Posted by oceansandseas on Jun 24, 2019
Faint Hope
Two Americans who say they are suffering from PTSD are Ron Rozmarynoski and Kevin Dumont. Though Rozy had not been on the 269‘s sister barge that sank in the South China Sea four years before the 269 went down, he was one of the first rescuers on the scene and helped to recover both survivors and bodies. That experience, together with his own on the 269, has caused emotional damage from which he says he has not recovered. He is not working. Kevin is still being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. He hopes to go back to school, perhaps to study photography. He stresses that he will never go back to sea. Victor Diaz says he is still totally incapacitated and lives with the faint hope that he will eventually see better days.
Reflection
In 1996, McDermott’s interest in C.C.C. was sold to Global Offshore, which in turn is a division of the huge construction conglomerate Brown and Root—the company that initially built and operated DLB–269. Global sold its 49 percent of C.C.C. back to C.F.C., the Mexican parent company, in 1999. J. Ray McDermott continues to be a major operator in offshore platform and pipeline construction and installation. The diving branch, which amounted to a very small part of its overall business, was sold to Horizon Offshore Contractors and just recently was resold to Cal-Dive International. Joe Perot retired but still lives in Mexico. Richard Lobb is there too. He no longer wishes to go to sea but is chief of operations for a large offshore contractor in the Ciudad del Carmen area. Lobb makes sure his vessels are the first towed in to shelter preceding major storms. The whole industry there seems to have learned a lesson from the sinking, and safety has become more than an empty slogan. Also, every October 15, work on offshore barges stops for a minute of prayer and reflection for those who didn’t come back, and someone usually tosses a handful of flowers on the water.
Finally, the 269 herself lies peacefully on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, some 70 miles off the Yucatan coast, in silent testimony to the fate that befell her and her crew. She is home, now, only to the creatures of the sea.
Comment/No Comment
Because of the ongoing litigation, there were a number of men I could not interview, including Richard Lobb, Joe Perot, and Ed Burgueno. Perhaps they would not have talked to me in any case, though Richard Lobb told me that he wanted to provide his side of the story but could not while the lawsuits were still going on. Nor could I question McDermott or C.F.C. However, please see the companies’ statements in the Appendix.
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Posted by oceansandseas on Jun 14, 2019
Afterward
And how are the survivors faring? Gustavo Zaldivar, the storesman who worked with El Padre, resumed working for C.C.C., now Global Offshore, and is a storekeeper on another barge. He and his wife worry continually that what happened to the 269 will occur again. Marco Polo, the diver, was unemployed for more than a year and then was rehired by Global. At present he works as a diver for another company. Raul Salabania Acosta, the valve tech, has worked at a succession of temporary jobs on and off shore. Luis Domingo de la Riva has not been able to find any steady employment since the sinking. According to his attorney, he suffers from severe PTSD and takes medications daily.
Lee Lloyd suffered, along with the others. Doctors have told Lee that he can never dive again.
Forget About a Job
According to Charles Musslewhite, some of the Mexican survivors he represents went back to C.C.C. asking for jobs after the 269 went down. They were among the more than 170 Mexican crewmen who were suing the company to receive compensation for their suffering during and after the sinking. They were told, “If you don’t want anything from this company [compensation], we will give you a job. If you continue with the court [the lawsuit], forget about a job.” Most have nevertheless persevered in their claims.
Looks Carefully
While the Americans fared better than the Mexicans, they too have suffered. Ray Pepperday is still an instrument (diving) technician, but he works mostly onshore now. Every time he has to go back out on a barge to spend a few weeks servicing gauges, regulators, and decompression chambers, he looks carefully at the barge’s condition, layout, and safety equipment, to prepare himself just in case.
Sick Joke
Lenn Cobb figures he will always be a diver, but since the 269 incident, he has changed. Working mostly on barges in the Gulf, he constantly checks the weather forecasts. In the summer of 1998 when Lenn was working on a barge off the Texas coast, the barge crew created a bogus weather forecast predicting a hurricane’s arrival right over them. Lenn says, “I got on everybody’s butt. ‘Come on, it’s time to pick up anchors and get the hell outta here!”‘ Finally the barge captain told the crew, “Hey, that’s enough. Y’all have screwed with this guy’s head enough.”
Moving On
Some men have found work ashore. Opie now successfully sells life insurance in New Orleans. Tim Noble is a project manager for a company producing remotely operated undersea vehicles. However, he has seen his twenty-five-year marriage collapse. His ex-wife told him that the sinking changed his personality. Lee Lloyd says he was informed by dive physicians that, indeed, the accelerated decompression during Roxanne’s first approach had caused neurological problems and as a result he can never again dive deeper than 30 feet. Thus he has had to give up his only real passion, diving. Both Lee and his wife, Renee, feel that he is not as easygoing as he once was. He loses his temper more often and is more irritable. Lee is a partner in a small company that does civil and criminal background screening.
