It all began like a good disaster film. The gas alarm sounded shortly after noon and the emergency evacuation started just moments later on the Elgin drilling platform in the North Sea. Only a small contingent stayed behind, laboring to plug the leak. Having failed to do so after hours of trying, they turned off all the machinery and electricity and fled the platform too.
When the last helicopter lifted off, it left the drilling rig alone on a swelling cloud of highly flammable gas from the deep.
For almost an entire week, though, something else stirred on the eerily deserted platform. Flickering way up at the tip of the 150-meter (490-foot) stack was an open gas flare, which the crew had failed to extinguish last Sunday as it hastily abandoned the platform.
On Saturday, Total, the French energy company that owns the stricken platform, announced to the relief of many that the gas flare had burned itself out. Up to that point, as a company spokesman thankfully noted, the wind had been blowing the gas vapors away from the platform and would hopefully continue to do so.
