We have seen many works such as movies or books about what it is like to be in the middle of the ocean. Many people even managed to survive such a difficult situation in real life. However, the story of Harrison Okene, which we will tell in this content, is quite different from the people we have just mentioned, even though it takes place far from the coast.
Because this man had to take shelter in the air pockets of the tugboat he was in, tens of meters under the sea, without any diving equipment. This struggle for life, full of desperation under water, lasted for exactly 3 days, and when he came out, he was quite surprised both how time passed and how he was greeted in the place where he lived. Let’s take a look at her story together.
Harrison was on one of the tugs supporting an oil tanker off the coast of Nigeria where oil operations were conducted, as cook:
The recently married Harrison earned a living as a ship’s cook. was providing. Although the weather looked beautiful on the day they set sail, no one knew about the storm that would cause disaster later in the day. Moreover, apart from the storm, there was another threat kept in mind: Pirates.
To avoid this threat, the crew locked their cabins when they were resting. This was one of the reasons that made it difficult for the crew to escape when the storm came and capsized the ship while everyone was sleeping.
Fortunately, Harrison had gone to the washroom at that hour:
As his crewmates tried to leave the rooms and make their way to the emergency departments, the force of the inflowing water made it difficult for Harrison to open the door. . For this reason, he could not catch up with his friends, and although he called out to them, they did not hear Harrison in the chaos. Then, as the door opened, Harrison was swept away by the current and was dragged into a different room.
Dragged into the captain’s room, where a small air pocket is located, Harrison was hit hard. It was then that the ship ‘like hit something’:
At that moment, Harrison realized that the ship was sitting on the seafloor. Moreover, the ship had turned upside down. Other teams who reported the sinking ship received help in a short time. But the divers of this rescue team were not prepared to stay in the depths for long, so they left without noticing Harrison.
Things were not going well for Harrison, who was both desperate and trying to be hopeful. Although there were many factors threatening his life where he was, he took a deep breath and tried to move to a different point. Swimming in the pitch dark, he made his way to the engineer’s room.
Luckily there was an air pocket here too. In other words, it has moved away from the problem of carbon dioxide poisoning a little. Now there are other problems
Now let’s do a situation assessment. Harrison was hungry, thirsty, frightened, and cold 30 meters under the water. Among them, he had breathing problems before, but now the room he was in worked a little bit. In order to prevent the cold problem, he tried to create a platform with the materials he found around. In this way, he kept his body above the freezing sea water. Otherwise it would have taken him several hours to die.
There was also a foul odor spreading around at this time. Harrison believed that the source of this odor was the crew who lost their lives. Worse still, he could hear the sounds of fish in the vicinity heading towards the corpses. It’s hard to fight when you think the world has given up on you, and when you’re faced with this situation. But that wasn’t enough for Harrison to give up.
Later, a higher-level diver team came to the scene and the place where the ship sank was determined. But the goal was not to save Harrison:
The purpose of this team was to collect the bodies underwater. The team, which included 6 divers apart from the technical staff, struggled to open the door that was held by the water for a while. When they entered inside, the search operations started under difficult conditions. By the time the team reached Harrison, they found 4 bodies.
They didn’t actually reach Harrison, Harrison got them (scary)
- Harrison’s moments of discovery
While Harrison was inside, he heard the sound of an anchor being dropped and the sound of divers entering. But he wasn’t sure if they were real or if his brain was playing tricks on him. As a result, he realized that he had no choice but to take his chance and took a deep breath and entered the water. Before Harrison did this, a diver named Nico had actually passed by him.
But even though Harrison made a sound, Nico moved forward without hearing him. Then Harrison dived into the water and tried to follow. Finally, Nico saw Harrison’s hand.
Saw it but thought it was one of the corpses:
- Harrison’s hand reaches out to Nico
But He panicked when Harrison’s hand took hold of his own. At that time, the officer on the ship said, “He is alive! He’s alive!” The lyrics can be heard in the video. From there, the divers moved to Harrison’s room and applied medical attention with the help of the technical team. At this point, you might be thinking, “Why didn’t they bring it to the surface right away?” A question may come up.
To answer this, we need to look roughly at the disease known as the hit or decompression. The aforementioned disease involves passing from high pressure places (such as the sea floor) to low pressure places (such as the sea surface) suddenly, causing the gas in the body to mix with the blood and cause conditions such as pain and paralysis. Especially when paired with situations such as panic, deadly scenarios can occur.
To avoid this issue, they had to warm Harrison’s body. They also used hot water for this. They soon showed him how to use the oxygen mask and brought Harrison to the surface.
He thought he had been down for 12 hours, but it had been exactly 3 days:
Harrison underwent treatment in the decompression chamber for a while after reaching the surface so that the pressure issue could be completely taken care of. . When he got out, he thought that his other teammates might be alive, but out of the 12-man crew he was in, only he survived the event. Of the others, the bodies of 10 people were collected, but what happened to the body of the remaining 1 is still unknown.
He couldn’t attend his teammates’ funeral and after all he became a diver himself: So how?
Nigeria, where Harrison lives, is a very strict religious place. When he went to the church and asked the people there why this situation happened to him and why only he was saved, that is, when he started to look for an answer to what had happened, he asked if he had used black magic, according to what he said.
Relatives of his crewmates may also suspect this, so Harrison said he was unable to attend the crew’s funeral. Although he swore not to return to the sea after all these events, he became a professional diver in 2015.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4
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