The fire alarm system on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was disabled prior to the catastrophic explosion that caused the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker said Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The rig's chief electronics technician told a federal panel Friday that the Horizon's fire alarm system and indicator light were deliberately set in "inhibited" mode so the alarms would not wake up sleeping rig workers in the middle of the night.

Michael Williams told the panel that he believed the alarms had been inhibited for over a year before the disaster, a decision made by leadership aboard the rig, the Washington Post reported.

The April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

The disabling of the alarm system was not unique -- federal records show that rig operators have paid frequent fines for bypassing safety systems that interfere with routine operations aboard, the Post reported.

Williams, a retired Marine, survived the fire by jumping from the burning rig into the Gulf of Mexico.

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