‘They sold a lie’: the whistleblower who warned about the risk of implosion of the submersible Titan

David Lochridge was fired after denouncing security problems. David Lochridge via BBC when the submersible Titan disappeared during a dive to Titanic’s wreckage in 2023, David Lochridge thought the five people on board – including his former boss – could be rescued. “I always hope it would not happen what happened. But I knew that if they continued on the same way and with that poor equipment, some incident would happen,” he told the BBC. ✅ Click here to follow the G1 international news channel on WhatsApp the whistleblower had been fired by the submersible company, Oceangate, after denouncing security problems in 2018. In June 2023, the submarine imploded and the five people who were on board died, including Oceangat’s executive director, Stockton Rush. Remember. A report from the United States Coast Guard, released on Tuesday (5/8), concluded that Oceangate’s safety, testing and maintenance failures were the main cause of the tragedy. “There are many things that could have been done otherwise. From the initial project to the construction and the operations. They sold a lie,” said Lochridge. But he firmly believes that American authorities could – and should – have been more rigid with Oceangate. The project and construction of Titan’s hull were criticized in the report released by the US Coast Guard. PA Media via BBC Lochridge entered Oceangate as director of sea operations seven years before the tragedy. He had moved with the Scotland family in the United Kingdom to the United States and was enthusiastic about the company’s ambitions. At the time, Oceangate developed a new submersible to bring passengers to the wreckage of the world’s most famous wreck: the Titanic. Lochridge participated in the project from the beginning, working with the team that designed the submarine. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he worked at sea for over 25 years, first in the British royal navy and later as a submarine pilot. He also commanded underwater rescue operations, serving calls for help from people arrested underwater. He knows the risks involved in deep dives. Among his responsibilities was to plan the dives and, as a chief pilot, would be in charge of taking the submersible and his passengers to 3,800 meters deep to see Titanic. Security was a fundamental role of this function. “As director of sea operations, I was responsible for everyone,” he told the BBC. “I was responsible for the safety of the entire Oceangate team and all the passengers who would enter the submarine.” Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet died in the accident. Reuters/AFP via BBC The University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) was developing a prototype of the new submersible, which would eventually be called Titan. The plan was to build the part of the hull that would house passengers with carbon fiber. Until then, no other deep dive submarine had been manufactured with this material: most have titanium or steel hooves. But Lochridge trusted the lab team. Oceangate Executive Director Stockton Rush had promised that the vessel would undergo a safety inspection of an independent maritime organization. Lochridge insisted that this external supervision was essential, especially because Titan would be manufactured with experimental materials. But in the summer of 2016, he started to have doubts about the project. Oceangate failed to collaborate with the APL and decided to work internally in the design and construction of Titan. Lochridge was worried. He did not have the same confidence in Oceangate engineers, he didn’t think they had experience in building submarines capable of enduring the huge pressures found in the depths of the ocean, where Titanic’s wreckage are. “At that moment, I started to question and felt that I had a duty to continue questioning.” When the Titan pieces began to arrive and the ship began to take shape, Lochridge found one problem after another. “When the carbon hull arrived, it was an absolute disaster,” he recalls. He found visible flaws in the material visible to the naked eye, areas where the carbon fiber layers separated, a process known as “delamination.” In addition, it has identified problems in several other key components. David Lochridge had years of experience working at sea when he was hired by Oceangate. David Lochridge via BBC Carbon fiber hull had titanium domes at the ends, but the metal had not been forged correctly. Lochridge also feared that the submarine observation window would not be able to support extreme depths. The most worrying, however, was when he knew that Titan’s safety would no longer be certified independently. According to Lochridge, he was always very frank on security issues, and did not be silent. “I pointed out all the problems I saw, but I faced resistance all the time,” he said. In January 2018, he returned to his concerns to Stockton Rush. This time Rush asked him to perform an inspection in the submersible. That was a crucial moment in the development of Titan. The passengers had already deposited the money to the dives to the Titanic, scheduled for the end of that year, and the test dives in the Bahamas were already scheduled. Lochridge states