Key witness says Titan submersible should have been stopped, he tried

Nearly a decade before the Titan submersible’s deadly dive, the marine operations director for the company that operated the vessel warned of potentially catastrophic consequences.

David Lochridge assessed the experimental submersible as it was being built. He told Coast Guard investigators Tuesday he had “no confidence whatsoever” in its safety.

“It was inevitable something was going to happen,” Lochridge said. “It was just (a question of) when.”

The experimental submersible vanished last June, less than two hours into its dive to the Titanic wreckage. Four days later, it was found on the ocean floor with the remains of five passengers. Investigators determined the submersible had imploded.

The Coast Guard wants to know why and if anyone should be held accountable. It’s convened its highest level of marine casualty investigations and is holding public hearings for the next two weeks in North Charleston.

Lochridge told investigators that between 2015 and 2018, he witnessed a myriad of red flags while working for OceanGate, the company that built the Titan submersible and sold expeditions. He questioned the materials being used to for its build and didn’t understand why the vessel hadn’t been classified, a process that would have allowed an outside party to weigh in on safety.

Lochridge says he regularly took his concerns to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush but was repeatedly dismissed. He believes the company was more concerned with “cost cutting” and a “desire to get to the Titanic quickly,” to “start making a profit.”

So, in 2018, Lochridge decided to put his worries in writing, as part of an inspection report for an early version of Titan. Not long after, he was fired.

But Lochridge refused to be silenced. He felt strongly the Titan submersible wasn’t safe. He reported the problems he’d witnessed during his three years at OceanGate to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Lochridge says he spoke with a case worker who promised to help. But after 10 months in a whistleblower protection program, he says he heard little except that the person handling his case had a backlog of others to investigate.

“I believe that if OSHA had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions, this tragedy may have been prevented,” said Lochridge.

South Carolina Public Radio has reached out to OSHA and is waiting for a response.

Much of the testimony from Lochridge and other witnesses over the first two days of hearings has been highly technical, focusing on the submersible’s design and materials.

For instance, the vessel’s viewpoint window may have not been safe for deeper dives, part of submersible’s hub was made of carbon fiber instead of a much stronger and durable titanium, and there may have been weak points in connections between different materials.

Lochridge is one of 10 former OceanGate employees expected to testify before the Marine Board Investigation, again the Coast Guard’s highest level of investigations. In all, 24 people are listed as witnesses.

Not on the witness list is Rush’s wife who was OceanGate’s communications director. Her husband and company CEO was piloting the Titan submersible on its final voyage.