The circumstances and causes of industrial disasters can sometimes be confusing. Here’s one way to get a clearer picture.

The Chemical Safety Board’s recent report on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster includes an animation depicting how the blowout preventer may have failed, resulting in a dangerous flow of high-pressure oil and gas from the Macono well in the Gulf of Mexico. In less than 12 minutes, CSB takes viewers from how the blowout preventer is meant to work to what happened aboard the rig and the depths below to cause the device to fail.

CSB is well-known for its video presentations, and has won several awards for its efforts.

When you have some time, check out CSB’s library of videos, many of which are animations portraying how these disasters have occurred. They can be insightful and frightening – many disasters CSB has investigated occurred due to simple oversight, bad housekeeping or ignorance.

Being able to visualize how incidents occurred and what could have been done to prevent them can be an important tool other facilities use to prevent similar disasters from occurring.