that he wanted the Oceangate to adhe the plans. “I made a report and sent all the directors of the company.” The next day, he was summoned for a meeting with Rush and other Oceangate employees. The transcript of the two -hour meeting, in which the report was thoroughly analyzed, reveals a heated discussion between Lochridge and Rush. At the end of the meeting, in response to the security questions raised by Lochridge, Rush said, “I have no desire to die. I have a beautiful granddaughter. I will continue here. I understand this kind of risk, and I am doing it with eyes wide open. I believe it is one of the safest things I will do in life.” To Colhridge’s surprise, he was fired shortly after the meeting. After a heated meeting to discuss submersible safety, Oceangate fired Lochridge. Getty Images via BBC but Titan worried him so much that he contacted the US government’s occupational safety and health administration (OSHA). The agency said his case was urgent because he involved public safety and that he would be protected by the whistleblower program, created to avoid retaliation by companies against complainants of occupational safety problems. As part of this process, OSHA forwarded Rohridge’s concerns about Titan to the US Coast Guard in February 2018. But, according to Blochridge, after Osha informed Oceangate that it would open an investigation, everything changed. In March, Oceangate asked Lochridge to remove the complaint and demanded that he pay $ 10,000 in legal costs, which he refused. Soon after, in July 2018, Oceangate sued Lochridge and his wife, Carole, for breach of contract, improper appropriation of commercial secrets, fraud and theft, among other accusations. The following month, Colhridge filed a lawsuit for unfair resignation. He states that throughout the process, Osha was slow and did not protect him from Oceangate’s retaliation. “I handed over the Osha documentation, talking to them by phone once every two weeks,” he said. “Osha did nothing.” ‘They defeated us’ in December 2018, under increasing pressure from Oceangate lawyers, Lochridge and his wife decided to leave the case. This meant the termination of the judicial process and, as part of the agreement, Colhridge withdrew his complaint to OSHA, which ended his investigation and also notified the US Coastal Guard that the complaint had been suspended. Lochridge also signed a confidentiality agreement. “Carole and I did everything we could physically, but at that point we were completely exhausted. We had nothing more to do. They knocked out.” Oceangate continued its travel project to the wreckage of Titanic. In 2018 and 2019, the submarine prototype held its first test dives in the Bahamas, including a piloted by Stockton Rush, reaching a depth of 3,939 meters. Later, a crack in the submersible carbon fiber hull was found, and by 2020 the damaged hull was replaced by a new, a second version of Titan. In 2021, the company began to take passengers to Titanic and, in the next two years, would perform 13 dives to the famous wreck. Until, in June 2023, the submarine disappeared with five people on board, including Stockton Rush. After distressing days of waiting, parts of the submarine were found scattered at the bottom of the ocean. At public hearings last year by the US Coast Guard, Colhridge criticized OSHA’s lack of action. “I believe that if Osha had tried to investigate the severity of the concerns I raised on several occasions, this tragedy could have been avoided. There was no need to happen, it should not have happened. And it should have been prevented.” US Coastal Guard captain Jason Neubauer acknowledged that the maritime entity could have been more active to avoid tragedy. Getty Images via BBC An agency spokesman said the whistleblower protection program is limited to protecting people from employer reprisals. He also said that the investigation had “followed the process and the normal deadlines of a case of retaliation.” OSHA also stated that it does not conduct investigations into public security problems that arise in complaints, but forward them to the competent body, in this case the US coastal guard. The spokesman added: “The Coast Guard, not Osha, had jurisdiction to investigate Colhridge’s allegations on project security and the construction of maritime vessels.” But the coastal guard’s report on the tragedy reinforces Lochridge’s position and states that the slowness in Osha’s performance was a missed opportunity for early government intervention. The report also cites a lack of effective communication and coordination between the agency and the coastal guard. According to the document, measures have already been taken to change this situation after the accident. Jason Neubauer, chairman of the Coast Guard Marine Investigation Commission, admitted to the BBC that they could have been more active. “The system did not work for the whistleblower in this case, so we have to improve. We have already started to do that.” Oceangate stated that after the accident, it definitely suspended its operations and offered to participate in the investigation. *This text was written and edited by our journalists with the help of an artificial intelligence tool for translation as part of a pilot program.

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