-By Warner Todd Huston
This guy is one lucky sailor! A 12-man crew that went down in a tugboat off the coast of Nairobi were all presumed dead but recovery divers got a big surprise when they finally got to the downed vessel and found one man still alive after nearly three days on the ocean floor.
Authorities thought all hands were lost and took their time with a recovery effort but 60 hours after the boat capsized and sank divers got the shock of their lives when they found ship’s cook Harrison Okene was still alive in an air pocket inside the stricken ship’s hull.
Okene was facing a very long, slow death as his air pocket slowly ran out of oxygen and as he died of food and water deprivation, but luckily that horrible death wasn’t to be when divers happened to show up to recover what they assumed would be the bodies of 12 dead sailors.
The video from the diver’s helmet camera is simply amazing. The relief on Okene’s face is palpable as the diver’s head pops up into the man’s air pocket haven.
Once the divers removed the sailer from his near tomb they placed him in a decompression chamber for two days to eliminate the nitrogen gasses that had built up in his bloodstream from his exposure to the extreme depth for nearly 60 hours.
But finally, after his health was assured, he walked out of the decompression chamber a living and lucky man.
“I prayed about a hundred times. When I was tired, I started calling on the name of God. I was just calling on His name for divine intervention. 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,” Okene told the media after he got home.
“I will just attribute everything to the grace of God,” Okene’s wife said.
Authorities report that the ship sank off the coast of Nairobi due to a sudden ocean swell that the bulky ship could not negotiate.
Wow, what an amazing rescue, eh? God was certainly on this guy’s side.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Follow Warner Todd Huston on:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.