Canadian police are considering whether “criminal, federal or provincial laws” were broken in the run-up to the Titan submarine disaster.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police will investigate “the circumstances leading to the deaths” of the five crew members aboard the submarine and decide “whether a full investigation is warranted.”
Their investigation was underway on Thursday, a day after it became known that human remains were found during the recovery mission and parts of the ship were brought ashore. It comes as a marine engineering professor claimed an electrical fault could have also contributed to the disaster, after suggestions it was made of inappropriate material.
Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion” while traveling to the wreckage of the Titanic 12,500 feet under the Atlantic Ocean.
Human remains have reportedly been found in the wreckage of the Titan submarine
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, which launched Titan, perished aboard the submarine along with his four passengers, including PH Nargeolet (right)
Shahzada Dawood, 48, one of Pakistan’s richest men, who along with his teenage son Suleman Dawood, 19, (together, left) died on the Titan, along with British explorer Hamish Harding (right)
Chief Inspector Kent Osmond, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), said a team of investigators has been set up for the “sole purpose” of determining whether a criminal investigation is warranted.
“Such an investigation will only proceed if our investigation of the circumstances indicates that criminal, federal or provincial laws may have been violated,” he said Saturday.
“Following the U.S. Coast Guard’s announcement earlier this week that debris from the submarine had been found and that all five occupants were presumed dead, we will now look at the circumstances leading up to those deaths.
“Our detectives have been involved and active in this case since this morning. Once it has been determined whether or not a full investigation will be launched, we will provide an update at that time.”
Dr. Jasper Graham-Jones, a professor of mechanical and marine engineering, said an “electrical catastrophe” could have contributed to the incident. His assessment follows others that have focused on the weakness of the carbon fiber hull, which was said to be unsuitable for depths to which Titan dived.
He said, “This could have been an electrical catastrophe. It could have been corrosion, it could have been fire.
‘Any leakage of water in the electricity can also lead to a breakdown.
“Some pipes and components that lead outside could start to leak. If a wire goes out, those wires going across the country could start leaking. They could be corroded.
“Suspected human remains” have been found in the wreck of the submarine Titan, the US Coast Guard announced on Wednesday.
Much of the Titan submarine recovered on Wednesday turned out to be a panel from its tail. Some experts expected the recovered pieces to be much smaller
Titan’s titanium front, where the viewing port was located, was clearly recognizable among the salvaged parts. It is believed that the titanium parts probably suffered less damage during the implosion, compared to the weaker carbon fiber elements
Several recognizable parts of the ship were hoisted ashore earlier in the afternoon, including the nose of the submarine and a large panel that appears to emerge from the tail.
Amid those recovered pieces, Coast Guard officials said they discovered human remains, which will now be transported aboard a ship to a port in the United States, where they will be tested and analyzed.
The discoveries surprised experts who suspected that Titan was completely destroyed when it experienced a “catastrophic implosion.”
Earlier on Wednesday, a coroner told DailyMail.com she believed the remains of those on board — including British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood — would probably never be found.
Officials said Wednesday the remains had been “gently removed from the wreckage” recovered earlier in the day.
“I am grateful for the coordinated international and inter-agency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,” Captain Jason Neubauer of the Marine Board of Investigation said in a statement.
“The evidence will provide researchers from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,” he added.
But Neubauer noted that “significant work” still needs to be done to understand what happened to the Titan submarine and to “ensure that a similar tragedy does not happen again.”
The MBI will continue to collect evidence and conduct witness interviews to inform a public hearing about the incident, and Pelagic Research Services – whose remote-controlled vehicle discovered the debris fields – said the team is “still on a mission.” is.
“They have been working around the clock for ten days now, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and are eager to complete the mission and return to their loved ones,” the company said in a statement.
A large round piece of the Titan, similar to the sections at each end of the hull, was also recovered
The salvaged remains of Titan were hoisted ashore by a huge crane on Wednesday morning
On Wednesday, a debris field was found on the seafloor 1,600 feet (500 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, which is more than two miles (nearly four kilometers) below the ocean’s surface and 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. .
The Canadian-flagged cargo ship Polar Prince towed the Titan out to sea last weekend, but lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after the submarine launched into the depths of the ocean.
News of the missing ship sparked a multi-national search and rescue operation, which ended when officials announced that the submarine had likely imploded, instantly killing all on board.
Years prior to the implosion, experts had warned that Stockton Rush’s self-designed submarine was unable to safely reach the wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor.
They said the carbon fiber hull, which housed the five crew members, was the “Achilles heel” as the material is not considered suitable for diving at the depths reached by the ship.
Titanic director James Cameron, a renowned deep-sea explorer and submarine expert, previously said the hull was likely broken into “very small pieces” during the incident.
‘If I had to put money down on what the finding [of the investigation] will be, the Achilles’ heel of the submarine was the composite cylinder that was the main hull that the humans were in,” he said.
“There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It’s pretty clear that that failed.’
Carbon fiber is prone to delamination, the process by which a material breaks into layers under pressure.
The craft’s titanium parts are believed to have weathered the disaster better, while the weaker carbon fiber parts – including the hull – were more likely to have been crushed into small pieces.
The parts lifted from the ocean seem to match Cameron’s observations, including that the larger piece was the ship’s titanium shell. Investigators will now try to confirm what each piece is.
Titan’s remains were found near the Titanic shipwreck 12,500 feet below the Atlantic Ocean
Titan’s carbon fiber hull and its acrylic viewing window were subject to several warnings, and James Cameron called them “potential points of failure” on the ship
But despite these incessant warnings from naval experts, OceanGate had assured the public for years that its Titan submarine was safe.
The company had boasted in promotional materials about Titan’s ‘Real Time Hull Health Monitoring’, which constantly checked the ship’s integrity during the dive.
The system used acoustic sensors and strain gauges to ‘analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submarine dives deeper, and to accurately assess the integrity of the structure’.
But legal documents show that a former Director of Maritime Operations “expressed concern that this was problematic because this kind of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is on the verge of failure — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect existing flaws.” before it was posted. pressure on the torso.’