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The widow of a sailor who tried to take his own life 14 years after the HMCS Kootenay explosion that killed nine of his crewmates and injured 53 others in October of 1969 has finally won a compensation battle for the pain and suffering depression caused during his lifetime.
“His shirt and most of the skin off the upper portion of his body appeared to be burnt off. Sickbay quickly filled with a thick black smoke,” he said."The thick black smoke in the flats prevented you from taking any sort of breath. I was coughing and choking by the time I did reach the gun deck and it took a minute or two before I could go back in and get up to the bridge.”
"I knew I was scared while on board, however, if I had even dared to mention my fears I would have been laughed at or off the ship all together.”The woman the sailor would eventually marry in 1972 started dating him about six months after the Kootenay blast. He “was moody, but he never explained why. He would simply say ‘It's something I have to deal with.’”“At that time, they had a new baby. She did not fully understand what he was going through because he kept it hidden. He told her he could not go for help because it would ruin his career.”Since 2009, she has been in contact with other Kootenay crew members. “Each one of them could have had a different outcome had they not been ordered to not talk about the explosion.
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