Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Water Gun Malfunction: Freak Accident About this episode The Northwest Shelf is Australia’s largest area of oceanic oil and gas extraction. In 2011, saturation diver Richard Bradley is 130 feet under water performing some routine maintenance… when he feels a sudden pain. The high pressure water blaster he’s using has malfunctioned, puncturing his left forearm with a jet of dirty water. Seriously injured, he can’t simply swim to the surface. As a complex procedure kicks into gear, every step must go perfectly if Richard is to reach the surface alive…
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Rhys Bevan | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 John Hopkins? It's the night of March 30, 2011.
0:07 John Hopkins? 150 kilometers off the coast of Western Australia, the deep blue of the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see.
0:16 John Hopkins? It's a clear evening. The moon bounces off the water, reflecting ripples of light onto the steel hull of a 300-foot boat sitting serenely amid the waves.
0:28 John Hopkins? It's quiet on deck, nothing stirs. For this diving support vessel, the action isn't so much above as below.
0:38 John Hopkins? Beneath the hull, two parallel cables run directly down into the murky depths. At the end of them, sits a pill-shaped diving bell about as wide as a double mattress, coated in a protective cage of thick metal pipes.
0:55 John Hopkins? Out and away from this wardrobe-sized submarine run two more cables made up of color-coded wires, twisted like licorice. These umbilical cords snake off in different directions, suspended in the inky underworld. And at the other end of one of these cables, floating like an astronaut in deep space, is 36-year-old commercial diver, Richard Bradley.
1:22 John Hopkins? Today, Richard is cleaning the anchoring system for an oil tanker. The tanker itself is in Singapore, unloading its cargo, giving Richard and his team a window to perform routine maintenance on the turret mooring. A semi-permanent submerged metal boy large enough to hold a tanker in place.
1:44 John Hopkins? A seasoned saturation diver, with over 15 years' experience, for Richard, this is just another day in the office. And the ocean is in good voice tonight.
1:57 John Hopkins? There's the crackle and pop of shrimp claws, the swish and scrape of fish. A natural soundscape amplified by the dense atmosphere. There are the man-made noises too. The hum of the support vessel's thrusters, the Darth Vader-like breathing of the divers, and the roaring of the high-pressure water blasters so powerful, they can strip paint underwater.
2:25 John Hopkins? Richard's water gun is set to a pressure of 15,000 PSI.
2:31 John Hopkins? As he floats around the turret mooring, he uses it sparingly, as much to save his hands the pain of the prolonged vibrations as to protect the integrity of the power tool. When suddenly, a single scream cuts across the diver's intercoms.
2:48 Speaker 01 I looked down and a blossom of blood sprouted from the arm of my suit.
2:54 John Hopkins? Richard's gun has malfunctioned, sending a jet of water into his left forearm with extreme force. The blast has punched a hole through the layers of his hot water suit and into his limb. It's a neat wound, and there isn't much blood, but this isn't good news.
3:10 Speaker 01 I was petrified because it seemed almost benign, but at the same time, with the training you have, I knew that what I had was an incredibly complex wound.
3:21 John Hopkins? The entry of contaminated water at high pressure means Richard's system has been flooded with foreign bodies. The fabric from his diving suit, the floating grit of the sea water, who knows what else? Any one of the tiny particles now in Richard's arm could enter his bloodstream and travel to his brain, his heart, his lungs.
3:43 Speaker 01 That was the full awakening of a fight or flight moment. I was absolutely pumped, full of an immediate cataclysmic load of adrenaline. The pain was nothing compared to the survival instinct that just took over my body.
4:04 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, people suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
4:27 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet saturation diver Richard Bradley. On March 30, 2011, Richard is 130 feet underwater in the North West Shelf, Australia's largest area of oceanic oil and gas extraction.
4:43 John Hopkins? He is performing some routine cleaning when he feels a sudden pain in his left forearm.
4:49 Speaker 01 It was what I imagined being shot would be like. I took the full blast from the nozzle at point blank into my forearm. The whole forearm just had this massive voluminous injection of everything in its path.
5:03 John Hopkins? But Richard can't simply swim to the surface. If he panics and makes a break for it, he'll be hit with agonizing and potentially deadly decompression sickness. What he does next will be crucial as he follows a complex, high-risk procedure. Every step must go perfectly if he is to have any hope of getting out of this alive.
5:25 Speaker 01 Sometimes you end up in these situations and you switch off and you just act and if fate is on your side, then you're coming back. If fate's not on your side, you're not.
