello. This tribunal took a year to hear evidence and prepare a 480 page report. The report indicated three main factors that had contributed to the incident:

1. The poor condition of the Betelgeuse for which its operator, Total S.A., was to blame. Immediately before the incident, the vessel's hull and tanks were cracked, corroded and leaking. The 11-year-old vessel had been worked hard and was at the end of its service life.
2. Incorrect unloading sequences and ballasting which resulted in the buoyancy of the hull becoming uneven and the hull therefore strained. Lack of crew training or knowing malpractice were possible explanations. Total was held largely to blame for this. However, given that all the personnel involved in the unloading had died in the explosion, it was difficult to be certain as to what had happened.
3. Inadequate and poorly maintained fire fighting and rescue systems both on the vessel and on the jetty. Gulf and Total were held jointly to blame for this. A combination of human failings and financial constraints were the immediate causes.

It was determined that a faulty unloading operation had unbalanced the vessel, causing it to break its back and thereby rupturing several empty ballast tanks. Vapour from the ruptured tanks had escaped into the vessel and exploded in a fireball. However, the Costello tribunal's findings were never accepted by Total:

Total recalls its view that the tanks exploded as the result of a fire which it believes started out on the jetty. The company can but contest the report’s conclusions which assume that the ballasting operations were carried out in a most unlikely way by a highly qualified crew. —The Times, 26 July 1980. "Gulf and Total accused." (Total rejoinder to the Costello Tribunal report)

Total drew attention to the unexplained absence from his post of the Gulf employee whose duty it was to supervise the unloading from the on-shore control room. The individual concerned had left the control room some time before the trouble started (see below) and his absence may have contributed to a lack of urgency in responding to events. Exactly what happened that night has never been established beyond doubt.

All the crew on board the ship at the time of the incident (41 in total) are believed to have died, although not all the bodies were found. In addition, one visitor to the ship (an officer's wife) and eight terminal workers were killed. Initial efforts to contain the fire were hampered by a lack of organisation and poorly maintained fire fighting equipment at the terminal. The Bantry fire brigade spent some time waiting at the town pier for a launch to take them onto the island. The terminal's own fire engine would not start. Firefighters had to break into the terminal's main depot in order to access equipment (much of which did not work) and materials.

There was some controversy over the exact timing of events and the response of the terminal management to the disaster as it unfolded. Some local residents claimed that there was anything up to 5 minutes between the audible structural failure of the vessel and the time at which the initial explosion happened. If this were so, the opportunity to attempt an evacuation had been missed. However, the terminal management insisted that the explosion had almost immediately followed the structural failure:

The Tribunal singles out one man who might have raised the alarm and saved the lives of those who perished : Mr John Connolly who was not in his post as despatcher in the control room of the terminal. To suppress that fact Gulf personnel and the Bantry telephone operator entered into a conspiracy. False entries were made in logs, false accounts were given of the disaster and efforts were made to avoid giving statements to the police. —The Times, 26 July 1980. "Gulf and Total accused."

No escape from the jetty or the vessel was possible in the absence of rescue boats, given that there was no fixed link from the jetty to the shore. However, all concerned praised the initiative and courage of the firefighters and rescue workers.

A Dutch salvage firm, L. Smit & Co., raised the Betelgeuse in four sections. The first section (the bow) was towed out to open water, 100 miles (160 km) offshore, and scuttled. This measure attracted protests from the fishing community, so two further sections were sealed up and towed to breaking yards in Spain for disposal. A fourth section was broken up locally. During the salvage operation, the life of a diver was lost. The last section was not removed until July 1980. Local fishing grounds were badly contaminated and a clean-up was not finally complete until 1983.

The costs of salvage, clean-up and compensation are believed to have totalled around US$120 million. That included compensation paid by Total to Gulf. Most of the relevant costs were paid by insurance companies and all the various claims and counter-claims were eventually settled out of court. Gulf never reopened the terminal and a feasibility study in 1985 showed that it no longer had any potential use in international oil trade. In 1986, Gulf surrendered its lease on the site to the Irish government. The government used the terminal (after carrying out a limited refurbishment) to hold its strategic oil reserve. Initially, oil movement to and from the terminal was carried out by road. In 1990, at the time of the first Gulf war, an improvised repair was carried out to the jetty to allow an oil tanker to offload at the terminal on a one-off basis. In 1996 an unloading buoy was installed and this has been used since that time.

A number of memorial services have been held to commemorate anniversaries of the incident. The most recent of these was on the 25th anniversary in January 2004. Relatives of the victims joined with local residents in a special service held at St Finbarr’s Church in Bantry. A memorial sculpture, incorporating the ship's bell which was recovered from the wreck, has been erected in the hillside graveyard overlooking the harbour. The bodies of two unidentified casualties from the incident are interred nearby.