The United States Coast Guard Marine Board has published its final report on the company responsible for operating the Sunmeible Titan, which imploded two years ago while trying to immerse yourself in the remains of the Titanic, killing the five people on board.
The report, published on Tuesday, says that the Board found that Oceangate did not follow the engineering protocols for safety, evidence or boat maintenance.
The 335 -page document also highlighted the problems with the way in which the business operated, its culture in the workplace and the need to improve regulatory supervision for “manned submersible and novel design vessels.”
“For several years prior to the incident, intimidation tactics used by Oceangate, assignments for scientific operations and the company’s favorable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny,” says the report.
The United States Coast Guard Investigation Board, which examined the implosion of the June Titan Sumersion 2023, published its report on Tuesday, with the president of the Board indicating that the deaths of the five people on board were ‘preventable’.
“When strategically create and exploit the challenges of regulatory confusion and supervision, Oceangate was finally able to operate titan completely out of the established protocols of deep water, which historically had contributed to a strong security history for commercial submersibles.”
The event caused an international search and rescue operation, after Titan lost contact with his support ship, the Polar Prince on June 18, 2023.
Finally, it was determined that the boat of the boat lost structural integrity and implio, killing the crew that included the CEO of Oceangate Stockton Rush, the British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, the father and his son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood and Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Nargelet.
“This marine victim and the loss of five lives could be prevented,” said Jason Neubauer, president of Titan MBI, in a press release.
“Two -year research has identified multiple contributing factors that led to this tragedy, providing valuable lessons learned to avoid a future fact. There is a need for stronger supervision and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside the existing regulatory framework.”
‘Critically failed’
The “main causal factors” for tragedy were that the company does not address engineering problems, read the MBI report and a lack of understanding of how the ship’s helmet would react to the “inherently dangerous environment.”
The company also continued to use the Titan after several incidents that committed the integrity of the helmet.
The report also listed the contributing factors, such as the “critically defective” security culture of Oceangate and operational practices.
“In the center of these failures were the obvious disparities among their written security protocols and their real practices,” says the report.
“The sustained efforts of the Executive Director of Oceangate to misrepresent Titan as indestructible due to unconfirmed safety margins and the alleged conformity with advanced engineering principles provided a false sense of security for passengers and regulators.”
The United States Coast Guard said there was a “lost opportunity” by the Government to intervene before the tragedy, pointing to a 2018 complainant, as well as poor communication between the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the United States Coast Guard on the protocols of the Seaman Protection Law.
“Early intervention may have turned out that Oceangate seeks regulatory compliance or abandons its plans for titanic expeditions,” he said.
Ultimately, the report made 17 recommendations, including the establishment of a working group of the industry to review and update the framework to help submersible to achieve security standards similar to those of surface ships.
The report also said that the US Coast Guard should press the extended federal requirements, so there would be an “adequate regulatory supervision” for the types of submersibles carried out by oceanographic research operations.
Another recommendation requires the required communication in all submarines and submersibles that carry out commercial or scientific operations, and a new requirement for submersible owners notifying the local Coast Guard officers of the United States, which would include a diving plan and an emergency response plan.
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