5:35 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:07 John Hopkins? It's evening, March 30, 2011. Onboard a support vessel floating 150 kilometers off the coast of Western Australia, Richard Bradley is getting ready for a night's diving.
6:21 John Hopkins? He is sat in the tiny wet room. It acts as a transfer lock between the pressurized saturation chamber where he and his fellow divers live and the diving bell that lowers them into the deep.
6:34 John Hopkins? There isn't much space in the so-called wet pot. But then again, there isn't much space anywhere when you're a diver operating at pressure. There is barely room to stand up in the hyperbaric living chamber, where Richard and his colleagues sleep stacked in tiny bunks, often five or six to a room, unable to leave. Privacy is not an option.
6:57 John Hopkins? There is a concentrated silence that always descends just before a dive: the calm before the storm.
7:05 John Hopkins? In the quiet, Richard looks up at two familiar faces.
7:10 John Hopkins? Tonight, he'll be diving with colleague Richard Sanderson, or Sando. Marty, the third member of their team, will be the bellman, remaining in the diving bell to monitor the equipment and provide backup.
7:22 Speaker 01 It doesn't mean anything if you don't do it with good blokes. And I've had the great privilege of working with all sorts of people: the good, the bad, the ugly, the wild, the rangy. But I can say that amongst all of them, there is this really amazing streak of just bonding together and getting it done, getting hard things done in trying situations.
7:43 John Hopkins? These three guys have been living together for 10 days already, sealed off in a pressurized metal tube. There's no need for small talk. They have their routines, they have their rhythms, and they all know the risks.
7:59 John Hopkins? With the final checks done, a three-man squeeze into the diving bell, a domed vessel not much bigger than a large fridge, and huddle amongst the helmets, fins, and racks of umbilical diving cable.
8:12 John Hopkins? Marty seals the diving bell off from the wet pot, and it detaches, beginning its descent.
8:22 John Hopkins? It doesn't take long for the bell to winch down to working depth. Other divers are working 100 meters down at the seabed, but Richard's team are relatively shallow today, only 40 meters, not quite the length of an Olympic swimming pool.
8:37 John Hopkins? Marty opens the bottom hatch, and Richard and Sando sink into the freezing water.
8:45 John Hopkins? Richard switches on his torch and scans around. He's looking for the high-pressure water gun he'll be using on the shift. The previous diver left it down here for him with instructions on where to find it. When Richard finds the gun, he conducts a thorough inspection. Well, as thorough as he can be.
9:07 Speaker 01 The gun, which I'd checked in the dark and, you know, I had a good check, but still, you know, on hindsight, I'd say maybe I was a bit too cursory.
9:16 John Hopkins? The light penetration at this depth at night is practically zero.
9:21 John Hopkins? Richard is totally reliant on his torch, but he's used these guns before. Pretty quickly, he gets to work.
9:28 Speaker 01 Our particular part of the work scope is that there was a turret mooring. Boy, we were clearing all the paint and stripping it all off, ready for some non-destructive testing. So essentially just checking for cracks in the welds and getting it all ready.
9:47 John Hopkins? This October on the Noiser Podcast Network. Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind all alone at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.
10:29 John Hopkins? Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
10:39 John Hopkins? Richard moves around the huge, sunken buoy, navigating mooring chains as thick as his torso. They drape down on all sides, disappearing into the blackness, running to the seabed like the legs of a gigantic metal spider. But his movement is being restricted, and so he discards some of his gear.
11:00 Speaker 01 I'd taken my fins off because as somebody who, even when I'm working mid-water, I like to Spider-Man around.
11:08 John Hopkins? Without his fins, he can more easily grab on and push off from the turret mooring. It's a move not without risk. Without fins, his mobility could be seriously impaired in an emergency. But Richard is no stranger to jeopardy. In fact, high-risk situations are kind of his happy place. Richard grew up in one of the planet's last true frontiers. The Kimberley is a vast, remote wilderness in Australia's northwest corner, covering over 420,000 square kilometers with a population of under 40,000. That's over 10 square kilometers per person.
11:51 John Hopkins? Richard's parents worked on the sprawling cattle stations along the Ord River that bisects this ancient rugged landscape.
11:59 Speaker 01 A very adventurous, outdoorsy childhood. As a kid, I was very curious and naughty, and I learnt to love the rush of fear and danger. I learnt to swim in a little place called Ivanhoe Crossing on the Ord River with saltwater crocodiles. My father was a bush pilot, a mustering pilot. He flew fixed-wing helicopters. The people I grew up with were cowboys. They were helicopter musters, they were bull riders. My childhood is littered with plane crashes and chopper crashes. My father himself had had several aviation wrecks, fortunately none with me. But through the course of my childhood, whether it was crocs or the bush or, you know, bush aviation, I was exposed to events where
12:43 Speaker 01 life often hung in the balance. And I think subliminally you get used to this sort of existence where there's a heightened sense of, "We've got to make this work now because we don't know what's going on tomorrow."
