Every day we fight to survive. Some in seemingly harder ways than others, and whether we know it or not. What one person perceives to be a fight, may seem like a joke or a game to another, and so one’s struggles are deeply personal and based on their specific strengths, weaknesses and experiences. I’ve come to learn, even while being cautious as I carefully sift through the tons of information that comes through the screens of my technological devices via social media, that because of this lean towards comparison as to who is in more trouble than the other, someone who genuinely needs help may be completely ignored, due to the fact that society says, “it’s not that bad.”

I recently read an article, out of the Caribbean Island of Trinidad and Tobago, about a surprisingly common and very unfortunate incident involving five divers. These men worked for a welding company and regularly braved the ocean to repair damaged oil pipes. One of them, a diver for more than ten years.

The Trinidad Express “Christopher Boodram lived because he was the last man to be pulled into the darkness of the undersea pipeline”

This was the first line of the online article giving the chilling details of that faithful day. I literally stopped reading a few times to take deep breaths, and once even paused till the next day. I have a very vivid imagination as a singer/songwriter among many other things, and so had to calm my nerves after reading such a scary narrative. This is a read that will stay with me for a long time.

The men somehow got sucked into one of the oil pipes, and after hours of struggle to both breathe and get out of the pipe, only one emerged alive, and that was in part because another diver, the brother- in-law of one of the victims was alerted about the incident by his nephew, and arriving on the scene, disobeyed orders to NOT enter the water. He brought that one visible diver to the surface and was prepared to go back for the rest, but this time was reportedly stopped by the Coast Guard officers, armed.

The four other men, who were surely injured from the trauma of the incident were said to have been left behind for over 48 hours before help was finally sent in, only to retrieve their bodies. The mission had gone from rescue to recovery. Whilst reading the account from the lone survivor, my heart bled, and my eyes were filled with tears and then I found myself in a cycle of thought that bothered me until I wrote this blog.

Too many times we see people in need of help, and we reach out to those who can, or have the power to do so, and we are told that we need to follow some sort of process or protocol. We are forced to wait for a string of events to take place. Phone calls, letters to be typed and stamped and documented before any type of action can take place, while the person or people we are trying to help are literally running out of time, and oxygen.

These five men went on a routine dive. We, every day, go about our lives, routinely. Even if some of us have no routine, we can consider it routine to just to whatever. They had the knowledge and the skills to complete a task that they had done many times before, but that day was different. A phenomenon called a Delta P Event occurred and they were all sucked into a dark, water filled and oil lined, 36-inch pipe, underwater.  I literally stopped my reading at the time and googled what the pipe looked like, especially looking for pictures where people were next to them to understand the ratio. I then googled the definition of Delta P or Differential Pressure and was presented with the most disturbing video of a sea crab being quickly sucked into a very small space in an underwater pipe. This is where I paused until the next day. I now had an all too clear picture of the Paria Divers’ experience.   

Thinking about physically being in a similar situation is utterly scary, and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. There was very little space inside that pipe. Many of us go through forms of stress or even depression that make us feel as scared, stuck, crammed into despair and helpless as those men may have felt.

They were inside of the pipe and could see nothing in the darkness therein. They were covered in thick, black crude oil, making it extremely difficult to move as the oil weighted them down and made toxic, the very little air in the air pockets that they used to breathe in between sharing their oxygen tanks. So many of us walk around in darkness. We sometimes find ourselves in sticky situations that are or can become toxic and dangerous. The lone survivor made it out of that pipe because he was the last to be sucked in meaning he was the closest to the exit, and he was also being pushed along towards the entrance by the man behind him, 57-year-old; Fyzal Kurban. Kurban and the other men were seriously injured from the incident, but he kept pushing him along the slosh and sharing his own oxygen tank. I was in disbelief reading this. This showed the man’s very strong will to survive, while suffering the pain from broken bones, aching lungs and God knows what else, and yet he did not make it out alive. Sometimes the people who are trying to help us out of our life-threatening situations have been in, or still are in similar or the same situations. They really should be helping themselves, but they choose to help us, and they sometimes pay for it, dearly.

He also stated that they began banging on the inside of the pipe with the equipment to alert the team above water that something was wrong. The news report stated that their noise was heard, but it appeared nothing was being done about it by the people who had the say. I tried to justify that they were trying to avoid further tragedy by not letting anyone else enter the water, but it still appeared unfair that these men were not given the chance to be rescued when they fought so hard to survive. It made me think about how sometimes we make noise ourselves, on social media, in our dressing, words and actions, in a sincere effort to cry out for help. How it is seen by the outside world is not always how we want it to be. We often get looked at or looked on upon with pity and seeming concern, but when it comes to diving in to save us from whatever danger we are in, one hand can be used to count the number of people willing to help.  

“The last thing I heard was their screaming and gasping” was one of the things that the lone survivor said from his hospital bed, when he gave his account. He had suffered no broken bones thankfully, and at the time of the report, he was not yet even told that the others did not yet make it out of the water, as his mental health was highly considered. The body may survive the ordeal, but the mind has another battle to fight. The memories of our traumas replay constantly in our heads if we do not have the proper techniques and avenues to confront, accept and release them.

This being one of the most difficult articles that I’ve chosen to write, it took me several days of really convincing myself to finish it. Days turned into weeks and as the time passed by, more information about the incident was brought to the attention of the public. From what I read, the family members of the missing men were being treated like ordinary citizens, having to wait on press conferences and news reports to get information on the status of the divers even though they were practically camping outside of the site. They found out along with the rest of the world that the mission had changed from rescue to recovery. The diver who was prevented from going back into the water was enraged and kept on stating that “The rest of those men could have been rescued then and there. They were simply left to die.” Every time I read and reread those articles it made me think.

Some of us are visibly in bad situations. We are hurt, broken, sick and damaged and all we need is help, but our situations are looked upon as hopeless and the aid is not administered. What’s the point, right? I mean people will miss your wedding, graduation, baby shower, housewarming and retirement party with every excuse in the world, but they will fly thousands of miles to attend your funeral. Some of us are viewed as unworthy of the help that could jolly well save our lives. Boodram, the survivor still hears the screams of his fellow men. He still remembers their prayers as they cried, coughed, and gasped inside that pipe, banging the life out of it to be heard and rescued. His promise that he would send help, unfulfilled. All we become are memories, when it is too late. When it’s easier to bury us than to help us get better. That man may never come to terms with what happened. He reported that he repeatedly told the people on the surface that the other men were still alive and genuinely believed that they were being rescued while being transported to a medical facility.

The families of those men are still hurting today. Women lost husbands and lovers, and children lost fathers. Mothers lost sons. Brother and Sisters lost siblings, and the list goes on. Closure is something that a lot of people don’t get in tragic situations. An explanation as to what happened and why, and ways that it can be prevented in the future may be the key to healing. Unfortunate situations like that incident often shock the masses, but do we really learn lessons from them? Do we love harder knowing that people can cease to exist in the blink of an eye?

Do we forgive faster? Do we notice the signs of our friends and family drowning and reach out to help? Or do we swim to safety ourselves?

I pray that Mr. Boodram somehow finds peace and I thank the Universe for yet another life lesson.

Sincerely: A Sad Island Girl