Hostage Survival

Life Changing

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.6 • 735 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2013 Nick Hitch found himself at the heart of a violent attack on a Gas facility in Eastern Algeria. It was later revealed that the militiamen were affiliated to Al-Qaeda. As a senior project manager Nick was deliberately targeted, threatened with execution, forced along with his colleagues to sit for hours in fear of detonating explosives to which they had been attached, and ultimately packed into a vehicle alongside a man with a crude suicide bomb on his knee. Thirty-nine foreign workers died during the attack, several of them Nick's close colleagues. Talking to Dr Sian Williams, he describes how the attack unfolded, how the challenges affected and continue to affect him, and how he has sought to put his horrific experience at the service of others who have faced similar trauma.

Producer: Tom Alban

Anyone affected by any of the issues described in this programme can find help and support at www.hostageinternational.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	Eleven climbers appeared to have died on the world's second highest mountain K2.
0:06.0	It was one of the deadliest days in mountaineering history.
0:10.0	Rock falls, avalanches.
0:11.0	Huge pieces of ice. All are big enough to kill you.
0:14.0	He just flew out into Devoid and he was gone.
0:17.0	How did it all go so wrong?
0:19.0	And is it really worth risking death to feel alive? Why would
0:23.2	somebody pay to go to a place called the death cell on a vacation? Extreme, peak danger. With me,
0:29.9	Natalia Melman Petrazella. Listen to the full series now. First on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:40.0	You're about to listen to the latest series of Life-changing.
0:44.0	Episodes will be released weekly, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:47.7	But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes first on BBC Sounds.
0:54.8	Hello, and welcome to the series that hears from people who've had an extraordinary, transformative moment
1:00.7	that's fundamentally changed who they are and how they see the world.
1:05.2	Today, Nick Hitch, a civil engineer working on huge complex projects, capable, dependable.
1:12.6	Nick worked in some tricky and unstable places where risk and uncertainty were part of the job.
1:18.0	And then one day, during a project in North Africa, things took a horrifying and dramatic turn, plunging him into an international crisis which had personal and traumatic consequences.
1:30.3	Hello, Nick.
1:31.0	Hello.
1:31.6	Thanks for coming in.
1:32.9	Just describe your job then.
1:35.0	What exactly does a civil engineer do?
	...

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