39 Bodies found in Lorry in Essex
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Soldato
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One would assume they know this in advance. I dont understand therefore, why no one made some modifications to the container.
The air available should allow for the crossing. I can only assume someone didn't open the doors beforehand when they were meant to. Or there were too many people in there.
Soldato
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Guess we can try a back of a fag packet calc on this then.
A shipping container is 12.2 x 2.4 x 2.6 meters which is 76 m3 or 76000 litres of air.
Air is c. 21% oxygen so in that container is 16000 litres of oxygen when its sealed up.
According to google a resting human consumes 550 litres of oxygen per day or 22 litres per hour.
There were 39 people in that container, so thats 39 x 22 = 858 litres of oxygen per hour. This is also the rate at which CO2 builds up.
From google it appears that a concrentration of 6% CO2 in air is sufficient to prevent O2 absorption (any life support engineers validate this?)
So I think we have roughly the following:
T=0: O2 = 16000 litres, CO2 = 0 litres (0%)
T=1: O2 = 15142 litres, CO2 = 858 litres (1.1%)
T=2: O2 = 14284 litres, CO2 = 1716 litres (2.2%)
T=3: O2 = 13426 litres, CO2 = 2574 litres (3.3%)
You can see the approximate pattern so to skip through quicker:
T=4: CO2 = 4.4%
T=5: CO2 = 5.5%
T=6: CO2 = 6.6%
So fatal CO2 levels in 6 hours even though there will still be over 10,000 litres of O2 in the container.
Does this stack up with how long they were in the container? Also if that container was half full of goods as well, halving the air volume then this time is halved also so only 3 hours.
Pretty much this, you can guarantee they got in the trailer a good hour + away from the port, the truck would have sat and waited for its slot (you don’t turn up and board, especially in a commercial vehicle) plus the crossing and disembarkation time, basically they never stood a chance.
plus one of the victims messaged her family stating she couldn’t breathe, no mention of cold - the fridge unit if set to freeze (-25 minimum) would have done for them in no time.
I’ve worked with reefer trailers, the last place you want to be is shut inside one, especially if it’s set for a frozen load, which I don’t think this one was, however stupid the gang who did this was they’d know having that freezer running would be as good as shooting them, or at least they should have known that!
Soldato
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Perhaps call me naive but given how dangerous it is to be shut inside, one might expect to be able to open the doors from inside in case of an accidental lock in?
Also how are these refigerator units powered during their journey on the boat?
Most reefers don’t have internal door handles so you couldn’t get out if you were shut inside the main reason is usually the trailer is reversed onto a loading bay where the doors are opened outward so they can’t be physically closed whilst the trailer is on a loading bay some roller shutter trailers do have internal release handles but not barn door type designs for the reason given.
Whilst fridge trailers have small holes in the floor for drainage these are no way near big enough to allow enough airflow to sustain a large group of people like in this case in such a small space, also if the fridge unit (which is diesel powered, you can connect them to mains electricity power when the fridge motor is switched off) is set to freeze not only do you have a minimum of -25c to contend with (many will go a lot colder) you also have windchill to factor in to the equation, they have powerful fans to circulate the air around the trailer to prevent warm spots.
Basically a very inhospitable environment even when wearing protective clothing.
When not using the built in diesel fridge motor.....
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Couldn't they have just bought a few oxygen tanks, it's not like they're expensive.
~£30 from Boc gets you 11000 litres of 99.5% O2... but then considering how dumb they are... they'd probably just oxygenate it too much instead and cause hyperoxia.
~£30 from Boc gets you 11000 litres of 99.5% O2... but then considering how dumb they are... they'd probably just oxygenate it too much instead and cause hyperoxia.
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That’s applying a bit of common sense and cost to the operation and assumes the traffickers give a **** about the welfare of the people being trafficked.
Criminals rarely display common sense, they are in this for profit, they aren’t going to pay out anything especially given they don’t give a **** about their victims.
Couldn't make my mind up as to if your serious or not really thinking this through or just being a bit silly tbh but there’s your answer!
I'm sure some traffickers must realise that dead slaves aren't good for business and we've just hit one of the idiots. I hope they give the guy a gold plated plea deal so he has every incentive to cooperate to start bringing some of them down. Though i imagine these operations are either run by separate crime groups or segregated enough that it's not as easy as finding a few delinquents.
Soldato
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It's safe to breathe 100% O2 at sea level.
I just cant understand why relatively intelligent vietnamese adults would agree to be sealed inside a container knowing it was fully sealed. The first thing I'd be thinking is whether there would be enough air for the trip, its pretty obvious even to non western people surely.
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If does that he will need to go into protection as I hazard a guess but being from NI he will be a dead man walking.
Pretty sure it is not in fact "safe" to breath 100% oxygen in a pressured container, which it would be if it had to maintain CO2 below hypoxia levels. Though i'm not sure if the pressure would mean much at the time/level of oxygen supply needed for a few hours.
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Japan has a labour shortage, they should've maybe gone there instead.
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No message.
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Soldato
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@Scania said there were drain holes, so the container cannot be pressurised.
Breathing 100% O2 through something like a SCUBA regulator, would have been fine. In fact why not breathe air this way (way cheaper than pure O2) then the CO2 build up inside the container is not a problem. Clearly impractical to take 39 SCUBA cylinders on the truck though when running around a ferry terminal trying to hide. A single 12 L 200 bar cylinder would only last around 100 minutes anyway.
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I'm interested to know if we have any 'Life Support Engineers' on these boards too...
Soldato
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I'm interested to know if we have any 'Life Support Engineers' on these boards too...
Ha! I nearly wrote NASA life support engineers there but didn't want to constrain things too much!
Anyway Ive been googling since last night and it seems anywhere between 6-10% CO2 would be the fatal level depending on exposure time. Humans appear to need an O2 level of at least 16% to breathe properly, which would equate to 5% displacement with CO2.
Indeed.
The only trailers I’ve ever encountered that are pressurised are some tankers, reefers most certainly aren’t.