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Posted by oceansandseas on Jun 7, 2019
$10,000,000
Attorneys representing some of the crew have suggested that with $10 million worth of hull insurance covering the ancient 269, she was worth more to C.C.C. on the ocean bottom that afloat. Nearing the end of her useful life, she would soon be worth only her value as scrap metal. Also, the attorneys charged that the American Bureau of Shipping inspectors who periodically surveyed the 269 so that she could be insured had failed in their duties. However, the attorneys did not pursue either of these avenues, believing that charges already leveled at C.C.C. and McDermott were sufficient to further their clients’ interests. As a result, it has never been determined whether these allegations had merit. It must be said, however, that there is absolutely no evidence that the barge was deliberately sunk, and the locations of the leaks strongly suggest that it was not.
Act of God
While I was not able to talk to a spokesman for C.C.C. or its parent company, C.F.C., a statement was received from the president of C.F.C. and is presented in the Appendix. C.F.C. says, among other things, that the Mexican government investigated the accident and found that it was due to an Act of God. It seems likely that the company would place responsibility for the decision to weather the storm at sea on Lobb and Perot. Although Perot claimed to have no memory of taking part in the decision to ride out the storm, others recall his involvement in the numerous conversations throughout the days preceding Roxanne I and II. As the barge superintendent, Lobb could have insisted that the 269 be towed into safe anchorage prior to Roxanne’s first arrival, and in retrospect, even he admits he should have insisted on towing her in prior to Roxanne II. “By hindsight,” Lobb said in his deposition, “now that I know where the storm went, we could have went to a port….We wouldn’t have sunk if we got into Dos Bocas…But I didn’t have a crystal ball. I couldn’t see that far ahead.” At least Lobb put his life on the line along with the others on the barge.
Lucky
C.C.C. had been lucky that the 269 had survived hurricanes in the past, and it was counting on the barge to survive again. Whether a desire to save money played a part in C.C.C.’s actions, as the plaintiffs have argued, may eventually be decided by a court. Witnesses for the company have asserted that money was not a factor.
Responsibility
And what of the responsibility of McDermott, and Offshore Pipelines, Inc., for the 269 disaster? McDermott has disclaimed any responsibility, for several reasons. First, it has said, the majority interest in C.C.C. was owned by a Mexican corporation which controlled and operated C.C.C.; McDermott owned only 49 percent.* Second, the barge’s captain and superintendent were C.C.C. employees, and C.C.C. alone was responsible for the barge’s movement.
* When Offshore Pipelines, Inc., formed C.C.C. with their Mexican counterpart, C.F.C., Mexican law required the Mexican partner to own 51 percent of the business. When the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Mexico went into effect in 1994, this requirement was eliminated.
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Posted by oceansandseas on May 31, 2019
Paying Up
Some of the most disabled by PTSD say that they may never be able to work again. Victor Diaz’s attorneys are asking for $2,340,000 for lost wages, past and future, and for medical treatment. Payment for his suffering would be on top of that. This figure will probably be the maximum amount requested by the men’s attorneys, other than for settlements with the families of the dead.
The 269 and her crew should never have been victims of Hurricane Roxanne
The Mexican crewmen will receive far less than the Americans because the Texas court would only hear the case under Mexican law, which does not recognize awards for suffering from PTSD. Unless a settlement is reached, their case will be heard within a year or two.
Should Have
In retrospect, it seems clear that Lobb and Perot should have had the 269 towed into a safe port. Their argument (in depositions) was that the port of Carmen’s channel was too shallow for the 269 with her 19-foot draft. The 269 had entered that bay at least once in the past. Also, the old Mega Dos, with a draft nearly as deep as the 269‘s, had been towed in prior to Roxanne and was towed out again five days later. In any case, the port at Dos Bocas had sufficient depth and would have been reachable if the 269 and her tugs had set out early Saturday evening. The crew members will certainly argue that the $54,000 per day in lost payments from Pemex was the major, if not the only, consideration in C.C.C.’s decision not to tow the 269 in. Richard Lobb, however, has testified that he was not aware of the financial consequences of bringing the barge in to port rather than weathering the storm.
Resinking the Evidence
An interesting footnote to the story is that in July 1996, nine months after it sank, the 269 was refloated by Smit International, the world’s largest marine salvage company, and towed 40 miles farther out to sea, where she was resunk in very deep water. In the United States, the Coast Guard would have demanded a survey of the vessel once she was raised to determine the reasons for the sinking. This was not undertaken here. McDermott/C.C.C. said that the 269 had been raised and resunk because she was in the shipping lanes and was a hazard to navigation. The attorneys for the plaintiffs have questioned this motivation, and others familiar with the operation raised their eyebrows, pointing out that it would now be impossible to obtain physical evidence of the barge’s condition at the time it went down.
