How Nigerian Man Who Survived 3 Days At The Bottom Of Atlantic Ocean Was Rescued

Entombed at
the bottom
of the
Atlantic
Ocean in an
upended
tugboat for
three days,
Harrison
Odjegba
Okene
begged God
for a miracle.
The Nigerian cook survived by breathing an
ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air
pocket. A video of Mr Okene's rescue in May
that was posted on the internet more than
six months later has gone viral this week.
As the temperature dropped to freezing, Mr Okene,
dressed only in boxer shorts, recited the last psalm
his wife had sent by text message, sometimes
called the Prayer for Deliverance: "Oh God, by your
name, save me. … The Lord sustains my life."
He believes his rescue after 72 hours underwater at
a depth of about 100ft is a sign of divine
deliverance. The other 11 seaman aboard the
Jascon 4 died.
Divers sent to the scene were looking only for
bodies, according to Tony Walker, project manager
for the Dutch company DCN Diving, who were
called to because they were working on a
neighbouring oil field 75 miles away.
The divers had already pulled up four bodies s o
when a hand appeared on the TV screen Mr Walker
was monitoring in the rescue boat, showing what
the diver in the Jascon saw, everybody assumed it
was another corpse.
"The diver acknowledged that he had seen the
hand and then, when he went to grab the hand, the
hand grabbed him!" Mr Walker said.
"It was frightening for everybody. For the guy that
was trapped because he didn't know what was
happening. It was a shock for the diver while he
was down there looking for bodies, and we (in the
control room) shot back when the hand grabbed
him on the screen."
On the video, there is an exclamation of fear and
shock from Mr Okene's rescuer, then joy as the
realisation sets in. Mr Okene recalls hearing
"There's a survivor! He's alive".
Mr Walker said Mr Okene could not have lasted
much longer. " He was incredibly lucky he was in
an air pocket but he would have had a limited time
(before) … he wouldn't be able to breathe any
more," he said
The full video of the rescue captured by divers was
released by DCN Diving. Initially, a shorter version
of the rescue emerged on the internet.
Mr Okene's ordeal began at around 4.30am on May
26. He was in the toilet when the tug, one of three
towing an oil tanker in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta
waters, gave a sudden lurch, then keeled over.
"I was dazed and everywhere was dark as I was
thrown from one end of the small cubicle to
another," Mr Okene told Nigeria's Nation
newspaper.
He groped his way out of the toilet and tried to find
a vent, propping doors open as he moved on. He
discovered some tools and a life vest with two
flashlights, which he stuffed into his shorts.
When he found a cabin of the sunken vessel that
felt safe, he began the long wait, getting colder and
colder as he played back a mental tape of his life –
remembering his mother, friends, mostly the
woman he married five years before with whom he
had not yet fathered a child.
He worried about his colleagues – 10 Nigerians and
the Ukrainian captain including four young cadets
from Nigeria's Maritime Academy. They would have
locked themselves into their cabins, standard
procedure in an area stalked by pirates.
He became really worried when he heard the sound
of fish, shark or barracudas he supposed, eating
and fighting over something big.
As the waters rose, he made a rack on top of a
platform and piled two mattresses on top.
He told the Nation: "I started calling on the name of
God. … I started reminiscing on the verses I read
before I slept. I read the Bible from Psalm 54 to 92.
My wife had sent me the verses to read that night
when she called me before I went to bed."
He survived off just one bottle of Coke, all he had to
sustain him during the trauma.
Mr Okene said he thought he was going to die
when he heard the sound of a boat engine and
anchor dropping, but failed to get the attention of
rescuers.
He thought, given the size of the boat, that it would
take a miracle for a diver to locate him, so he
waded across the cabin, stripped the wall down to
its steel body, then knocked on it with a hammer.
But "I heard them moving away. They were far
away from where I was," he said. By the time he
was saved, relatives already had been told the
sailors were dead.
He was rescued by a diver who first used hot water
to warm him up, then attached him to an oxygen
mask. Once free of the sunken boat, he was put
into a decompression chamber and then safely
returned to the surface.
SOURCE: AP
Sent From David Aniemeka