Missing Titanic submersible posed risk of 'extreme danger' to passengers, OceanGate exec warned in 2018
- The OceanGate Expeditions submersible that went missing with five people aboard while trying to visit the site of the Titanic wreckage has only 41 hours or less of oxygen left, U.S. Coast Guard officials said.
- Rescuers are searching an area of ocean that is "larger than the state of Connecticut" for the Titan submersible, Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said.
- A former OceanGate Expeditions director warned that the submersible posed potential "extreme danger" to passengers because it had not been properly tested for use at very low water depths.
The OceanGate Expeditions submersible that went missing with five people aboard while trying to visit the site of the Titanic wreckage has only 41 hours or less of oxygen left, U.S. Coast Guard officials said Tuesday.
Also Tuesday, federal court filings from a 2018 lawsuit came to light, revealing that a then-OceanGate director warned that the company's submersible posed potential "extreme danger" to passengers because it had not been properly tested for use at very low water depths.
Rescuers are searching an area of ocean that is "larger than the state of Connecticut" for the Titan submersible, Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said at a news briefing Tuesday.
But there have been "no results" thus far, he said.
"Search and rescue crews are working around the clock to find the submersible and crew," said Frederick, who called it a "very complex search."
The submersible went missing Sunday, less than two hours into its dive about 900 nautical miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, is on board the vessel.
Also aboard are billionaire Hamish Harding, owner of Action Aviation; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48; and his 19-year-old son Suleman. The fifth person is a crew member of the vessel.
OceanGate began offering trips on the submersible, whose passengers pay $250,000 apiece, in 2021.
"This is your chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary," the company said on its website advertising the trips.
In a "CBS Sunday Morning" segment in November about his trip on the submersible, correspondent David Pogue read out loud the text of a waiver he signed for the excursion.
"An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death," Pogue read.
2018 lawsuit
Court filings from a 2018 lawsuit between OceanGate and its former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, show that he had "disagreed with OceanGate's position to dive the submersible without any non-destructive testing to prove its integrity."
Lochridge, in a court filing first reported by The New Republic, said the failure to perform that testing would "subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible."
"Lochridge first expressed verbal concerns over the safety and quality control issues regarding the Titan to OceanGate executive management," Lochridge's court filing said. "These verbal communications were ignored."
The filing said that Lochridge had been denied access to information about the vessel's viewport — the section where passengers could look out from the submersible — which revealed that it "was only built to certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters."
"Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to the experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy ('PVHO') standards," the filing said.
"OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters," the filing said. "The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable
materials were being used within the submersible."
OceanGate had sued Lochridge and his wife in Washington state court in June 2018, alleging breach of contract, fraud and other claims that the company said arose from him discussing OceanGate's confidential information with at least two other people, as well as representatives of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in purported violation of a nondisclosure agreement.
Lochridge then filed a counterclaim against OceanGate in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
The case was settled in late 2018.
OceanGate did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit. A spokesman for the lawyer who had represented OceanGate in the Lochridge case declined to comment.
The Titanic sunk on its maiden voyage from England to New York City on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg. More than 1,500 people died in the disaster.
The wreckage of the ship was not found until 1985 off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It sits about 13,000 feet under the Atlantic Ocean.
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