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Posted by oceansandseas on May 24, 2019
Sea Again
Many of the 269‘s survivors, as fearful as they may be, have had to go to sea again because offshore work is the only occupation they know and because they have families to support and bills to pay. Several say they just cannot, will not, go back out, and some of these men and their families are on the verge of bankruptcy. The Mexican survivors are in the worst predicaments. Their financial safety nets were generally meager to begin with, and their difficulties finding other jobs were more pronounced. Also, many of the Mexican crewmen were not seafarers and had never experienced a hurricane at sea before they experienced three hurricanes in the course of a month. Thus they may have suffered, on average, far more severe PTSD repercussions than the Americans onboard. Skeptics will ask how it may be proven that these men are really suffering from PTSD. Dr. Matsakis indicated that a battery of available tests can convincingly demonstrate whether someone is experiencing a certain level of post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys says that two psychiatrists testifying for McDermott said in depositions that they did not believe the men suffered severe levels of PTSD.
Some of the dive crew settled for an average of $300,000 each.
What Is A Life Worth?
So, how much have the survivors been offered by the companies, how much have they received—and how much are they likely to get?
According to a number of the divers, each member of the twenty-man American dive crew was offered $75,000 by McDermott just after the accident if he agreed not to sue. About half took the offer, but most of those returned the money when they realized that they might not ever be able to work at their old jobs again and therefore that they should seek much more than the amount offered. Four of them and a few of the other American employees on the 269 have settled for between $300,000 and $1 million. Ten other Americans, including Chuck Rountree, Tim Noble, Roy Cline, Rozy, Mitch Pheffer, and Victor Diaz, have not been able to settle with the companies and expect to go to court sometime in the near future.
Pitiful
The situation with the Mexican employees is, as one might expect, pitiful. Many of the Mexican crewmen who are suing say that initially C.C.C. offered them next to nothing, the peso equivalent of a few hundred dollars. When some threatened to sue, they were offered P10,000, or about $1,100—and jobs—if they did not sue. Nearly all refused. On March 7, 2000, four and a half years after the sinking, the Ciudad del Carmen newspaper reported that C.C.C.’s majority owner, C.F.C., still had not paid the Mexican survivors and the families of those who died. C.C.C. had offered to send the sons and daughters of the deceased to college. So far the company has not kept its promise. According to Charles Musslewhite, a Houston attorney who, along with a few other attorneys, represents most of the crew, the suing Mexicans have received no satisfaction in their own country and are suing in Texas. Musslewhite says the Texas State District Court agreed to hear the case on the basis that the 269 was partly American-owned and that since there are such great injustices in the Mexican legal system, the men probably had no recourse there.
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Posted by oceansandseas on May 17, 2019
Suffering Continues
Many of the 269‘s survivors, as fearful as they may be, have had to go to sea again because offshore work is the only occupation they know and because they have families to support and bills to pay. Several say they just cannot, will not, go back out, and some of these men and their families are on the verge of bankruptcy. The Mexican survivors are in the worst predicaments. Their financial safety nets were generally meager to begin with, and their difficulties finding other jobs were more pronounced. Also, many of the Mexican crewmen were not seafarers and had never experienced a hurricane at sea before they experienced three hurricanes in the course of a month. Thus they may have suffered, on average, far more severe PTSD repercussions than the Americans onboard. Skeptics will ask how it may be proven that these men are really suffering from PTSD. Dr. Matsakis indicated that a battery of available tests can convincingly demonstrate whether someone is experiencing a certain level of post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys says that two psychiatrists testifying for McDermott said in depositions that they did not believe the men suffered severe levels of PTSD.
Captain Trosclair did not have the authority to tow the 269 out of harm’s way.
What Value
So, how much have the survivors been offered by the companies, how much have they received—and how much are they likely to get?
According to a number of the divers, each member of the twenty-man American dive crew was offered $75,000 by McDermott just after the accident if he agreed not to sue. About half took the offer, but most of those returned the money when they realized that they might not ever be able to work at their old jobs again and therefore that they should seek much more than the amount offered. Four of them and a few of the other American employees on the 269 have settled for between $300,000 and $1 million. Ten other Americans, including Chuck Rountree, Tim Noble, Roy Cline, Rozy, Mitch Pheffer, and Victor Diaz, have not been able to settle with the companies and expect to go to court sometime in the near future.
No Recourse
The situation with the Mexican employees is, as one might expect, pitiful. Many of the Mexican crewmen who are suing say that initially C.C.C. offered them next to nothing, the peso equivalent of a few hundred dollars. When some threatened to sue, they were offered P10,000, or about $1,100—and jobs—if they did not sue. Nearly all refused. On March 7, 2000, four and a half years after the sinking, the Ciudad del Carmen newspaper reported that C.C.C.’s majority owner, C.F.C., still had not paid the Mexican survivors and the families of those who died. C.C.C. had offered to send the sons and daughters of the deceased to college. So far the company has not kept its promise. According to Charles Musslewhite, a Houston attorney who, along with a few other attorneys, represents most of the crew, the suing Mexicans have received no satisfaction in their own country and are suing in Texas. Musslewhite says the Texas State District Court agreed to hear the case on the basis that the 269 was partly American-owned and that since there are such great injustices in the Mexican legal system, the men probably had no recourse there.
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