7 years ago this month a young American pilot was taken hostage from a bar in Warri, close to where we lived (well, he was employed as a pilot but didn't get to do much flying during his brief BHL career!) Then another expat taken from the jetty. Then the Shell School headmaster with his two year old son, on a Sunday afternoon walk on the riverside. Then we had an aircraft attacked at Opuama and the crew just got airborne in time to save the a/c and pax but left the crewman behind (along with trainee crewman).
The it went quiet for a bit and the Civilian government came into power at the end of May. 1st of June saw the first successful attack (previos crews held for less than a day) of a 212 and the crew spent 3 days on holiday till the (now imprisoned) Bayelsa state governor helped secure their release as good
PR. Later that month a Port Harcourt based 212 was attacked and the crew held hostage for 19 days. The day before they were attacked, a Warri based aircraft escaped in the nick of time.
June was the month Wari was declared a national disaster area by the federal government due to the inter tribal war that was going on.
August saw the 3rd 212 crew taken hostage as they were attacked offshore on a Texaco rig. They spent a week in Fishtown.
October saw the 4th aircraft attacked, again at Opuama. That crew were split and the Nigerian pilot spent a week away, the crewman and expat captain spent two weeks living in a 7 ft by 7 ft bamboo hut. Lived on bananas and pineapple, slept on the floor and took their dump in the river, squatting on the edge.
Welcome to the glamourous world of commercial aviation!
Around this time the federal government decided enough was enough and took revenge for the killing of 12 police man that had also been taken hostage. The army drove into the town of Odi one morning and wiped it out (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/543544.stm). All went quiet.
By the end of 1999, 50% of the 14 pilots in Warri Shell had been attacked or held hostage. We got 7 and 5 as a means of compensating us for the harsh conditions (had been 8 and 4). The Shell families that had left, had returned.
All became peaceful again. New pilots arrived from various places, often Australian. Line training continued with explanations as to why we had adopted the strange practice of circling round every location endlessly looking into the bushes for bad guys and waiting for the HLO (but land based) to come out waving his white flag to signify all was well. "Ah well, back in 1999 is wasn't like this was the reply".
Eventually, practices slackened. All the new pilots thought that talk of the troubles were just war stories from 'whenis' (when I was...blah blah)
2003 came and started with a bang. The western swamp from Warri erupted and installations were attacked and destroyed. Mass evacuations took place and these newer pilots got involved and saw it all first hand. I believe the record was 23 in the back of a 76 and 22 in a 155!
One chap with a gun, who hadn't mastered the art of deflection shooting, managed to get a bullet through the stabiliser of a 155.
Some (7?) poor unfortunate Americans working at Escravos were caught on the river in a boat and murdered.
Hey, but look on the bright side: at least we were getting paid 20,000 GBP less than the North Sea pilots, so had fewer financial worries!
Peace returned, with the help of a couple of gunships and generally enhanced military presence.
More new pilots appeared and were line trained. Why were we transporting troops to and from locations? Why did Otumara have a shelter next to the pad full of armed 'troops'. Why was there a machine gun nest on the river side next to the heliport? "Ah, well back in 2003 and 1999 etc". More war stories.
So it goes on. A few years from now, some new young pilot will be sitting there listening to some old fart bleating on about 2006, 2003 and 1999 and wondering what on earth he's on about; it's fine here now!
However, I'm damm sure there are some serious parties going on in 42, 44, 45, and 46 Coronation Street, to name but a few!!
