Macleans: The Tofino disaster: Inside the rescue effort
October 27, 2015 —
As Maclean’s magazine reports:
Five Britons are dead after a whale watching boat with 27 people aboard sank near the tourist town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. One person remains missing….
It’s currently 12 degree Celsius offshore, and a few degrees colder in the open Pacific. Survivors would have gone into “Cold Shock,” which causes immediate hyperventilation, triggers the gasp reflex, according to research by Gordon Giesbrecht, a University of Manitoba professor who studies the body’s response to cold water. Survivors would have been struggling to breathe regularly which can trigger hypertension and lead to sudden death.