Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show - BBC News

well yesterday the U.S Coast Guard revealed that all five people who'd been aboard these submersible hoping to see the wreck of the Titanic had died what went so tragically wrong is now under investigation the BBC has seen emails which show that warnings over the safety of the Titan sub were dismissed by the company's CEO also on the program Banks here in the UK have agreed to offer greater flexibility to mortgage holders who are potentially facing huge increases in their monthly payments due to another rate rise the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues his State visit to the U.S with President Joe Biden calling the partnership with India among the most consequential in the world a man's been found guilty of murdering a police Sergeant but how did he manage to smuggle a gun into a custody Center and the tents have been pitched the sun has been shining and now 200 000 people will spend the weekend enjoying some of the world's biggest music stars yup it can only be Glastonbury now we start with developments on the death of five people on board these submersible which went missing in the Atlantic on Sunday and the BBC has seen email messages showing that warnings over the safety of ocean Gates Titan sub were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company the messages were exchanged with a leading deep sea exploration specialist now the worries were over the Craft's unusual design it's non-pherical shape the reliability of the material it was made of carbon fiber and the fact it had also not been through any external Independence certification or classing process now the BBC has been exclusively given an email exchange between Stockton Rush that's the CEO of Ocean Gate who died in the incident and a leading deep water exploration specialist Robert McCallum so let's take a look at them so this was an email sent in 2018 Rob McAllen warned Stockton rush I have given everyone the same honest advice which is that until a sub is classed tested and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations he went on as much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and Innovation you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk so I implore you to take every care in your testing and see trials and to be very very conservative now a few days later ocean Gates Stockton Rush replied I've grown tired of Industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop Innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing Market he told Rob McCallum since glamo the former co-founder of Ocean Gate and I started Ocean Gate we've heard the baseless cries of you are going to kill someone way too often I take this as a serious personal insult now the next day Rob McCallum replied in the starkist terms I think you are potentially placing it yourself and your clients in a dangerous Dynamic Ironically in your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry she is Unsinkable now ocean Gates lawyers then contacted Rob McAllen and threatened legal action today we have contacted them again and they say they have no additional information Robert McCallum maintains that no one should have gone in this submersible well this morning we heard from William Conan chairman of the U.S marine technology Society manned underwater Vehicles Committee in 2018 he and other Engineers wrote a letter to Stockton Rush warning of the dangers of using an uncertified craft this was a clearly preventable we do have regulations I think the the issue has to come out here is that as an industry and look we we make submersibles we've been making submersibles here in Los Angeles for 30 years there's some the best submarines in the world there is there is order in the industry there are ways to be clever and go around things so for sure it needs to be clear that a submersible like this of what they were doing for tourism would not be allowed in U.S Waters the Coast Guard would not allow it it would not be allowed to work in British Coastal Waters because it would have required it to be certified same thing in Canada and then turns out that they operated in international waters where no Coast Guard has jurisdiction well you found two loopholes and let's just say it wasn't very wise well the director of the film Titanic James Cameron completed 33 Dives to the site and here's what he said you know the community our community of deep ocean Engineers spoke out against it Coit quite loudly and the warnings were unheated now before these developments the co-founder of Ocean Gate spoke to the BBC and rejected claims that they had cut any corners uh any expert who weighs in on this including Mr Cameron will also admit that they were not there for the design of the sub for the engineering of the sub for the building of the Serb and certainly not for the rigorous test program that the sub went through an investor in Ocean Gate who previously made the same trip Aaron Newman told the BBC that the idea that Stockton Rush did anything wrong was disingenuous he was doing something far beyond whatever but anybody else had like he the sub that he built and was it was taking down there was a a magnitude more advanced and for instance you look at the the craft that James Cameron took down that was a tiny little sub that one person laying flat in could operate so you know he introduced new ideas and new uh New pieces that are not conventional and some people don't like that well with more on the latest from Boston I joined Now by our correspondent Carl nasman and Carl just really tell us the latest from where you are what's happening now well the biggest uh point of reference right now is these concerns about safety and this big conversation that's beginning to emerge and I think it's interesting to look at a couple of points there one of them is is these concerns that are coming out now so uh very experienced uh deep sea explorers like James Cameron who uh basically looked at the facts on the table and said you know he had some concerns about the design he had some concerns about the material used and then it's also interesting to look that many of these other concerns that were