Lagos (AFP) ― Remarkable video footage has emerged of a 29-year-old Nigerian sailor who was rescued after spending nearly three days trapped in an air pocket after his ship capsized in rough seas.
Harrison Okene had been left for dead after his tug boat the Jascon 4 went down off the Nigerian coast on May 26 but he managed to survive by squeezing into a compartment when the vessel settled upside-down 30 meters underwater.
Footage from a helmet-mounted camera on a frogman scouring the wreckage for survivors shows how he came across a hand in the gloomy waters.
“Ah, right. You’ve found one, yeah?” his colleague guiding operations says in English in a southern African accent, presuming the discovery of another dead body.
But the hand, finger tips badly wrinkled from the sea water, reaches out and grabs the diver’s glove.
His response is inaudible but sounds shocked while his colleague watching the monitors exclaims: “He’s alive! He’s alive!”
“Okay. Keep him there. All right. Just, just hold him there, Okay? Keep him there.”
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
