Drilling advances

	Vol. 228 No. 6
LES SKINNER, PE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Cold-water survival. It was late at night on April 14, 1912 when the Titanic, a luxury oceanliner sailing from Southampton, England, to Cherbourg, France, to Queenstown, Ireland, to New York, US, grazed an iceberg 375 mi. southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, and sank in 12,460 ft of water. Of the 1,490 people that went into the water (1,516 people according to a US Senate investigation) all were casualties, the victims of hypothermia and/or drowning caused by hypothermia.

During World War II, the British Royal Navy lost 45,000 sailors in the Atlantic Ocean. Of that number, the Admiralty estimates that 30,000 died from hypothermia and/or drowning caused by hypothermia.

On February 15, 1982 at about 1:30 a.m., again off the coast of Newfoundland, the Ocean Ranger capsized due to a loss of ballast control during a vicious storm with +50-ft seas and peak winds of over 100 knots. Of the 84 men that went into the water, all were casualties, the victims of hypothermia and/or drowning. Many of these men were wearing immersion suits and life jackets (personal flotation devices, or PFDs). Others were wearing pajamas.

On September 28, 1994, the car-ferry vessel, Estonia, with 989 people on board, capsized and sank in the Baltic Sea off the southwest tip of Finland. Some of the 852 victims were trapped in their cabins and drowned. Of those that went into the water, all were casualties, the victims of hypothermia and/or drowning caused by hypothermia.

What do these statistics have to do with drilling? Plenty. Exploration and production work continues to advance into cold-water environments in the Barents Sea, the Canadian and US Beaufort Sea, the Caspian, the Okhotsk, the Bering, the Chukchi and, of course, the North Sea, not to mention future work near Antarctica in the Southern Ocean. After all, if there’s oil off Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, chances are the oil potential continues to the south around the South Shetland Islands adjacent to Antarctica and beyond, right? That means that there are going to be people on ships in very, very cold water.

Men who were in the water less than three minutes during the Ocean Ranger rescue attempts could not catch or hold rescue lines thrown to them by boat crews. A life raft was thrown to these men, and none of them could climb into it. According to the testimony of one boat skipper when asked if they were still alive after only a few minutes in the water, he replied, “Well, they weren’t moving.”

Not surprising. Cold water robs heat from an immersed human body 32 times faster than the same temperature in air. The heat loss shuts down the circulatory system in the extremities almost immediately upon contact with the water. Arms and legs stop moving and fingers are rendered useless. In the North Atlantic off Newfoundland in February, the water is at 0°C (32°F). Now the devastation of the Titanic incident becomes clearer - none of those victims had immersion suits, and PFDs don’t provide much thermal protection at all.

Exploration and development drilling programs require a number of people who are not professional mariners to be aboard various ships involved in the effort. Many of them have not been trained in cold water survival. Some of the hands on the ships haven’t either. Think of the galley crew, the radio operator, the mud engineer, the geologist, the new floor hand. They just signed up two weeks ago, and they’ve never seen an immersion suit, much less know how to don one for a dip in the ocean.

The Canada Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board (CNOPB) and their counterpart in Nova Scotia (CNSOPB) have regulations that define who may go offshore in their jurisdictions. One of those is that the people must be in reasonably good medical condition. Immersion suits, whether the older “Gumby” suits or the newer “Mustang” suits, are designed to provide insulation and keep the wearer dry. Like all other forms of insulation, they can only keep one warm for so long. Swimming to keep warm is not recommended, since you’re simply exposing the outside skin of the suit to a constant supply of cold water as you move through the water. So, if a person has a medical condition, like a heart problem, going in the water could be fatal, even with an immersion suit.

To help assure mariner’s safety, CNOPB and CNSOPB require all personnel to carry a card that shows that they have completed cold-water survival training at a certified facility. I took my training in St. John’s and it included Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET) wearing a “Gumby” suit. If you’ve ever trained to get out that tiny little window in warm water wearing a bathing suit and a pair of coveralls, trust me - it’s a little different in an immersion suit.

To give you a taste of cold-water immersion, the folks at St. John’s take the class down to the harbor and let them jump off in the 0°C water for a late afternoon swim. It doesn’t sound too unpleasant until the water hits your face and your fingers go numb. Soon, the cold begins to seep in, and suddenly your empathy for those 84 men on the Ocean Ranger soars. It’s both an eye-opening and heartbreaking experience, but you learn your lesson well. Incidentally, the US Coast Guard does the same type training in Kodiak, Alaska. Rank is of no consequence - if you’re in the Coast Guard, in the water you go.

If you are a supervisor, please make sure all your people take cold-water survival training somewhere. There are excellent schools in Aberdeen, Kenai, San Francisco and others, as well. Personally, I want everyone on the ship I’m on to have had this training. You see, since self-rescue is not very likely, and, if I fall in the water unprotected, I want someone available to drag my cold rear-end into the lifeboat, even if they have to jump in the water to get me. Just kidding, but it’s a thought!

Clearly, the best solution is not going in the water at all.

Take some advice: Learn where your muster station is and go to the lifeboat with your immersion suit on when they call for an abandon ship exercise.

Take these drills seriously. You really don’t want to be standing on the deck watching the lifeboats disappear as you go down with the ship. It would make the Titanic sinking seem like deja vu all over again.