raised were about five years ago so many of these uh the email exchanges we just heard about the letter sent to CEO Stockton Rush that all took place in 2018 and of course this was five years ago it's also even a few years before the Titan made its first visit in 2021 to the Shipwreck of the Titanic so there were warnings even before this Titan vessel began making these Dives about the experimental nature of it about the the shape the design of the vessel itself and also the material the car in fiber there so that is definitely the conversation now on a day in which we're also beginning to remember the victims and of course more and the four people that died here but now that the dust has settled a bit and the investigation is beginning just about 900 miles from here in Boston these questions about safety questions now but also questions from five years ago you're absolutely right there to mention the fact that um that we are mourning the loss of five people in terms of sort of the Salvage situation in terms of trying to give their families any sort of Solace after all their some oh you know what what's able to happen what are they able to do because obviously these the remains of the sub and these people are in a very very inhospitable environment yeah yeah that was that's the words that was uh were used yesterday by the U.S Coast Guard that the ocean and the deep ocean is just so inhospitable they didn't answer directly exactly whether or not any kind of bodies or or human remains would be able to be recovered from the site but it sounds unlikely this is a very deep part of the ocean we also know that the way that this vessel likely uh imploded it happened with so much force in fact what some people have described it as the weight of the Eiffel Tower weighing down on on top of that submersible it's unlikely that we will um ever see any any bodies recovered but that doesn't mean that this uh recovery Mission isn't continuing out there there's a ROV making its sway to the site now that will begin to continue to look for debris down below look for key pieces of this submersible and presumably look for any human remains that might be recovered but this is now a recovery Mission and it will continue into the days and likely weeks to come okay uh Carl thank you Carl uh [Music] um I just want to bring you some breaking news I mean there's been different lines coming in regarding this submers submersible incident uh all the time uh the latest we've just had is some news that Canada's Transportation safety board have announced a probe into the loss of the Titan submersible I'm just reading this is from the Reuters news agency here in a statement the board has said it was launching a safety investigation regarding the circumstances of this operation because and the reason if you're wondering why as a Canadian ship is because the Titans surface support vessel the polar Prince was a Canadian flagged ship as I say sort of so many lines coming in about this story all the time which is the latest we can give you the Canada's Transportation safety board on Friday announcing a probe into the loss of the Titan submersible and it's launching a safety investigation clearly lots of the questions at the moment are to do with the safety safety both beforehand and obviously during the uh the mission um lots more questions that people are asking um and I want to bring in my next guest um offer ketter he's a submersible pilot he is the president of submerge this is a submersibles Consulting and operations company he's been a subpilot for more than 20 years so thank you very much for joining us on the program offer can I ask your reaction um did you have any concerns when you heard about what had happened and perhaps your knowledge of the company before this happened good evening Sarah thank you for for having me on the show um my personal experience and my company's experience in the submersible world is very different than um what has happened with Ocean Gate and what happened with the Titan on the Titanic for many many reasons um so yes I I obviously have I had my thoughts and had my analysis based on the very little information that was available originally um but it is an extreme one-off uh kind of event and it does not fall in line with my and our experience in the submersible World for for over two decades in terms of sort of legislation and sort of safety testing when you're sending a submersible down to to depths perhaps not as deep as this what is the legislation what is the safety testing how rigorous is it so any submersible that we use as Pilots or as operators is designed by a certified manufacturers that have a very rigorous Engineering Process they didn't start this process a year a few years ago or even 10 years ago they started it many many decades ago based on past experience past knowledge past engineering and they have evolved with the the engineering but always sticking to very strict guidelines that exists that exist today we have American Bureau shipping we have DMV we have Lloyds register there are standards there are guidelines there are procedures there are testing methods um that exist and are being used by the industry and that's why I feel that it is extremely important to explain to the public that this event this tragic event is one of a kind is one-off it's Unique it's extreme and it's not what the industry of travel and Leisure and private submersible exploration is accustomed to uh okay offer thank you very much for your for your Insight to this evening we'll have to to leave it there for the moment but I just want to remind you of uh the breaking news that we had um this evening to do with this story this is the statement from Canada's Transportation uh safety board TSB which have announced a probe into the loss of the Titan submersible so they released a statement it said the board was launching this safety investigation regarding the circumstances of the operation because the Titan's surface support vessel that's the Polar Prince was a Canadian flagged ship around the world and across the UK this is BBC News

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Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023