into flames, an inferno that killed 11 men. that s when the disaster occurred. were there signs of a disaster in the making? tie ron benton was checking for anything unusual. weeks before the blast, he says he found it. he talked to special investigations unit correspondent drew griffin. tyrone benton. we flew down to the pod and saw there was an angular fit tig that had a leak on it, what was connected to the angular fitting wasn t able to see but there was an angular fitting that did have a leak. it was a fluid leak on one of the two pods.
according to our tracking now, the disaster in the gulf has spilled just under 100 million gallons of oil into the gulf. tonight, you re going to hear from the man who may have seen the first signs of this catastrophe. his name is tyrone benton. his job on the deepwater horizon was critical. he watched cameras to check for anything unusual and weeks before the explosion he found it a cloud in the water. it was a leak. reporter: tyrone may have seen the first sign something was very, very wrong on the deepwater horizon. did you ever get close enough to the leak to see what was leaking? yeah. we flew down to the pod and saw
day after day, says benton, the fluid leak continued. day after day, bp and transocean were notified. you re the first person that s come forward that i know of that said we had this problem. there was a leak. instead of properly fixing the leak, officials from bp and transocean decided to bypass that leak. it s hard to determine, as you said, whether or not that leak had anything to do with this. but certainly the prudent thing, the most safe thing to do would have been to pull up that blow-out preventer, fix it and put it back down. is that not correct? yeah, you could look at it that way, yes. no one listened and a few weeks later, tyrone benton was lying in his bunk on the deepwater horizon when the first explosion knocked him out of bed. the second covered him in debris as he scrambled to find his
put it back down. is that not correct? you could look at it that way, yes. reporter: no one listened, and a few weeks later, tyrone benton was lying on his bunk on the deepwater horizon when the first explosion knocked him out of bed. the second covered him in debris as he scrambled to find a flashlight. it was pitch black. panic on board? screaming? panic, screaming, people jumping overboard. it was completely chaos. and i could hear my supervisor telling everybody, let s go, let s go, let s get in the lifeboats, we ve got to go. he kept his head. he kept his cool. most of us were just panicking. we wanted to go, like, right then. but we had to wait for everybody. so we sat on that rig as long as we possibly could for everyone to be accounted for. reporter: not everybody was
the explosion, tyrone benton knew he was looking at a potentially dangerous week, that the b.o.p., blow-out preventer, was at possible risk for failure. and it was taken care of? it wasn t taken care of. in order to take care of it, you have to pull the whole b.o.p., which will shut down production. like i said, from my understanding, they just shut down one pod and worked off the other. tyrone, 11 people dead. yes. for the better part of a day, the leak was studied, observed, measured. the most prudent course to fix it, says benton, was ruled out. and so instead? they went ahead and shut down that particular pod, the yellow pod, and started working off the other pod. you liken that to shutting down one engine of a twin-engine plane? that s correct. you can do it. yes. but not ideal. if you have to, then you can.