Were warning signs ignored? Things to know about this week’s testimony on the Titan sub disaster
Last year, five people hoping to see the wreck of the Titanic died when their submarine imploded in the Atlantic Ocean. This week, a Coast Guard panel investigating the Titan disaster heard four days of testimony that raised serious questions about whether warning signs were ignored. The panel plans to hear another five days of testimony next week.
Here’s what witnesses have said so far:
Testifying about a dive that occurred several years before the fatal accident, Chief Engineer Tony Nissen said he felt pressured to get Titan ready and refused to fly the ship.
“I’m not going to do it,” Nissen told Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate, the company that owned the Titan. Nissen said Rush was difficult to work for, made demands that often changed from day to day and was focused on costs and schedules. Nissen said he tried to keep his conflicts with Rush under wraps so others in the company wouldn’t be aware of the friction.
Science director Steven Ross said that during a dive just days before Titan imploded, the ship had a problem with its ballast, which keeps ships stable. The problem caused passengers to “fall over” and hit the bulkhead, he said.
“One passenger was hanging upside down. The other two managed to squeeze themselves into the bow,” Ross testified.
He said no one was injured, but it took an hour to get the ship out of the water. He said he did not know if a safety assessment or hull inspection had been carried out after the incident.
A paying passenger on a 2021 mission to the Titanic said the trip was cut short when the ship developed mechanical problems.
“We realized that the only thing it could do was circle and turn right,” Fred Hagen said. “At this point, we clearly could not navigate to the Titanic.”
He said the Titan surfaced and the mission was canceled. Hagen said he was aware of the risks involved in the dive.
“Anyone who wanted to go was either delusional that it wasn’t dangerous or they embraced the risk,” he said.
Chief Operating Officer David Lochridge said the tragedy might have been prevented if a federal agency had investigated the concerns he had repeatedly raised.
Lochridge said that eight months after he filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a caseworker told him that the agency had not yet begun its investigation and that it had 11 more cases before it. By then, OceanGate was suing Lochridge and he had filed a countersuit. A few months later, Lochridge said, he decided to walk away from the company. He said the case was closed and both lawsuits were dropped.
“The whole idea of the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little science.”
Renata Rojas, an Explorers Club member who lost two paid passengers in the fatal dive, struck a different tone in her testimony. She said she felt OceanGate was transparent leading up to the dive and that she never felt the operation was unsafe.
“Some of those people are very hardworking people who just wanted to make their dreams come true,” she said.