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Domestic Stories: HOMEGROWN SIMULATOR PREPARES SUBMARINERS FOR EMERGENCY ESCAPES
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By Richard Vieira
RIMOUSKI, QU — The Canadian navy, The Institut maritime du Quebec (IMQ) and Innovation maritime have developed a revolutionary submarine emergency escape simulator and intensive training program that have already sparked the interest of navies from NATO countries around the world, including the United States.
Credit: The Institut maritime du Quebec
Assisted by a safety diver, a submariner is ejected from the escape tower of the training simulator.
“We are all extremely impressed with the result of this training program,” says Cdr Claude Gauthier. “The American navy is already looking into what it has to offer.”
Many European navies already have submarine evacuation training programs in place, but none have technology that comes anywhere close to this simulator and accompanying two-day training program, which both took about a year to develop.
 Credit: The Institut maritime du Quebec The submarine evacuation simulator. |
“Our method of delivering this type of training with this simulator is the first of its kind in the world,” says Daniel Dion, assistant director of the IMQ, whose Commercial Diving Training Centre has instructed some 400 Canadian submariners over the last five years.
The training regimen, provided by the Canadian Forces Naval Operation School in Halifax, begins with a Basic Submarine Qualification course — covering topics of submarine rescue and escape in a wet-pressurized environment — before moving on to actual underwater training within the simulator, which will holds five submariners and one instructor.
After the six enter the CSET, the submariners conduct a series of safety checks before closing the lid of the simulator. The vessel then dives to a depth of eight metres, at which time the trainees escape the vessel one by one.
Each submariner will first put on a submarine survival escape air suit, then enter the escape tower of the vessel. After closing the hood, he will begin flooding the tower, which takes 30 seconds. Six seconds later, the submariner, with help from a safety diver, is ejected from the tower at a speed of 5.5 metres per second until he reaches the surface, where a safety swimmer awaits his arrival.
The safety diver and swimmer are among the precautions put in place to ensure the submariners are protected from every foreseeable hazard during the training process.
The IMQ’s hyperbaric chamber is also available should a diver experience decompression sickness, an ailment caused by a rapid change from a high- to low-pressure environment that can cause breathing problems, coughing, paralysis, convulsions, severe joint pains and even shock. The sealed chamber provides a high-pressure breathing environment so the diver can gradually depressurize.
Since January, some 80 submariners have undergone training on the innovative submarine simulator.
A total of 800 Canadian submariners are expected to take this training over the next five years.
With files from Le Soleil
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