A submersible carrying tourists to look at the remains of the Titanic went missing on Sunday, and the odds of anyone onboard surviving grow lower by the day. It’s also been reported that the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the excursion, is onboard. And the more information that comes out, the less surprising it is that we’ve ended up in this situation.
Metro reports that last year, when asked about the safety of the Titan submersible, Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, said, “You know, there’s a limit. At some point safety just is pure waste. I mean if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
Considering he planned to take other people more than two miles under the surface of the North Atlantic, that’s a pretty terrifying quote to read. But it’s also reportedly not the first time Rush showed a disregard for safety. CBS reports that back in 2018, OceanGate was sued by an employee that claimed he was fired for raising concerns about the Titan’s safety.
According to the report, OceanGate fired David Lochridge when he questioned how safe the Titan was and later sued him after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, claiming he violated the terms of his contract. Lochridge then countersued, claiming he was wrongfully terminated. In the suit, he said he pushed back against launching the Titan without doing “non-destructive testing to prove its integrity.”
“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,” Lochridge said in his suit.
The Titan relied on carbon fiber for a hull that would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters, a depth that Lochridge claimed in the court filing had never been reached in a carbon fiber-constructed sub. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters. Titan relied on carbon fiber for a hull that would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters, a depth that Lochridge claimed in the court filing had never been reached in a carbon fiber-constructed sub. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters.
He also said that even though the Titan was made out of carbon fiber, no carbon fiber sub had ever gone that deep before.
If these claims are true, they paint a pretty clear picture of a CEO who didn’t care about safety and was happy to risk other people’s lives to make a little money.