12:55 John Hopkins? Life in the Kimberley for Richard and his family was one of living for the moment, attuned to nature, ready to adapt to whatever each day threw at them.
13:05 John Hopkins? But when Richard turned eight, his parents threw something at him he wasn't expecting.
13:10 Speaker 01 My father flew me up to Darwin and put me on a jet plane that took me down to Sydney and I was basically inserted into a proprietary school for boys. And nothing prepares an eight-year-old boy for that.
13:25 John Hopkins? Richard's world of freedom and adventure in the bush was wrenched away, replaced by one of rules and hierarchies far from home in a boarding school in Australia's biggest city.
13:38 John Hopkins? Adapting to this double life in two opposite environments was a struggle for the boy from the outback.
13:45 Speaker 01 I had a real problem with authority. I ran away, I had problems, they nearly kicked me out. I worked out how to take a beating and get on with it. So, yeah, life was a bit of a dichotomy, you know, you had this sort of one life where you had to follow the rules and there was corporal punishment and there was beatings and bullings and all the hierarchy that comes with it. It was very Victorian. But then as soon as I got home, you know, I was back in the bush.
14:17 John Hopkins? Whether at home or in the city, one thing that remained constant was Richard's love of the water.
14:23 John Hopkins? He learned to dive at fifteen, taught by an old maverick in Sydney who literally threw him into the deep end first time. It was both irresponsible and incredibly dangerous, but Richard came up beaming.
14:37 John Hopkins? By contrast, he complained that getting his scuba certification was boring. It was too safe, too careful, all the risk had been mitigated out of it. Then he discovered pearl diving.
14:50 Speaker 01 The first time I jumped overboard on a pearling boat, the water was black. The tide was ripping, within five minutes I had a sea snake wrapped around me and I was sucking on the regulator and nearly breathing it down.
15:03 John Hopkins? Searching for pearls in deep-sea mollusks is dangerous work, and as such, it's relatively well-paid. Richard took the winnings from his first season of pearling and went travelling. When he returned, he began university with a plan. He was going to become a commercial diver. He'd heard about a specific type of diving that was incredibly dangerous and therefore lucrative: saturation diving.
15:32 John Hopkins? It's a method that allows divers to work at extreme depths without constantly surfacing. It involves being placed under the same pressure that exists underwater for prolonged periods, sometimes weeks at a time, in specialised habitats. Doing this acclimatises divers and negates the need for constant decompression.
15:54 John Hopkins? When the human body is placed under extreme pressure, like when it's under a large amount of water, inert gases like helium or nitrogen dissolve into the blood and tissues. If it decompresses too quickly, these gases form bubbles inside the body, causing decompression sickness, otherwise known as the bends, so-called because of the way the body contorts in agony. It can be fatal. To avoid it, decompression must be rigorously, painstakingly slow. If decompression happens really fast, as it did on the Biford Dolphin Oil Rig in 1983, the results can be tragic and grisly. When a mechanical failure caused the rapid decompression of two pressurised chambers,
16:39 John Hopkins? five of the six men inside met horrifyingly gruesome ends.
16:46 John Hopkins? Of course, safety protocols have improved since the 80s, but every saturation diver knows the stories. Biford Dolphin, WildRake, Piper Alpha. The industry's not for the faint-hearted. But in many ways, that's what drew Richard to it in the first place.
17:03 Speaker 01 I was always that young bloke that said, "Yeah, I'll go." And you know, I just found myself running with a posse of people that felt the same way, about the same environment. You know, after a while, you start to amass dead friends. My risk parameters are greater than others, even within my industry. I still have a fear of death. I just don't feel like I'm actually operating at my optimal level unless I'm close to that sense of fear.
17:31 John Hopkins? Beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, Richard has been blasting paint of the turret mooring with his ultra-high-pressure water gun for a few hours now. His gun is firing a jet of water at a pressure of 15,000 pounds per square inch, or the equivalent of a large African elephant balanced on a single Lego brick. Needless to say, it makes short work of the paint job.
17:57 John Hopkins? For the gun to remain balanced, water must be propelled backwards at the same pressure as the water going out of the front.
18:05 John Hopkins? To do that safely, a large conical exhaust pipe, otherwise known as a retro shroud, protrudes backwards from the gun and fires the counterthrust safely behind the user. Without this nozzle, which is also spreading the ejected water over a larger volume, the destructive jet of water coming out the front of the gun would also be coming out of the back.
