Key OceanGate employee says Titan tragedy was prevented

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former chief operating officer, said he was disappointed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s decision not to pursue the complaint.

“I believe that if OSHA had tried to investigate the seriousness of the concerns that I have raised on several occasions, this tragedy could have been prevented,” he said while speaking before a panel trying to determine what determined the Titan’s plod on its way to the wreckage. of the Titanic last year, killing all five on board. “As a boater, I feel deeply disappointed by the system that is meant to protect not only boaters but the general public.”

Lochridge said during testimony that eight months after he filed an OSHA complaint, a caseworker told him the agency had not yet begun investigating and that there were 11 cases before him. By then OceanGate was suing Lochridge and he countersued.

About 10 months after filing the complaint, he decided to leave. The case was closed and both lawsuits were dropped.

“I didn’t give them anything, they didn’t give me anything,” he said of OceanGate.

OSHA officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, Lochridge said he frequently argued with the company’s co-founder and felt the company was only engaged in making money.

Lochridge was one of the most anticipated witnesses to appear before a commission. His testimony echoed that of other former employees Monday, one of whom described OceanGate boss Stockton Rush as volatile and difficult to work with.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge said. “There was very little in science.”

Rush was among five people who died in the explosion. OceanGate owned the Titan and brought it on several Titanic dives starting in 2021.

Lochridge’s testimony came a day after other witnesses painted a picture of a troubled company eager to get its unconventionally designed craft out on the water. The accident has sparked a worldwide debate about the future of private underwater exploration.

Lochridge joined the company in the mid-2010s as a veteran engineer and submarine pilot, and said he quickly came to feel he was being used to lend scientific credibility to the company. He said he felt the company was selling him as part of the project “for people to come in and pay money,” and he didn’t like that.

“I was, I felt, a show pony,” he said. “I was made by the company to sit there and chat. It was hard. I had to go and make presentations. All of these.”

Lochridge referenced a 2018 report that raised safety concerns about OceanGate’s operations. He said that with all the safety issues he saw, “there was no way I was going to sign this off.”

Asked if he had confidence in the way the Titan was built, he said: “No confidence.”

Employee turnover was very high at the time, Lochridge said, and management dismissed his concerns as more focused on “bad engineering decisions” and a desire to get to Titanic as quickly as possible and start to earn money. He was eventually fired after raising safety concerns, he said.

“I didn’t want to lose my job. I wanted to do Titanic. But let’s sink it safely. It was also on my bucket list,” he said.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended operations after the implosion.

OceanGate’s former director of engineering, Tony Nissen, kicked off Monday’s testimony by telling investigators he felt pressured to prepare the ship to sink and refused to pilot it for a trip several years before the Titan’s last voyage. Nissen worked on a prototype hull that preceded the Titanic expeditions.

“‘I’m not getting into it,'” Nissen said he told Rush.

Former OceanGate chief financial and human resources officer Bonnie Carl testified Monday that Lochridge characterized the Titan as “unsafe.”

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and the Titan’s unusual design have brought it under scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after exchanging texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship, the Polar Prince, then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its on-board screen.

One of the last messages from the Titan’s crew to the Polar Prince before the submersible exploded said “all is well here,” according to a visual recreation shown earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers moved ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. The wreckage of the Titanic was later found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) from the Titanic’s bow, Coast Guard officials said.

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein and former chief science officer Steven Ross are scheduled to appear later in the hearing, according to a list compiled by the Coast Guard. Numerous watchdog officials, scientists, and government and industry officials are also expected to testify. The U.S. Coast Guard subpoenaed witnesses who were not government employees, Coast Guard spokeswoman Melissa Leake said.

Among those not on the witness list is Rush’s widow, Wendy Rush, the company’s director of communications. Lochridge said Wendy Rush had an active role in the company when she was there.

Asked about Wendy Rush’s absence, Leake said the Coast Guard does not comment on reasons for not subpoenaing certain individuals for a particular hearing during ongoing investigations. She said it was common for a marine board of inquiry to “hold multiple hearings or conduct additional depositions for complex cases.”

OceanGate has no full-time employees at this time, but will be represented by an attorney during the hearing, the company said in a statement. The company said it has cooperated fully with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began.

Ongoing Marine Board of Investigation is the highest level of marine casualty investigation conducted by the Coast Guard. At the conclusion of the hearing, the recommendations will be forwarded to the Commandant of the Coast Guard. The National Transportation Safety Board is also conducting an investigation.