How the Marines Train to Survive a Helicopter Crash Underwater | Damage Control | WIRED

[Music] we train people to perform complicated underwater egress movements we ask people to confront what can be some pretty primal stuff fear of darkness confined spaces fear of water and all happening simultaneously and we take away their ability to see and it can play a little bit into the things that they are afraid of at survival systems us a SWAT Coast Guard and Marine units learn basic steps for underwater survival the primary tool is custom-built helicopter simulator but in order to make these passengers safe they'll be put in danger first we'll experience what it takes to survive and over the water aircraft survival situation and then we'll take a peek behind the curtain and getting even deeper understanding of what goes into creating and maintaining such a high-stakes training system this is damage control I'm Albert Bohemia I'm the founder of survival systems started in 1982 when I was in the military I was one of my jobs was their crew life support and I knew that there were many problems with that equipment and I also knew that the passengers had no training after I left the military I was flying to the Arctic and I did attempt to land on top of a mountain basically crashed I survived the crash because of my military training and the way I had been drilled in - even though you don't think it's ever gonna happen to you always be prepared to react I understood from personal experience that unless you're very ready you may not do the right thing Bohemia built this simulator so he could provide training for servicemembers first responders and others who might experience forest water landings and he built it in such a way that it accurately simulates real danger their training is called underwater egress or simply water egress the simulator is as realistic as we can make it without actually making it into a helicopter or an aircraft the mechanisms operate the way they do on the aircraft so if a handle spins in the aircraft the handle will spin inside the simulator if you fly next to a door that's 22 inches across the simulator exit for that door will be 22 inches across so when a student shows up for training they'll enter the simulator and they'll either be seated next to an exit or they'll be seated one seat or two seats away from an exit so we have them buckle in we assumed that there's an over water emergency they get into a brace position we have an impact with the surface of the water and subsequent rollover through the course of the day we we start with baby steps we work on the easy stuff first procedures first and then we start applying those procedures under more and more complicated scenarios the most common and the biggest mistake that I see people make they try to get that seatbelt off as quickly as possible when that happens you lose all reference to the rest of the airframe it's very easy for a person to become disoriented and end up right-side up inside of an upside-down aircraft proprioceptive disorientation is a factor that impacts a person's ability to perform an underwater egress it's our awareness of our body position in space in under those circumstances it's really difficult to figure out where you are relative to everything else and find the emergency exit the average person does know exactly where they are until they physically start the process of reorienting themselves it's a bit like if you don't touch the edge of your bed and the headboard of your bed you don't know where you are if all you feel is blankets and sheets it's the same thing in a helicopter if you release your seatbelt you don't know where your exit anymore this disorientation is one of the first and most critical issues trainees face the technology they use was designed to guarantee disorientation once you hit the water so we wanted to disorient the average human being a hundred percent of the time so as you were safely strapped into this machine and you were elevated above the water and we lowered you we have to continue the speed of this hint at the same rate and whilst we were pulling you on the water and pulling you upside down we had to make you lose your vision make you lose your sensory input so that you didn't know anymore whether you're up down or sideways and now we start teaching you how do I get out of here there are several factors of disorientation happening simultaneously - especially in a rollover situation one we have visual disorientation we lose two-thirds of our visual acuity when we're submerged immediately color also starts to disappear as descend through the water column and red is the first color that disappears it happens at ten or twelve or fifteen feet or so and a lot of emergency exits placards handles are all marked red so a person under those circumstances are maybe looking around and they're seeing purple or black or blue the survival systems course retrains the brain to enact a series of simple processes when disoriented and under intense stress the main things that we recommend that people do to help overcome that or want to stay in the seat belt buckled into your seat as long as possible because as long as you're buckled into the seat you know where you are relative to everything else in the aircraft and that's a good starting point for performing the egress secondarily we recommend using an anatomical reference point to be to work our way towards and exit I would tell people if you're confused touch yourself yeah these are my legs and if these are my legs this is where my seat belt is this is my seat if my seat is here this is where my exit is once they jettison the exit they need to make sure that they have an open exit to find their way out so they'll grab the frame their other hand will come down and work the harness they'll either spin it or they'll pull the latch and they'll release their harness once they've done that and now they can pull themselves out so the disorientation can continue to affect somebody after they've performed the underwater egress and we've seen this in the training environment where somebody who pulled himself clear the exit and started swimming towards the bottom of the pool Bohemia says he felt that disorientation when he crashed to during the disaster situation after I crashed I was completely dysfunctional as a human being I couldn't think I could not organize myself the only way I could come to any type of structured reaction was to write down on my knee pad I have crashed I now have to survive I have to make a plan so I realized how training and being able to do emergency reaction to a threatening life-threatening situation how important it is that you've thought about it the training he developed depends on the technology underlying it Albert wanted to be absolutely certain that what he built would put trainees into the correct frame of mind and give them as close to a real experience as possible he knew that lives depended on it so it's a very nice elegant integrated system crane operator the divers the instructors how they communicate and how they use the safety features that are built into the crane things like they're redundant wire ropes the weight of the crane the emergency stop they are all a nice integrated system that allows all of the redundancies to make it easy for us to train somebody and not hurt the engineer to control the system that safely emulates a dangerous environment it also goes back to the classroom discussion with the instructor part of what we do and I think we do it particularly well is establishing rapport with the students in the classroom to have them come up to you and tell you as the instructor I don't know how to swim great we can work with that I know how to swim but I am terrified of this we can work with it just have faith in us and get in the simulator the first time we will walk you through Anna I always remember one of the Canadian military aircrew who he came he took a course and I was an instructor and he kept jumping out of the simulator every time we would call ditching and start lowering the machine he would jump up and at one point he got really angry and he left the site he didn't came back the next day and said listen is there anything you can do to help me finish and we did we worked with him for almost a whole day until we could get him upside down on the water he could stop his panic for years later I was training in the pool and this dude came by and stood on the pool deck and said hey come over and he said oh I just want to thank you man you saved my life my kids have a father because of what you did and he said I was hateful I was hateful to what you did to me in that machine but he said only during the final moment of death versus life I understood why you guys design your machine - we did and also did the training - what you did I had to crash to really understand it survival systems has created a safe simulation and detailed system of protocols for one of the most dangerous things that can happen to you in a helicopter nothing they do here can prevent emergencies from taking place but by training for dangerous situations like ditching a helicopter escaping an onboard fire and other worst-case scenarios they're providing helicopter pilots and passengers with tools that might just help them walk away from a disaster [Music]

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: Wired, wired damage control, damage control wired, 180 wired, vr video, helicopter, helicopter crash, helicopter crash survivial, surviving helicopter crash, helicopter accident, helicopters, helicopter drowning, helicopter underwater, underwater helicopter, underwater crash, underwater helicopter crash, helicopter crash underwater, crash underwater helicopter, crashing helicopter, helicopter safety, helicopter safety training, helicopter training, training helicopter crash

Id: aXbLPU4GLE0

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2020