18:27 Speaker 01 Midway through this cleaning job, I'm going left and right, and the vibrations of this gun, because it is so powerful, unbeknownst to me at the time, but the way that the shroud had been put on and the design of the shroud, there were three grub screws holding it on, and one of the grub screws had come loose.
18:45 John Hopkins? A tiny, crucial screw wriggles and dances under the immense vibrations of the gun.
18:53 John Hopkins? Finally, it falls out. Richard continues to work oblivious, until suddenly, there is a deep bang and a thudding pain.
19:05 John Hopkins? Richard releases the trigger and drops the gun. He looks down at his arm.
19:10 Speaker 01 The shroud came away, and I took the full blast off from the nozzle at point-blank into my forearm.
19:23 John Hopkins? It's March 30, 2011, late at night. Many miles off the coast of Western Australia, 40 metres underwater, Belman Marty is sat listening. He's been in roughly this position in the diving bell for the past three hours. Tonight, his role is one of safety, a backstop in case anything should go wrong.
19:45 John Hopkins? He is wild away the hours checking that both Richard and Sando's umbilicals aren't twisting, teasing them out if they need more, and reeling in any slack. Periodically, he checks the gas panel, makes sure the diving bell is all in good order, but aside from that, his job is to sit and wait. The only entertainment to punctuate the long hours in this black abyss is the chatter over the intercom.
20:12 John Hopkins? Right now, however, there is only quiet. A single scream has just silenced the airwaves.
20:20 John Hopkins? For what seems like an age, Marty doesn't speak. He just listens. Who screamed? And why?
20:30 John Hopkins? Finally, Richard Bradley's voice crackles on the line. He's got a problem.
20:36 Speaker 01 I told topside to make it cold, which is essentially to turn the gun off, and I was coming back to the bell.
20:43 John Hopkins? This can only mean one thing. Something has gone very wrong. Frantically, Marty starts hauling in the umbilical. Meanwhile, at the other end of the long cable, Richard has a dilemma.
20:56 John Hopkins? He isn't wearing his fins. He could look for them in the dark and try to put them on with his one working arm, but time is ticking. He has an open wound, allowing who knows what to enter his bloodstream. He could be about to go into shock or pass out.
21:14 John Hopkins? Luckily, Richard has a ready-made escape rope.
21:17 Speaker 01 I knew that I had my umbilical there, and it's the umbilical that's down which your gas and your hot water and your expired gas and your communications, and it's very strong. And I knew that I had that to haul myself along, so I just started hauling with my one good arm, and I just started hauling myself back.
21:35 John Hopkins? With his injured left arm dangling limply by his side, Richard uses his right to pull himself through the water and back towards the diving bell.
21:45 John Hopkins? It should be straightforward. It's anything but.
21:50 John Hopkins? He's been diving at forty metres, but the umbilical cable is seventy-five metres long. That means inevitably there is some slack.
22:00 John Hopkins? And any slack is a potential danger. It means the cable could be dragged into the thrusters of the support vessel.
22:08 John Hopkins? These are huge propellers that work constantly to make sure the surface vessel maintains its position while the diving bell is lowered. With tides and currents, the boat works hard just to stand still. This means that as Richard pulls himself inch by inch, metre by metre back along the length of the umbilical, he should also be coiling it to take up the slack.
22:32 John Hopkins? But with one arm incapacitated, of course he can't.
22:37 John Hopkins? This is where his colleague Marty steps up.
22:41 Speaker 01 Marty's in the bell, he's overheard it on the comms as well, he knows something's not right. And he's a big Tahitian boy and he's just hauling up on hose and racking it.
22:51 John Hopkins? The umbilical cable is thick and heavy, but Marty works furiously to pull as much slack into the diving bell as quickly as possible.
23:00 John Hopkins? Richard continues to shimmy his way along the line, silt, dancing in the light of his torchbeam, blood rushing in his ears.
23:11 John Hopkins? Despite the dull throb of deep pain in his left arm and the rising panic of being so far from any sort of medical help, he makes decent progress. Until halfway along the line, there is another obstacle, one that even Marty cannot help with. It's something called the Golden Gate.
23:29 Speaker 01 The Golden Gate is a device that we have when we are working shallow in saturation so that our umbilicals don't end up back in the thrusters. We go through a Golden Gate to extend our range.
23:41 John Hopkins? He approaches the Golden Gate, a sunken cage through which the umbilicals pass to help prevent slack floating up into the boat propellers.
