Nigerian Survived 3 Days Underwater
Durban - In what has been described as an
incredible feat, a team of South African divers, including at least four
from Durban, has rescued a man who spent almost three days in an air
bubble - 30m under the sea - after the tugboat he was on capsized off
the coast of Nigeria.
Ten other crew members died and one is still missing. Many of them were locked in their cabins as a precaution against pirates.
But Nigerian Harrison Okene had
just got up when the ship rolled. He was able to get himself into an air
bubble just 1.5m by 3m, where he perched on a table to keep himself
alive, drinking softdrinks out of cans that were floating around him.
According to the owners of the
boat, West Africa Ventures, the vessel capsized, but did not sink to the
bottom. It floated 30m below the surface, with Okene trapped inside.
The vessel had been towing a tanker to a mooring buoy on May 26 when it
was flipped by heavy swells.
The South African divers were on a
different expedition on the West Coast of Africa when they responded to
a May Day call. A 100km away the Chevron-chartered tugboat, AHT Jascon
4, had capsized. It was 27km off Escaros in the oil rich Delta state of
Nigeria.
What was meant to be a body
recovery mission for the South African divers turned into an underwater
rescue when, after 60 hours alone in the wreck, Okene grabbed a diver as
he swam past, having earlier failed to attract the attention of the
first diver down.
Divers
were shocked to have found Okene alive and said they were amazed by how
calm he was during the rescue. Because he had been 30m underwater his
body had filled with nitrogen and divers had to put him into a
decompression helmet before he could be safely brought to the surface.
Okene’s incredible feat and the
divers’ effort to bring him to the surface safely has caught the
attention of maritime experts and international film-makers who want to
turn the rescue into a documentary.
Writing on the Facebook page of a
maritime website, Paul McDonald, a “dynamic positioning officer” on
board the dive support vessel involved with the recovery and rescue
mission, said: “All on board could not believe how cool he was when
being rescued. The divers put a diving helmet and harness on to him and
he followed the diver to the bell where he was then taken to deck level
and kept in the chamber and decompressed for 2 days. It was amazing to
be part of this rescue and my sympathy is with the families who lost
(their) loved ones.”
Rob Almeida, an accomplished
sailor and partner at gCaptain, in an article written for the company’s
website, had spoken to former US Navy Salvage Officer Patrick Keenan
about the amazing rescue
“The fact this person survived is
incredible,” commented Keenan. “After spending two days at 30 meters of
depth, he had become saturated, meaning his body had absorbed all the
pressurised gases and equalised with the surrounding water pressure.
Bringing him to surface from that depth, and after having been saturated
at 3 or 4 atmospheres, could easily have killed him.” In saturation
diving, divers are brought to the surface from depth using a pressurised
diving bell, which mates up to a pressurised chamber on deck. This
allows the “saturated” divers to live and work above and below the
surface at a steady pressure state for an indefinite period of time, and
most importantly, to be brought to the surface safely,” Keenan wrote.
Specialist deep sea diver Patrick
Voorma, who owns Calypso Dive Centre at uShaka Marine World, said it was
incredible that Harrison was able to survive at those depths for such a
long period.
“When
you are under water, your internal body pressure will become the same
pressure as the water pressure surrounding you. If you go down to 30m
there is four bars of pressure - double the pressure in your car tyres -
being exerted in your body,” he said.
“By staying under water for such a
long time, your body becomes saturated and you will have four bars
worth of gas pressure in your body of which the nitrogen will be the
problem.”
“It will be like opening up
a can of Coke. All that nitrogen will just rush out of your body and
will give you a gas embolism which can kill you instantly.”
Corrie van Kessel, spokeswoman for
West Africa Ventures, said on Thursday that the divers had yet to find
the body of the 12th crew member.
“The search and rescue operation that has been under way since 26 May 2013 has had to be stopped for safety reasons.
The vessel, Jascon 4, which is
located some 30 metres under water in an upside down position, has
become so unstable that the risk of injury to our rescue divers has
become unacceptably high,” Van Kessel said in a statement.
“Our
divers performed an extremely difficult and dangerous task in the most
testing of conditions and we are grateful for their professional service
as well as the contributions of many other personnel who gave all their
efforts to this challenging recovery operation.”
