Thrissur: The news of the Titan submersible imploding during a trip to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean killing all five travellers flooded Ramachandran with memories of another disaster witnessed years ago.

Ramachandran Kallazhy (Rama), who hails from Kottayi in Palakkad, is an expert working with a Singapore-based firm involved in laying deep-sea cables. He has decades of experience in the field.

 

Thirty-seven years ago, this underwater expert witnessed a similar tragedy.

Technology was not very advanced in the underwater cable sector back then. Workers climbed into a special chamber, which was immersed into the ocean floor from a ship to carry out welding and maintenance of the underwater cables. A pipe connected the chamber to the oxygen plant on the ship and enabled the workers to breathe.

Workers spent up to seven days underwater. On returning to the sea surface, the occupants of the chamber remained in it for some more days for acclimatisation. Two days before the incident, Rama’s ship received a storm warning and returned to the shore. The warning was repeated the next day and again the ship headed to the coast. On both days, the storm did not break.

When yet another warning was issued on the third day, the captain of the ship decided to stay put in the sea. However, the cyclone hit the area at night. Three workers who had been immersed into the seafloor in the chamber were brought back to the ship. But, they could not open the chamber immediately as the pressure difference between the interiors of the chamber and the sea surface could kill the workers.

By that time, the weather conditions worsened and the authorities decided to evacuate the occupants of the ship to land by helicopter. The copter soon arrived and Ram boarded it along with some others. However, the chamber with the three workers could not be loaded on the copter.

An unfortunate decision was made. The chamber would be abandoned along with the ship. The workers trapped in the chamber wrote a message on paper and pasted it on the glass walls. “We love our wife and children. God will be there to guide our kids,” it said.

The captain of the ship refused to board the chopper. He said that he would pay the price for not heeding the weather warning. Ram flew to safety, but he heard the next day that the ship had sunk along with the chamber.

Still engaged in the same profession, Ram said that no humans dive to the ocean floor these days in glass chambers to lay cables – the work is done by robots.