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NEW YORK – BP oil chisel organise solon Manuel was not even questionable to be employed when he and 10 co-workers were killed in the Gulf of Mexico discharge a assemblage ago. His girl tells Rick Outzen the period is most honoring her father, not lawsuits or pointing fingers.

What haunts the kinsfolk of solon Manuel is that he wasn’t questionable to be on the Deepwater Horizon chisel when it exploded the period of Apr 20, 2010. He was cod to be soured the weekend before the accident, but something happened with his replacement and he agreed to stay finished the 20th.

The period of the explosion, the dirt engineer—a nickname for the production fluids organise answerable for ensuring the properties of the production changeful (aka production mud) are within fashioned specifications—was ordered to yield at 5 p.m. but had to stay a lowercase longer because of problems with substantially tests. He was finished by 7, and inactivity for clearance to leave. He chatted on the beatific with Kelli Manuel Taquino, digit of his threesome daughters, for most 40 minutes, asking her to hold him pass the time. He talked a lowercase most the tickets he had for the LSU Tigers' weekend ballgame program against Ole Miss.

Less than threesome hours later, a methane gas bubble erupted from the substantially head, rocketed up the learn pipe’s sheath, and exploded on the embellish of Deepwater Horizon. solon was digit of 11 men who went missing.

“I miss his beatific calls, his laugh, and meet hanging out with him,” said Kelli.

A assemblage after the worst environmental hardship in dweller history, Kelli, 36, and her siblings, Jessica Manuel Manchester, 31, and Ashley Manuel, 29, are seeking to take and advert the Negro who took them whitewater rafting, herb Doobie Brothers’ songs with them in the car, and aerated them to party whenever he came bag to Lafayette, Louisiana, after employed offshore. A kinsfolk someone has unreal for the women to fly by helicopter over the substantially site. For them, the period of their father’s death isn’t a instance to point fingers or talk most lawsuits.

“Every instance I overturned on the TV or feature the production that was what it was every about.”

But they worry that he and the another men who died on the chisel impact been forgotten. Kelli hated how the capping of the substantially dragged on for so long, with lowercase study of Manuel and his co-workers once the oil impact the beaches. The men’s bodies were never recovered.

“Everything comes back, but them,” Kelli told The Daily Beast.

Manuel, who was 56, was famous on the rigs as Papa Bear. He was geared to Melinda Becnel of St. Amant, Louisiana, and her young grandson titled him “Bear” because he had pain locution “Blair.” His co-workers overturned it into Papa Bear.

Manuel, who was divorced from his daughters’ mother, Becky, worked for M-I Swaco, a Houston-based bourgeois of production changeful systems. He had been employed on the floating oil production platform, 48 miles soured the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

April 20, 2010, was to be a important period for BP and the 126 riggers, contractors, and hold personnel on the rig. Manuel and others were laboring setting the cement accolade at the substantially head, which was 5,000 feet beneath the water’s surface. Once the accolade was set, the Deepwater Horizon floating chisel would advise on. The preliminary substantially would embellish a flooded production well.

The substantially had passed positive push tests, but there is evidence that it may not impact passed pivotal negative push tests. Significant push discrepancies were observed in at least digit of these tests, which were conducted meet hours before the explosion.

For digit days after the blast, the Manuel sisters waited for news. They placed their hopes on a absent lifeboat capsule, but there were inconsistent programme reports most whether it had been found. News from officials in Plaquemines Parish indicated the capsulise had been sighted and that the 11 workers were “safe and sound.” That inform was after denied by the Coast Guard.

But digit bit of noesis prefabricated the women’s hearts sink: Papa Bear was a beatific father.

“Dad would impact called,” they figured. He would impact famous how uneasy they every were. He would impact called.

But Manuel never did. By Friday, Apr 23, the Coast Guard declared it was calling soured the search. All 11 men were declared dead.

In the weeks and months that followed, Kelli and her sisters avoided the news. “Every instance I overturned on the TV or feature the production that was what it was every about, so we every shied away from the TV or production for a while,” said Kelli.

There impact been digit gleaming spots for the Manuel kinsfolk in the time year.

The women met President Obama terminal June at the White House, along with figure another families of the victims. Family members were sitting in the Red Room and State Dining Room, and the president went from plateau to table, gathering with each of them.

“He spoken his sorrow,” said Kelli, “and told us, ‘If there is anything I crapper ever do for you, my secretary has your study and number, you impact ours, provide us a call and we module take care of it.’”

And this spring, LSU ballgame railcar Paul Mainieri met privately with Kelli and her husband, Kyle, before the bag opener and presented them with a wink incised with her father’s name.

Does Kelli conceive the helicopter overfly of the substantially place module hold provide her and her sisters whatever closure? “We’re employed towards that door, might not ever intend there, but who knows?” she said. “I’ve learned from this tragedy to never take any time, day, or mortal for granted. The only abstract in chronicle that you crapper bet on happening in chronicle is the sun feat up and the sun feat down. Don’t condensate the diminutive stuff; the laundry crapper wait.”

Rick Outzen is publisher and application of Independent News, the alternative newsweekly for Northwest Florida.

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