A giant wave capsized his boat and he survived three days thanks to a bubble

The story of harrison okene (43) is just great. In 2013, the Nigerian-born man was trapped in a sunken ship for 72 hours. .

At a depth of 30 meters, on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the divers had already recovered four bodies when they realized that Harrison, the ship’s cook, was still alive. The man survived in this condition until he was rescued and stated so during the trip he drank only one Coca Cola .

“What happened is a sign of divine deliverance,” Harrison told the channel. CB.C . “The professionals sent to that maritime tragedy only searched for the remains of the 12 sailors, but he managed to survive. How did he do?

The tragedy

The story began at 4:30 in the morning on May 26, 2013, when Harrison Okene, the ship’s cook, got up to go to the bathroom. The ship was an oil tug (the AHT Jascon-4) of the multinational Chevron and sailed in the Atlantic Ocean, above the Niger Delta.

The vessel, which had a crew of 12, was navigating dangerous waters off the Nigerian coast. Apparently, a tremendous wave broke the tow rope and disaster struck: the ship capsized.

Okene, was in the bathroom when the accident occurred, and soon after the boat began to sink. Most of the crew were locked away in their cabins, a necessary safety measure against the pirates who regularly plunder and hijack vessels in that area. That day, however, the security measure sealed the condemnation of the others. They are all dead.

The survivor

Harrison was violently swept out of the bathroom by the current in the middle of the night, leaving him in only his underwear. The water, which had entered almost the entire ship, left the man in the officer’s cabin. Some time later, the ship found itself on the bottom of the ocean and that was what saved it the man was immersed in an air bubble.

In the 60 hours following the sinking, Okene heard the sounds of ocean creatures making their way through the ship with the rest of the crew dead. Harrison miraculously survived thanks to the tiny air bubble. With it he was able to stay alive for 3 days: naked, without food, without water and without light.

The sinking of the ship was national news in Nigeria and the search began shortly after the tragedy. It was then that a group of divers, who had only expected to find dead bodies, were in for a pleasant surprise. They found Okene at just the right time. He didn’t have much oxygen left, he was about to freeze to death.

Immersed in the icy water, clad only in his boxers, Okene repeated the last psalm his wife had written to him, which some call the prayer of salvation: “By your name, Lord, give me life.”

Harrison was convinced that his rescue after 72 hours underwater and at a depth of 30 meters was a sign of divine salvation. The other 11 sailors aboard Jacson were deceased.

Divers, who were working in an oil field 120 kilometers from the site, had already picked up four bodies. When a hand appeared on the screen monitored by Walker on the rescue boat, showing what the diver was seeing, everyone thought it was just another dead body.

“It was terrifying for everyone,” she said. “For the trapped boy, because he didn’t know what was going on. It was a shock to the diver who was down there looking for bodies and we (in the control room) jumped when we saw the hand holding him on the screen”, cone of the divers jumped in BBC. He added: ‘He was incredibly lucky to be in an air pocket, but he would have limited time…until he could no longer breathe.’

The diver who rescued him used hot water to warm him up and then put an oxygen mask on him. After pulling it from the sunken boat, he put it in a decompression chamber and then brought it to the surface.

The bubble and physics

The first thing that most have thought of and that many physicists have begun to study is the size that an air bubble should have in order to support a person. Physicist Maxim Umansky of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory commented, “The pocket of air Okene found was, by his estimate, only 4 feet tall, and humans inhale about 7,000 to 8,000 liters of air every 24 hours. hours.

According to the physicist, the pressurized airbag likely contained enough oxygen to keep Okene alive for the nearly three days he was there. Even so, there is an additional danger: carbon dioxide (CO2), which is lethal to humans in very small concentrations.

Luck was definitely on the side of Harrison Okene, the man was able to put himself in the right place. If his body had been exposed to cold ocean water, he would have died within hours.