Air Force chef boots way to warmth

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 4

Air Force chef boots way to warmth

PA Wellington An Air Force chef spent an hour trapped in a Shelly Bay freezer before booting his way to freedom. Sergeant Trevor Collins had gone into the freezer to stir a bowl of sorbet (a flavoured ice), a job which took about 15 minutes. When he went to leave the freezer, the door release mechanism came away in his hand. It was 4 p.m. on a Saturday and there was no-one to hear him if he shouted. The sorbet was not deeded until 7 p.m., and no-one was likely to come near the freezer until then.

Sergeant Collins then laid into the freezer door’s formica-like panelling with his steelcapped cook’s safety

boots, and after 45 minutes had punched a hole large’enough to get his hand through, and was able to reach the door handle.

Sergeant Collins, who was wearing only a chefs jacket and cook’s trousers, said it took a hot drink and about 34 minutes before he thawed. It was the next day before the tingling left his frigid fingers. Being trapped in a freezer, he said, was “not an experience I’d recommend.” *