Trapped at the bottom of the ocean | Harrison Okene story — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01On May 28th, 2013, divers in the wreckage of the  Jacson-4 were attempting a triage of the vessel,
2. 0:08which overturned at the coast of Nigeria. What  they didn't expect to find was a survivor.
3. 0:22So in 2013, the 29-years-old Nigerian cook Mr.  Harrison Okene was working onboard a powerful boat
4. 0:31used for towing larger vessels, when it overturns  in Atlantic Ocean during the heavy storm. The
5. 0:3712-man crew was there to stabilize an oil tanker  at a platform. They were about 32km off the
6. 0:44Nigerian coast at the time of the incident. The  ship eventually settled 30m down on the seabed,
7. 0:52upside down. Everyone drowned, except Harrison. It  was around 5 a.m. and he was on the toilet taking
8. 1:00dump when the vessel just started going down.  The speed of sinking was fast. In pitch dark,
9. 1:07he managed to grope his way from the toilet into  another room, which had enough air to keep him
10. 1:13alive. There, he set a simple platform to keep his  body partially above water and delay hypothermia.
11. 1:21There in the dark, as the horror of  his predicament began to sink in,
12. 1:25Harrison could do little but pray. When the  boat was 30 meters underwater, he could not see
13. 1:32anything. All around him was pitch-dark and the  ocean in which he swam was cold. He was crying and
14. 1:40calling on Jesus to rescue him. He prayed so hard.  He was hungry, thirsty and cold and he was just
15. 1:47praying to see some kind of light. He was wearing  just his underpants, stuck in an air bubble a
16. 1:54little more than a metre thick, alone, and partly  submerged in cool water. In the hours that follow,
17. 2:01he tried to find if another person was alive or  maybe, if a diver had been sent. Another hurdle he
18. 2:08had to jump was that solitude in the ocean was not  quite something sea-people are trained to survive.
19. 2:14But all his movements were expending the very  little oxygen he was receiving in the water.
20. 2:21In fact, the rescue team that later found him  theorized that if they were to find any living
21. 2:26person, they had concerns about how that person  would react having inhaled in that much nitrogen
22. 2:33during the time. If that much nitrogen filled  any living person, they would most likely die
23. 2:39if they rushed their heartbeat. That means  a survivor in that instance should be helped
24. 2:45into not panicking. Harrison survived on only one  bottle of Coke. Two flashlights that he had found
25. 2:54gave up after less than a day. In the dark,  he had almost given up hope after three days
26. 3:00when he suddenly heard the sound of a boat, a  hammering on the side of the vessel and then,
27. 3:06after a while, saw lights and the rising waters  around him bubbling. He said he knew it had to
28. 3:14be a diver, but he was on the wrong end of the  cabin. The diver came in, but he was too fast,
29. 3:22so Harrison saw the light but before he  could get to him, the diver was already out.
30. 3:28Harrison tried to follow him in the pitch  darkness, but he couldn't trace him,
31. 3:32so he went back. Divers were looking only  for bodies and already had recovered four
32. 3:39corpses when they came upon Harrison When the  diver returned, Harrison had to swim again
33. 3:46to reach him and still the diver did not see him.  Harrison then tapped him at the back of his neck.
34. 3:52When the diver saw his hand, he said "corpse,  corpse!" into his microphone, reporting up to
35. 3:58the rescue vessel. When the diver brought his  hand close to Harrison’s, he pulled on his hand
36. 4:04and the diver goes "He's alive! He's alive!" The  next challenge was getting Harrison safely to the
37. 4:10surface. After such a long time at depth, he had  absorbed potentially fatal amounts of nitrogen.
38. 4:18Normally you would dive recreationally for  no more than 20 minutes at those depths.
39. 4:24Bringing him suddenly to the surface,  his blood would fill with bubbles
40. 4:28which would prevent a sufficient amount  of blood from being sent to his brain.
41. 4:33The team needed to skilfully readjust  the gas levels in Harrison`s body.
42. 4:39They suited him with a diving helmet and  guided him to a diving bell, designed to
43. 4:44maintain internal pressure. He lost awareness  during the transfer but managed to survive.
44. 4:51The bell then brought him safely to the  surface, where he spent two days in a
45. 4:57decompression chamber. He suffered from peeling  skin, recurring nightmares, and insatiable hunger,
46. 5:04but was otherwise in good health. He had assumed  that all the other 11 crew made it safely to the
47. 5:10surface when the boat went down, while he  alone sank to the bottom. It wasn’t until
48. 5:16later that he learned he was the only survivor.  All the bodies of his colleagues were recovered
49. 5:23except one, who was never found. He said he  didn't go to the funerals of his colleagues
50. 5:30because he feared their families' reactions -  Nigerians being generally very religious but also
51. 5:37superstitious. How this air bubble wasn’t full  of water was anyone’s guess. I would say someone
52. 5:45was looking after him. That’s all for today,  stay tuned for some more true cases. Take care.