April 20, 2010 is a date Kevin “KP” Senegal says he will never forget. Ten years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 crew members and triggered the largest marine oil spill in history, the survivor is telling his story publicly for the first time.
Senegal was on board the Transocean-owned, BP-operated rig on the first day of his shift when he noticed a sheen on the water that looked like oil. He went inside to tell a coworker what he had seen. Moments later, everything exploded.
“All we could do was say, this is it, it’s over! The floor left my feet. It shook you from wall to wall, you had to hold on,” Senegal recalled.
He and others near him reached an outside deck as the rig burned. Several tried to reach the most intense part of the fire to help anyone they could. “The minute everybody was trying to try to save somebody, the heat was so hot, you couldn’t take three steps towards that fire,” he said.
The group made it onto a life raft with what Senegal estimated as 60 to 80 other crew members. As they neared safety, a cable snagged the raft. Senegal freed it, and they floated to safety.
A decade later, Senegal says he is thankful to be alive but still living with the aftermath. He shakes daily and says he still sees smoke. He received a settlement to help with medical bills and legal fees, but he says the trauma still affects his ability to hold a job, leaving him struggling financially.
“BP promised me that I would never have to worry again in life,” Senegal said. “They told me they were going to take care of me for the rest of my life and I’ll be alright. Now I need BP to reach out again because I feel it didn’t pay the expense of my trauma.”