Oceans and Seas

the work of author Michael Krieger

Part 8 – Hurricane Force – All the Men In the Sea: The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Rescues in History

Posted on Aug 15, 2017

Part 8 – Hurricane Force – All the Men In the Sea: The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Rescues in History

Disease of our Times

With hurricane force winds expected to be over the barge in as little as six hours, time was not on the side of the divers.

If the 269 sank with them still not fully decompressed, they would either drown, going down with the barge, or leave their sealed chamber and die of the bends, one of the more painful ways by which a human can exit this world.

Decompression sickness is a disease of our times.

Nitrogen

Almost unknown until men started working in deep mines and build­ing underwater tunnels in the last century, it was named “the bends” because it often produces pain in the abdomen and joints that is so severe it will cause the victim to double over in agony.

As a diver descends into the water (or someone goes deep underground), pressure greatly increases on the body, on air in the lungs, and on the air’s main components, nitrogen and oxygen, which are dissolved in the bloodstream.

The great­est problem is with the inert gas, nitrogen.

When a diver or worker gradually ascends to the surface, the nitrogen can natu­rally leave the body slowly, as gas, through the lungs, which is why decompression takes so long.

If the person returns too quickly to the surface, he is likely to have nitrogen trapped in the fatty tissues and in the lungs.

This is the stinger. It protrudes from the stern of the barge. The nearly completed pipeline (in red), is lowered to the sea floor.  Photos courtesy Lee Lloyd

Permanent Breakdown

The trapped nitrogen forms bubbles in the bloodstream and the bubbles flow with the blood to various parts of the body.

In the joints and in the stomach the bubbles expand, causing enormous pain.

In blood vessels running through the bones there is no place for the bubbles to expand.

Consequently they can block the thousands of small veins that run through the bones, especially in the long bones like the femur and the tibia.

The result is a permanent breakdown of the bones known as dysbaric osteonecrosis.

In the 1958 building of the Clyde Tunnel in Scotland nearly 20 percent of the workers experienced this disease, as did almost 35 percent of the workers building a sewer tunnel in Milwaukee in 1969.

Paralysis of the lower body and spinal cord injury are other results of decompression sickness, but the worst scenarios, almost always resulting in death, are embolisms, or blockages, in either the heart or the brain.

Embolisms, as mentioned earlier, are the main causes of death in cases of explosive decompression.

Pure Oxygen

So why, if inert gases like nitrogen or helium can cause the bends, do divers not just breathe pure oxygen?

Unfortunately, too great a concentration of oxygen in the body is just as toxic as the other gases.

Most people don’t realize it, but we here on the Earth’s surface breathe far more nitrogen than oxy­gen.

Air at sea level is 79 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxy­gen, with just traces of other gases and organic matter.

Lung damage may result from breathing a 60 percent or higher con­centration of oxygen for more than six hours.

At greater con­centrations the nervous system is affected.

Divers breathing too great a concentration of oxygen can also experience convul­sions and seizures, both resulting in death.

Tables and Procedures

Understanding only too well how little time they had to help the divers, Ambrose and his assistants set out to verify whether the old emergency decompression procedures were still valid.

Dr. Russ Peterson, a noted hyperbaric physician in Houston who had developed the procedures, was the first to be called, but he was out of town.

His wife said she would try to track him down. Next, they called Dr. Gordon Daugherty, of Austin, Texas, the company’s dive physician.

Daugherty asked Ambrose to immediately fax him the tables and procedures.

Daugherty then faxed them to Bill Hamilton, another hyper­baric-table expert.

By that time Russ Peterson had called back.

Together the three experts and the three diving officers came up with a plan that they hoped would run the fine line be­tween getting the divers decompressed before the hurricane hit and giving them the bends.

But no one knew for sure if it would work.

Imminent Danger

At 1445 that afternoon, only two hours after he had been alerted, Ambrose called Ed Burgueno, McDermott Undersea Services’ representative at Ciudad del Carmen.

He gave Burgueno the following instructions for him to relay to the 269 by single-sideband radio:

“At 1530 hours, if you choose to com­mence emergency decompression, increase the elevation pres­sure rate to five feet per hour.”

Change and start the divers breathing 50/50 nitrox [nitrogen and oxygen] through BIB masks* at twenty minutes on/five minutes off cycles.

At thirty-three feet switch to pure oxygen and continue the twenty minutes on/five minutes off cycles on BIBs.

At ten feet depth commence a 110-minute hold (this will be the Div­ing Supt.’s call as to the conditions, and the threat of disaster that may exist at that time).

If the vessel is in imminent danger at this time, the divers should be brought to the surface.

After completion of the 110-minute hold, slowly bring the divers to the surface.

After surfacing, divers should remain in the vicinity of the recompression facilities and breath pure oxygen a minimum of ten minutes out of every thirty for the next six hours.

This authorization is not a directive to implement this procedure but rather authority to do so should the on-site Diving Superintendent decide to do so.”

Switching to Air

Ambrose later explained the reasoning behind the procedure.

“These efforts were to have the divers off gas as fast as possible by placing oxygen in their systems.

Then after switch­ing to air it was hoped that the helium would be purged from their bodies and that it would be replaced by nitrogen, but in a dilute form similar to what they would experience at sea level, out of the chamber.”

Still, the ultimate decision whether to go to emergency decompression was left to the diving superintendent on the 269, Chuck Rountree, and to the divers themselves.

Rountree quickly consulted with the six divers in the chamber as well as with his two diving supervisors and Richard Lobb.

They all agreed they ought to go ahead. At 1515 Chuck called Ambrose back and told him, “OK, we’re initiating it.”

 

*B.I.B. (built-in breathing system) masks allow a different gas to be given to divers than what already exists in the chamber.

Each diver inside the chamber wears a breathing mask connected by a supply hose to gas supplies outside the chamber.

Each diver’s mask also contains a regulator in an exhalation hose, also led outside the chamber.

The regulator prevents the exhala­tion hose from taking the incoming gases the diver needs to breathe.

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