Last month the United States Coast Guard began to hold hearings in an effort to determine who was at fault for the OceanGate Titan Sub disaster which occurred last year. In June 2023, OceanGate sent their Titan Submersible and its five passengers down to visit the wreck of the Titanic. Disaster struck on June 18, 2023, when the submarine imploded killing all five passengers, including OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush.
Hearings ended on Friday and a decision has not yet been reached, but testimony provided looks bad for the operations and workplace environment of OceanGate from its founding until the discovery of the wreckage after the disaster.
Whistleblower and former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge testified that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was abusive, incompetent and unprofessional when operating the submersible, citing an incident in which Rush decided to take over operations from Lochridge on a dive to the wreck of the SS Andrea Doria during which Rush ran the submersible into the hull of the Doria causing it to become stuck, and refused to relinquish control back to Lochridge up until a paying client pleaded with him to do so.
Lochridge also testified that his concerns regarding the construction of the Titan submersible were dismissed numerous times in January 2018, more than five years before the submersible imploded.
Karl Stanley, a friend of Rush testified that the disaster was not an accident stating, “The definition of an accident is something that happened unexpectedly and by sheer chance. There was nothing unexpected about this.”
Stanley also testified that it was his belief that ego was a large part of Rush’s decision making process and why he continued to use the submersible even though he was aware it wasn’t fit for use.
The majority of testimony presented over nine days of hearings pointed the blame solely at Rush, accusing him of being egotistical, abusive, cheap, and unprofessional. Only one person, Reneta Rojas, stated that she believed Rush was competent, or at least saw nothing wrong with how Rush ran the company and its operations.
Rojas stated that her role was to observe and give her opinion on operations when she was present on the first dive after the submersible had completed deepwater testing, where it would dive to a depth of seven meters. When questioned, Rojas confirmed that the viewing dome had fallen off as the submersible was being loaded onto the ship after the dive, stating that she thought there were only two or four bolts holding the dome in place, which sheared off. Rojas stated that after this incident it was decided that 18 bolts should be used to secure the dome in place.
Although the hearings have ended, the Coast Guard has yet to publish a final report available to the public. The report is expected to contain a definitive cause of the implosion, new regulations on deep-sea diving, and possibly criminal charges. All announcements about the hearings and the public report are available on the Coast Guard news website.
