David Lochridge, former director of marine operations at OceanGate who had expressed concerns about the safety of the Titan submersible, said Tuesday (17) that the tragedy could have been avoided if U.S. safety authorities had investigated his complaints years ago.
Lochridge also criticized OceanGate’s corporate culture for being focused on “making money” and offering “very little in the way of science” during testimony before the U.S. Coast Guard agency investigating the vessel’s June 2023 implosion that killed all five people on board.
“I believe that if OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions, this tragedy could have been avoided,” Lochridge said at the end of Tuesday’s hearing.
Lochridge previously described a 2018 report in which he expressed safety concerns about OceanGate’s operations and said there was “no way I would sign off on that.” He said he had “no confidence” in the submersible’s construction.
The former director said he contacted OSHA via email eight months after being fired from OceanGate in 2018 to reiterate that he was “extremely concerned” with the safety of the Titan. He said he felt “deeply disappointed” that his warnings were not immediately investigated.
THE CNN has reached out to OSHA for comment. A representative for OceanGate declined to comment on Tuesday’s testimony.
Lochridge said his responsibility was to ensure the safety of all crew, customers and training riders, but that he felt more “like a show pony” because no one else was qualified as a rider.
“It was all smoke and mirrors,” he said of the way the company operated. “All the social media you see about all these previous expeditions. They always had problems with their expeditions.”
The Titan submersible sent its final message just six seconds before losing contact with the surface during its dive to the wreck of the Titanic, according to testimony on the first day of a two-week hearing held by the Maritime Board of Inquiry tasked with reviewing the tragedy.
The mothership, the Polar Prince, then lost track of the vessel.
A lawsuit filed by the family of one of the victims alleged that the message, sent about 90 minutes after the vessel plunged, was an indication that the crew may have known something was wrong and were trying to abort the mission.
Lochridge noted that the manufacturer of the viewing window — an acrylic window on the submersible — built and certified it for a depth of 1,000 meters.
But Lochridge told the security agency that OceanGate intended to take the vessel “to 4,000 metres with passengers who are unaware of this”.
Lochridge said OceanGate ignored the manufacturer’s concerns and its offer to build a viewing window certified for a depth of more than 4,000 meters. The viewing window was designed in-house by OceanGate and manufactured by a third party.
Lochridge testified that the OceanGate founder’s vision “was to give someone this PlayStation controller and within an hour they would be a pilot.”
“That’s not how it works,” he said.
“It’s like showing someone how to fly a helicopter and then putting them in charge of taking passengers up,” he added.
He accused the company of “ignoring all the standard rules and regulations that are set by experienced people.”
Lochridge said OceanGate was “pushing, pushing, pushing to try to get this out the door as quickly as possible so they can start making a profit” on what he described as an “experimental submersible” that the company had “already taken deposits for to go on the Titanic.”
The former director added that leadership dismissed his concerns, choosing instead to focus on completing the Titanic mission as quickly as possible.
“Whenever I expressed my displeasure about what was going on, my disapproval — that’s probably the best word … I was dismissed,” he said Tuesday.
“Everybody knew about the engineering team, I mean I spoke to every single one of them, all these kids straight out of university, some hadn’t even been to university yet… None of them were experienced submersible operators. There was no general experience within that organization,” he added.
His testimony before the Marine Board of Investigation came a day after testimony from former employees of OceanGate — the Everett, Washington-based company that developed and operated the 23,000-pound submersible, charging about $250,000 per passage.
The company has faced increasing scrutiny of its operations amid reports of safety concerns. Former employees have said the company cut corners in its rush to embark on missions with a poorly designed submersible.
“They wanted to be able to qualify a pilot in a day, someone who had never sat in a submersible. They wanted people to basically come in, be vetted as pilots and be able to take passengers into the submarine,” said Lochridge, who said he was fired in 2018 after raising the alarm about safety issues.
He added: “Whenever you’re on a submarine, the most important thing is to get home safely to your families, not to go and make money and push the limits. … Don’t take unnecessary risks with faulty equipment — and I mean faulty and deficient.”
Remember the case
The Marine Board of Investigation, the Coast Guard’s highest level of investigation, was convened just days after the submersible disappeared and tasked with reviewing the cause of the tragedy and offering recommendations, including on possible civil penalties and criminal prosecutions.
The submersible lost contact with its mother ship during its dive to the Titanic on June 18, 2023. When it failed to resurface, an international search and rescue mission began in the remote waters several hundred miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Ultimately, authorities concluded that the vessel had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” — a sudden inward collapse caused by immense pressure.
Debris from the submersible was found on the seabed hundreds of meters from the Titanic, and authorities recovered “supposed human remains” believed to belong to the victims.
Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of the vessel’s operator; businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood; businessman Hamish Harding; and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet were killed.
Once the investigation is complete, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board will each conduct an independent review and complete reports, said Jason Neubauer, chairman of the Maritime Investigation Board.
He cautioned that additional hearings could be held in the future, and he would not provide an estimated timeline for the investigation’s completion.
Dakin Andone and Cindy Von Quednow from CNN contributed to this report.
This content was originally published on CNN Brasil’s website, Former operations director warned about Titan’s safety years before the tragedy.
Source: CNN Brasil
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