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A listener note, Against the Odds uses dramatizations that are based on true events.

Some elements, including dialogue, may be invented, but everything is based on research. Dive Inspector Ed Punshard

Ed Punshard races across the deck of the silver pier, holding a pen and not pad.

I'm looking for John Barr. Has anyone seen John Barr silver pit, holding a pen and no pad.

I'm looking for John Barr.

Has anyone seen John Barr?

He's trying to make a list of survivors,

but in all the chaos, it's hard to tell

who's been brought safely aboard,

and who's still missing. It's 10.50 PM on July 6, 1988 in the

North Sea off the coast of Scotland. A few hundred feet away, the Piper Alpha

oil rig is still ablaze. Punchard and his dive crew escaped the rig a half hour

ago aboard a small Z boat which brought the men here to the silver pit, a 138-foot-long emergency rescue ship.

Remarkably, some men are unscathed. That includes the clerk Dick Common, who fell from a rope and bounced off the side of the Z boat and into the sea. Punchard watched it happen and assumed Common was a dead man, but he arrived here a few minutes ago without a scratch on him.

Other men were not so lucky. They're bruised and burned or show signs of shock,

and to Punchard's frustration the silver pit has few

medical supplies. It's a converted fishing vessel that hardly seems suited to the task

of rescuing men from a burning oil rig.

Punchart looks up and sees an apocalyptic ball of fire shooting into the night sky.

It must be half a mile tall and so bright it's like staring into the sun.

...