23:51 John Hopkins? Richard can see that on the other side of the gate, his umbilical line is taut. Marty has racked in as much as he can.
23:59 John Hopkins? Now, all Richard has to do is swim or haul himself through the gate and across the 20 metres or so between the gate and the diving bell. But his umbilical cable, this side of the gate, is floating behind him, slack, like a giant sea serpent drifting on the currents. Not only is there the danger of the propellers, but the cable could also become twisted or kinked. The umbilical provides all the divers oxygen and hot water for their suit. A slight malfunction could have catastrophic consequences. Again, it's Richard's team who support him in this time of need. As he looks back at the writhing underwater cable, he suddenly sees Sando emerging from the gloom.
24:44 John Hopkins? He is racking not only his own, but Richard's umbilical too, making it safe enough to continue. There's no time for thank yous. Richard turns and sets off again, navigating speedily past the golden gate. Now, there is just the final stretch back to the diving bell, with Sando behind him and Marty ahead doing all they can to help.
25:06 Speaker 01 So I start pulling myself along the line. I'm hauling on my hose. By the time I arrive at the standoff of the bell, Marty's got most of my excess hose in. And I'm back to the bell, and now I'm just like, woof, all right, this is, okay, I've managed to achieve this.
25:25 John Hopkins? As Richard wriggles himself, one handed up into the trunking of the diving bell, two large hands grab the gas canisters on his back.
25:32 Speaker 01 Marty just, because he's, like I said, he's a big fellow, he just gets me and just hauls me up on my bailout bottle. And I just come in and, and sit down, and he's great, he unhooks my hat, gets it off me, and then, woof, okay, so we're backing the bell.
25:54 John Hopkins? This October on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.
26:37 John Hopkins? Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
26:45 John Hopkins? It's taken Richard about nine minutes to get back to the diving bell. It's already been a huge effort just to get him out of the water. And they are by no means home and hosed.
26:57 John Hopkins? First, they coil up and stow all of Sando's umbilical and get him into the bell too.
27:03 John Hopkins? Once that's done and all equipment is in and locked down, Marty closes the hatch on the diving bell, sealing them in, and they begin their ascent to the support vessel.
27:14 John Hopkins? It's not far to go. They've only been shallow diving, but the seconds pass like minutes.
27:20 John Hopkins? Richard looks at the faces of his colleagues. There is an obvious edge of fear.
27:27 John Hopkins? Then he looks down at his arm, at the hole that is so neat and bloodless it's uncanny, surreal, like an optical illusion.
27:37 John Hopkins? The diving bell rejoins the boat with a clunk and the three men prepare themselves for transfer.
27:43 Speaker 01 The bell locks onto the system and we do a TUP, a transfer under pressure. And so that essentially involves the pressure in the bell equalizing with the pressure in the system through a trunking that's got a hydraulic clamp on it.
27:58 Speaker 01 That is often considered the most dangerous time for saturation procedures. It's when you expose the pressure of the system and the bell to a possible breach through the hydraulic clamp.
28:10 John Hopkins? In this environment, nothing can be rushed.
28:14 John Hopkins? Richard waits as the pressure in the diving bell slowly equalizes with that of the saturation chamber.
28:20 John Hopkins? Once that's done, he passes through various transfer hatches. Only then is he able to finally get some medical attention.
28:29 Speaker 01 Derek Finlay, the diver medic, was there to welcome me and cut my suit off and we got a look at what was there. I was really surprised when I saw it. It was about the size of my thumbnail and it was a really, really neat bullet hole, like a puncture. And because the pressure had been so high, there was no blood. It was cauterised, but it was a serious sort of cavity into my forearm. And it's, you know, it's like a broken wing. It's hanging beside me and I, I can't really feel my hand. I couldn't move my hand, but what I later learnt was compartment syndrome was setting in because of the force that had come in.
29:07 John Hopkins? Compartment syndrome is an increase in pressure inside muscle tissue, which restricts blood flow, damages nerves, and is both extremely painful and extremely dangerous.
29:18 Speaker 01 It was definitely one of the scariest moments because when I saw that, you don't need to look far in the world of pressure devices and explosions for really painful outcomes from people who take in high-pressure water, high-pressure oil. And I was now aware that my bloodstream had had an injection of all sorts of foreign bodies into it.
29:38 John Hopkins? The medic tells Richard what he already knows. He needs complex surgery and he needs it as soon as possible. They need to get to land and to hospital. That's fine. The company has great insurance. They'll fly Richard to the best surgeon in Australia if they need to. There is only one problem. The small matter of the extra gases currently dissolved in Richard's blood.
