- author, Eloise Alana, Nadine Youssef, Alex Therrien and Catherine Armstrong
- stock, BBC – Newfoundland and London
Being trapped inside a 22-foot (6.7-meter) submarine, thousands of feet underwater, in danger of running out of oxygen, is incredibly distressing and terrifying.
Search and rescue teams are still trying to find the missing submarine “Titan” during a diving trip to see the Titanic wreck, while the circumstances surrounding their crew of five remain shrouded in mystery.
It is believed that the submarine and its crew will have less than 10 hours until their remaining oxygen levels run out, prompting search and rescue operations to race against time to locate the submarine before it is too late.
Ken Leeds, a hyperbaric medicine expert at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, told BBC News that air wasn’t the only danger crews faced on board.
He adds that the submarine may have lost electrical power, which may have played a role in the process of controlling oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.
As oxygen levels decrease, the amount of carbon dioxide inhaled by the submarine crew increases, with disastrous results.
“When carbon dioxide levels increase, it becomes an anesthetic that puts a person to sleep,” says Leeds.
Too much gas in a person’s bloodstream, known as hypercapnia, can lead to death if left untreated.
Ryan Ramsey, a former Royal Navy submarine commander, says he has seen online videos of Titan’s interior and could not see a carbon dioxide removal system called a scrubber.
“For me, these are the biggest challenges,” he adds.
Meanwhile, the crew is at risk of hypothermia, in which the body becomes too cold.
Ramsay says that if a submarine is at the bottom of the ocean, the temperature of the water is about 0 degrees Celsius, and if electricity is lost, no energy is generated, so no heat is generated.
The hypothermia, lack of oxygen and carbon dioxide build-up inside the submarine made it impossible for the submarine’s crew to communicate with search and rescue teams, such as pounding the hull at regular intervals to try to attract attention.
“If they’re unconscious, there’s not much they can do to help themselves,” says Leeds.
While the Coast Guard warns there may be little oxygen left, crews still have a chance to maintain supplies, at least for a while.
Slow breathing can also help, says Ramsey, but he admits it can be difficult given the pressure of the crew.
If electricity is still available, the women say they can sort out carbon dioxide-absorbing particles or reduce their energy use.
As for food and water, Coast Guard officials said the crew had some “limited rations” on board, but did not specify how much.
Despite these challenges, Leeds insisted that search and rescue operations should not be stopped too soon, and said that the submarine crew could survive even with very low oxygen levels.
“in it[நீர்மூழ்கிக் கப்பலில்]”If anybody can survive, it depends on them (groups) having electricity, it depends on them having lights, which helps them detect things and make these controls, and they can survive,” says Leeds. .
Search results so far
The US Coast Guard announced that they detected a loud noise while searching for the missing “Titan” submarine, but they do not know the source and nature of this noise, while the US Navy is helping to analyze the data.
This discovery prompted the research team to expand the scope of the search and shift its focus to the area where the noise was detected, but it was still unclear what the noise was, and there were no underwater searches in the area where the noise was monitored. Still not given anything..
More boats and underwater vehicles are due to join the search today, with two ROVs already working remotely underwater.
As more boats and underwater search vehicles arrive, “the search will resume where the search was first conducted,” said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick.
The total survey area of the sea floor is about 26,000 square kilometers.
Five people were aboard the missing 22-foot submarine: British businessman Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahjata Dawood, his son Sulaiman, French explorer and former diver in the French Navy Paul-Henri Narcolet, and CEO of Ocean Gate. of a submarine. Stockton Rush.
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