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.