30:02 John Hopkins? In order to set foot outside the saturation chamber where Richard has been living for the past 10 days, in order to even open the outer hatch a tiny crack, Richard will have to decompress.
30:16 John Hopkins? This is the process whereby his body is slowly brought back to normal atmospheric pressure. The time it takes depends on how deep you've been diving and how much pressure you've been under. In Richard's case, it's going to take a while.
30:29 Speaker 01 And our team began the sort of forty, forty-four hour decompression.
30:34 John Hopkins? Forty-four hours. Nearly two whole days and nights just sitting, thinking, hoping. Hoping that the wound doesn't result in any number of life-threatening complications: a clot, an embolism, a stroke. Richard takes his place in the decompression chamber alongside his colleagues, closes his eyes, breathes, and prepares himself for a very, very long wait. It's the morning of March 31st, 2011. The sun beams down on a large diving vessel as it slices through the surf, dividing the
31:18 John Hopkins? crystal-blue water in a spray of white foam. Having spent the last 10 days anchored out at Australia's northwest shelf, the boat is making its way home. As it heads towards the port of Dampier on the coast of Western Australia, the atmosphere on board is unusually tense. This is not a scheduled stop. They're returning early because one of their divers has had an accident working at depth. Outcomes in these instances are rarely good. The crew go about their duties with deliberate focus. Oddly, for an emergency, though, they don't seem to be in any rush. The injured diver, 36-year-old Richard Bradley, is currently 10 hours into a 40-hour decompression.
32:03 John Hopkins? He isn't going anywhere fast.
32:06 John Hopkins? He is sat in the corner of a decompression chamber, propped up with his left arm cradled, staring blankly into space.
32:14 Speaker 01 At the best of times, it's a very chill experience where you read a lot of books and make plans for when you get out. But in a situation like this, my brain is full of all sorts of really terrible outcomes that I've read about in case studies. One of the things that crossed my mind was a piece of product getting stuck in my brain or in my lungs or my heart. You know, I just didn't know what was spinning around in my bloodstream. Was there bubbles in there? I don't know. You get educated about these horrific case studies. So this was the next sort of chapter of my survival story. It was a real head game.
32:54 John Hopkins? Richard shifts his body weight, a throb in his arm growing all the time. He pops a large pill out of his packaging and grabs his water bottle. He has been offered painkillers and antibiotics to take throughout his decompression. He has decided to only take the antibiotics.
33:12 Speaker 01 The pain was quite obtuse and very intense, but I felt like it was a reminder that A, I was alive, and B, I thought painkillers would affect my mental clarity.
33:26 John Hopkins? Any new sensation during decompression could be a clue to something being wrong.
33:32 John Hopkins? In this 40-hour wait, pain will be Richard's constant companion and his guide.
33:39 John Hopkins? He swallows the pill. He is taking a gram of oral antibiotics every six hours, enough to wreak havoc in his stomach. Yet another difficulty.
33:50 John Hopkins? Richard leans across and pulls his laptop up onto the bench with him. With one hand, he opens it and begins typing.
33:58 John Hopkins? Fortunately, the company Richard is working for is one of the best equipped in the industry. They have all the latest tech.
34:05 Speaker 01 You know, it'd only been recently that, in the last year or three, that we'd had internet in the work environment. We actually had good internet on board. The ability to send an email to a friend of mine from our booth. He's a trauma specialist and a shoulder surgeon who I know and trust. And I basically just gave him my situation and he immediately hooked me up with a surgeon in Perth, Dr Jeff Eckhart.
34:31 John Hopkins? From this isolated, hyperbaric chamber in a sealed metal unit in the belly of a ship out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Richard is able to communicate with one of Australia's top surgeons.
34:43 John Hopkins? He can use the long hours in decompression purgatory to make sure that what comes after is as swift and as well-prepared as possible.
34:51 John Hopkins? He can also tell his loved ones he's okay, keeping family and friends in the loop. Plus, typing emails comes to serve its own function. It gives him something to do.
35:03 Speaker 01 Just write out this 48 hours. Don't take painkillers. Take the antibiotics and fill your days and your thoughts with what can we do to proactively progress this in the direction that we want to go.
35:18 John Hopkins? The hours creep by. More pills, reply to emails, try to read, try to rest, repeat.
35:26 John Hopkins? The pain in Richard's arm is insistent. It bores into him like a slow-motion drill.
35:32 John Hopkins? He takes deep breaths. The massive adrenaline dump that flooded his body in the immediate aftermath of the injury is gradually receding.
35:41 John Hopkins? It's being replaced by something more dogged, more determined.
