Draft:Harrison Odjegba Okene

  • Comment: After reading the draft, WP:BLP1E was resonating. As it happens, this article was previously deleted for the exact same WP:BLP1E concern; I don't see how the situation now is any different than in 2013. Utopes (talk / cont) 22:05, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Harrison Odjegba Okene, is a Nigerian marine repair and maintenance diver who survived for 3 days inside a ship wreck at the bottom of the ocean.

At the time of his ordeal he was a ships cook on a tugboat called the Jascon- 4. an air pocket in 100 feet (30 Meters) on a sunken tugboat, the Jascon-4. The vessel, which capsized on 26 May 2013 due to strong ocean swells, had been performing tension tow operations and stabilising an oil tanker at a Chevron platform in the Gulf of Guinea[1] (in the Atlantic Ocean), about 32 km (20 mi) off the Nigerian coast.

After sinking, the boat came to rest, upside-down, on the sea floor 20 miles from land. Eleven crew members perished. However, in total darkness, Okene felt his way into the engineer's office, where an air pocket about 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) in height contained enough oxygen to keep him alive. There, he fabricated a platform from a mattress and other floating objects, keeping his upper body above the water to help prevent hypothermia.[2][3][4][5] According to Okene, prawns were nibbling on his feet and legs as he sat in the water, praying.

Three days after the accident, Okene was discovered by South African divers Nicolaas “Nico” van Heerden, Darryl Oosthuizen and Andre Erasmus, employed to investigate the scene and recover what they presumed would be twelve bodies. Upon entering the engineer’s office, van Heerden saw a human hand, belonging to Okene, which he assumed to be a corpse. As he pulled on Okene’s hand, van Heerden realised the hand was grasping onto his. Immediately, the diver surfaced within the small space to speak with and devise a survival plan with Okene. The rescuing divers determined the only option was to bring Okene the proper dive equipment, outfitting him with a diving helmet so he could breathe; after swimming out of the shipwreck, Okene was transferred into an enclosed diving bell and safely returned to the surface for decompression from saturation. Nonetheless, the stressful experience combined with the decompression transfer caused Okene to pass out; however, he was revived, and immediately taken to hospital by helicopter. Experts determined that given the amount of space Okene was living in underwater, he possibly had two or three days’ worth of oxygen remaining.[1]

Post Rescue

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About a year after his rescue, Okene was in a car that went of a bridge into the water. After escaping and rescuing the other passenger, he enrolled in a three month diving course and now works as diver making repairs to oil and gas facilities.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b Top Ten Weather Disasters. The Weather Channel. 27 August 2016.
  2. ^ Sifferlin, Alexandra (3 December 2013). "Man Survives 60 Hours Under Water In Sunken Ship". Time. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  3. ^ "Nigerian survives two days at sea, in underwater air pocket". Africa. BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation. 13 June 2013. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  4. ^ Moran, Terry (3 December 2013). "Cook Survives 3 Days in Air Pocket of Sunken Ship Off Nigerian Coast". ABC News. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  5. ^ Lallanilla, Marc (4 December 2013). "Undersea Miracle: How Man in Sunken Ship Survived 3 Days". LiveScience.com. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  6. ^ Cocozza, Paul (26 September 2023). "I survived three days in a capsized boat on the ocean floor – praying in my air bubble". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 August 2024.