Hearing begins to determine what happened to Titan submarine
The OceanGate vehicle went underwater with five people on board with the intention of visiting the Titanic but had a malfunction that resulted in the death of all of them. The Coast Guard continues to investigate the incident.
OceanGate's submarine Titan during one of its last dives
It has been more than a year since the incident that caused the death of the five passengers who were aboard the submarine Titan intending to visit the wreckage of the Titanic.
It was on June 18, 2023, when the submersible, which departed from the coast of Canada, sank in the depths of the northern Atlantic Ocean and ended up imploding, killing all five people on board, including the American pilot and CEO of OceanGate (the company that owned the submarine), a French sailor, two businessmen and the 19-year-old son of one of the businessmen. All of them paid $250,000 for the trip.
The investigations began immediately. Conspiracy theories and accusations were also launched by a former OceanGate worker, David Lochridge, who claimed that he had warned that the Titan had not passed all the tests and that the submarine could endanger the lives of its passengers. After this, he claimed in statements reported by NBC News, he was given "10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk."
But he turned out to be right, and the Titan never resurfaced. The investigation remains open, and Lochridge will be among those scheduled to testify at a hearing that began Monday and will drag on for the next two weeks, as the Coast Guard tries to figure out what happened.
Officials said they will look at various aspects that could have caused the failure on the Titan, including "pre-accident historical events, regulatory compliance, crewmember duties and qualifications, mechanical and structural systems, emergency response, and the submersible industry."
For this, they will take statements from engineers and executives of OceanGate, the company that owns the Titan as well as its co-founder, Guillermo Söhnlein, who came out in defense of the deceased founder a year ago.
And what is the purpose of this hearing? According to the president of the Marine Board of Inquiry, Jason Neubauer, during a press conference, the objective is to provide the necessary safety recommendations to the authorities so that they can take them into account and make sure that "no family will experience such a loss again."
Along with this, they will also try to discover whether there was any negligence or misconduct and, if there was, it will be referred to the Department of Justice so that it can formally charge the possible culprits who unwittingly caused the death of the five Titan passengers whose bodies now rest next to the Titanic's wreckage.
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