Titanic tourist submersible destroyed: How it happened | About That

this afternoon at 3 P.M Eastern we got the news everyone was dreading in consultation with experts from within the unified command the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber upon this determination we immediately notified the families that's the man heading the multinational task force that has spent the last four days searching round the clock for the five people on board the Titan submersible they've used planes ships a submarine subsea robots even remote operated Vehicles capable of descending all the way to the ocean floor to the wreck of the Titanic itself where the Titan was headed but after an expensive exhausting and hopeful search it is now believed that Titan was destroyed here's how it happened uh five different major pieces of of debris that uh told us that it was the remains of the Titan according to the U.S Coast Guard an ROV a remote operated vehicle was able to scour the ocean floor near the Titanic wreckage a few hundred meters away they found this the initial thing we found was the nose cone which was outside of the pressure Hall that was clue number one soon after they found a large debris field where they found other components they analyzed what they looked like compared them to the design specs of the Titan submersible and it seemed like a match shortly thereafter we found the a second smaller debris field within that debris field we found the the other end of the pressure hole the the AFT and Bell um which was basically the comprised that the totality of that pressure vessel [Music] it was all consistent with the components used to build the Titan but they also think the debris tells them something about how the Titan went down not a slow steady leak but rather a violent sudden change in pressure this is a incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic uh implosion of the vessel I catastrophic implosion is what can happen when you are subjected to the incredible pressure of being so deep underwater you know the the Titan wreckage is about 13 000 feet below sea level when you're that far down the forces acting on the hull of the ship many thousands of pounds per square inch you know I've heard it compared to having the equivalent of an Empire State Building crushing you from all sides we've taken a regular styrofoam coffee cup and that's then strapped to the outside of the submersible in a net bag and when we eventually come up top side and recovered the actual same coffee cup is is basically a that size foreign the big question right now is how such a catastrophic implosion could have happened you know it was an experimental sub that was literally written on the death waiver passengers have to sign to be allowed on board and a lot has been said about the Cavalier attitude that the company's CEO had when it came to safety Innovation and pushing the envelope with you know new materials never before used in a sub of this kind but we also learned something from this afternoon's news conference that tells us about the timing of the implosion you know you'll recall the Titan lost contact with its Mothership on the surface part way through its descent this was on Sunday morning they should have returned by the afternoon but didn't and it was only that evening the Coast Guard was alerted then it was roughly another day until a Canadian plane would arrive dropping sonar buoys into the water you can think of those like underwater microphones it gave search teams listening people so here's the thing there's this period between Sunday and Monday where nobody had any clue what was going on down there and the suggestion seems to be from the Coast Guard that's when the implosion likely happened uh this uh was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel which would have generated a significant Broadband sound uh down there that uh the Sonoma sport have picked up they would have heard the implosion if it had happened while their sonar buoys were deployed but they heard nothing I mentioned this because it tells us something about what the crew's final moments might have been like you see the great fear here was that death would have been slow and unbearable imagine you're trapped all alone in a 22-foot hunk of carbon fiber it's cold because sunlight can't penetrate the water there's limited food limited water to drink only a single porthole that you can't even look through without powering the ship's lights because it's pitch black on the other side and you're running out of oxygen perhaps a silver lining in all of this is that in the case of a violent implosion death would have been instantaneous on behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command I offer my deepest condolences to the families I Can Only Imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some soulless during this difficult time on board the Titan Hamish Harding a British billionaire Explorer a renowned French diver shizita dawood and his son Suleiman two members of One of Pakistan's wealthiest families and Stockton Rush the CEO of Ocean Gate Expeditions the company behind this doomed Voyage finding its final resting place not far from where the Titanic itself sank more than a hundred years ago

Channel: CBC News

Views: 7,757,291

Keywords: titan, titanic, submersible, submarine, missing, oceangate, stockton rush, hamish harding, shazada dawood, paul henri nargeolet, rescue, coast guard, atlantic ocean, deep dive, wreck, titanic tour, catastrophic failure, explosion, lost, about that, andrew chang, cbc, cbc news, cbc explore, exploreapp

Id: KzBwQiMydfY

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023