35:46 Speaker 01 My superpower most certainly will be, no matter how bad a situation gets, I can find the good in it. I'd been involved with two jobs with fatalities, so I'd seen what a bad day at the office looks like when you get caved in and have your life squashed out of you. The fact that you can sit here and even ask yourself that, could it be worse, is in itself a reason to say that you're in a better place than if you're dead. I wasn't accepting it. I wanted to be the strongest and most positive mental outlook I could muster.
36:29 John Hopkins? Finally, at long, long last, the hatch on the decompression chamber is opened. And Richard breathes the unfiltered air of Australia's north-west coastline. He is home.
36:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, getting out was a bit of a victory, as far as I can tell. It was the next victory.
36:47 John Hopkins? Not that Richard can enjoy his victory for long. Usually, at this point, divers go through a 12- to 24-hour period of observation, known as "bend watch", to check for signs of decompression sickness. But there's no time for that.
37:04 John Hopkins? An ambulance is waiting at Dampier Port to take Richard to hospital. However, there is one important thing to do first.
37:13 Speaker 01 I got my kit together and got a photo with Marty and Sando and said, "Thank you very much for getting me through it." And I walked off the boat onto an ambulance. The ambulance took me to Caratha Hospital, the local GP surgeon there, took one look at my arm, and it was just like, "Mate, this is out of my league."
37:32 John Hopkins? The hole in Richard's arm is going to need highly specialised attention from a surgeon with experience of high-pressure underwater injuries. The energy company Richard is working for is one of the largest in Australia, and remarkably they have their own medevac jet for just this sort of scenario. Richard is flown to Perth Airport, where another ambulance is waiting to take him to a private hospital in one of the city's leafy suburbs. There, he meets the man he's been emailing for the past several hours.
38:03 Speaker 01 The surgeon was waiting there, very amiable chap by the name of Jeff, and he was dressed up in West Coast Eagles, the local football team colours, and the hospital was right next to the footy field. And he allayed all my fears. He looked at it and he said, "Listen, mate, I can't tell you what the outcome's going to be, but we are going to give it our best shot. I'm just going to go watch the Eagles beat the Dockers, and by the time I get back, you will be knocked out and in surgery, and we're going to go to work and see what you've got there."
38:36 John Hopkins? This October on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world.
39:07 John Hopkins? In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
39:29 John Hopkins? When Richard wakes up, some fifteen hours later, he looks around the hospital ward with fuzzy eyes.
39:37 John Hopkins? As his senses return, he glances down at his left arm. It's covered, but not sealed, which seems odd. The cast has been left open to the elements.
39:50 John Hopkins? Richard uses his right arm to lift the covering slightly so he can peer underneath and take a look at his injury. It isn't a pretty sight.
39:59 Speaker 01 He'd split me like a banana. He basically ran it from the sort of down near my wrist all the way to the back of my elbow. He flayed it open. There was a whole team of them. They spent four or five hours doing what's called a debridement, and they basically peel your arm open, and they've all got those little microscope glasses on, and they pick all the foreign bodies out. They remove a lot of the excess fat, and they just give it the best possible clean they can.
40:30 John Hopkins? In a long and painstaking procedure, a team of surgeons has spent hours finding and removing any foreign objects from inside Richard's arm to prevent them spreading subcutaneously to other parts of his body. They have then left Richard's arm uncovered, with the skin peeled back, exposing the inner workings to the elements, to give his body the opportunity to naturally expel anything they couldn't see. Richard's arm is left open for a whole week.
41:00 Speaker 01 I had this arm that was pinned open and have you seen the Terminator? You know where he's repairing himself? It was like that. And my mates came around and it was definitely worth a photo or two.
41:13 John Hopkins? Multiple surgeries later, with the arm as clean as Jeff and his team of surgeons can get it, they take a skin graft from Richard's leg and begin closing the wound.
41:25 John Hopkins? Miraculously, the muscle and fat in Richard's arm absorbed enough of the force of the high pressure injection that his tendons remain relatively intact. And so he won't lose the use of his arm. Excellent news particularly as he's left-handed.
41:40 John Hopkins? But recovery is at a snail's pace.
41:44 John Hopkins? As he convalesces in a hotel on the edge of King's Park, close to the hospital, Richard looks wistfully out of his window at a building across the street.
41:53 Speaker 01 They were building this new skyscraper. And it's a BHP skyscraper. It was an amazing edifice of glass and steel, super high. If it's not the highest in Perth, it certainly was back then. And I knew that of a night time mates of mine were breaking into it and going up the top of it and jumping off it. And I was looking at this building and thinking, as I get out, I'm going to go jump this building, you know, it's got to be done before they finish building it. And then I just had this sort of acute moment as I'm sort of getting FOMO and thinking about all that sort of past stuff. I'm like, really? I mean, come on, mate, you've just had a close rush.
42:36 Speaker 01 Is that really something you want to go and do and poke fun at your good fortune? Like, do you want to continue to play that card?
42:46 John Hopkins? A month after his first surgery, Richard is allowed to fly back to his hometown of Broome, under strict instructions to return in a few months for further operations to close the wound properly.
42:58 John Hopkins? It's while in Broome, with his arm still held together by surgical staples, that his life takes another unexpected twist.
43:06 Speaker 01 I'd only been back in Broome for two days. I had like nearly 300 staples in my arm. And I met Kate Sutton and it was a thunderbolts and lightning moment, you know? It's a day I'll never forget. It was earth-shattering and maybe the seeds of what I was looking at when I closed the door on the whole base jumping thing planted other seeds about, oh wow, this is so different to anything. I've had relationships in the past, but this is a very, very different thing. Like this is all-encompassing. When you know, you know. And I was, yeah, I was knocked down.
43:40 John Hopkins? Before long, Kate has moved from Sydney to Broome and they've set up a small business together. And things keep accelerating. Within a few months, they have their first baby together. Fifteen years later, they're still married, now with three children.
43:58 John Hopkins? But while his newfound romance moves quickly, other things take a bit more time. Eventually, the hospital in Perth called to say Richard needed to undergo further surgery to improve the aesthetics of his arm, but he opts out. By this stage, he tells them he doesn't care what it looks like. He just wants to get back in the water.
44:19 Speaker 01 I went off to work with another company here in Australia and jumped back in the water, just air diving, shallow but ripping tides. And it was a good test start. As soon as I was back in the water, I was back in my happy place. And to this day, it is still my happy place. There's nothing, nothing more satisfying for me than having a task or a purpose and a body of water to jump into and get it done. So I'm very, very grateful that the universe conspired to send Kate my way and, you know, make a full rebound. It's a happy ending. It's a happy ending.
44:57 John Hopkins? But what allowed for this happy ending to occur? What helped Richard to survive his accident and the ordeal that followed? One key aspect, he says, is a certain outlook, an ability to keep thoughts of death off to one side.
45:13 Speaker 01 They don't give it undue emphasis because, you know, I believe that life is for living and, you know, we live in a world now where no matter where you look and these algorithms and the electronic stuff, it attempts to leverage that fear. And we've got so much anxiety that the insurance system, the litigation system, our systems have leveraged that fear. And in leveraging it, they amplify it. And I just don't buy into that noise.
45:40 John Hopkins? Richard also credits some of his resilience, perhaps begrudgingly, to the military-style boarding school he was sent to at just eight years old.
45:48 Speaker 01 The benefits that I gained from that sort of an education were probably not the ones that my parents intended when they shipped me out. But my ability to deal with awful situations and awful people and after you've been through the level of hazing and fratting and the hierarchy of these places, there's nowhere in the world that I couldn't go to and there's nowhere in the world that I couldn't work with.
46:13 John Hopkins? Ultimately, though, there is no substitution for good old-fashioned dumb luck.
46:18 Speaker 01 My mum used to have this saying to me when I would get lucky. She used to say, "Richard, you were born under a star." And I have been incredibly lucky. You're talking to me because for whatever reason, that gun didn't shoot me in the guts. Two inches to the right, it was in the chest and it was game over. And I stand on the shoulders of a lot of people, like those friends of mine that are no longer with us. You know, I tip my hat to them every day. I do not forget them. They ride with me always. Since this lucky moment, I have tried to honour my good fortune in the husband that I am, the father that I am, the colleague and the mate that I am. And I've endeavoured to not be as self-centred
47:03 Speaker 01 and as fatalistic as I used to be. My way of thinking, the karmic sort of way, is that if you honour the previous luck you've had, maybe more of it will keep coming.
47:21 John Hopkins? Next time, we meet Zoe Holahan. In July 2018, she and her husband Brian travelled to Greece to enjoy a relaxing honeymoon, having tied the knot just days before. But what should be one of the happiest times of their lives soon morphs into a horror story right before their eyes, when the couple wake from a siesta to find themselves trapped in one of the worst natural disasters in the country's recent history. Racing against time, Zoe and Brian face a desperate scramble to escape before it's too late. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen today by joining Noiser Plus.
48:00 John Hopkins? This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four.
48:42 John Hopkins? Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.
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