A key employee who labeled a doomed experimental submarine unsafe before its final fatal voyage testified Tuesday that the tragedy could have been prevented if a federal safety agency had investigated his complaint.
David Lochridge, former chief operating officer of OceanGate, said he was disheartened by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s decision not to follow up on 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 may have been prevented,” he said while speaking before a commission trying to determine what caused the Titan to implode on the road to the shipwrecks. of the Titanic last year, killing all five on board. “As a seafarer, I feel very disappointed by the system that is meant to protect not only seafarers, but also the general public.”
Lochridge said during testimony that eight months after filing a complaint with OSHA, a case worker told him the agency had not yet begun to investigate and that there were 11 cases before his. At the time, OceanGate was suing Lochridge and had filed a counterclaim.
About 10 months after filing the complaint, he decided to move away. The case was closed and both lawsuits were dropped.
“I didn’t give him anything, he 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 met frequently with the company’s co-founder and felt the company was only committed to making money.
Lochridge was one of the most expected 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 the way of science.”
Rush was among the five people who died in the implosion. OceanGate owns the Titan and has taken it on several dives to the Titanic since 2021.
Lochridge’s testimony began a day after other witnesses painted a picture of a struggling company that was eager to get its conventional craft designed in the water The accident started a worldwide debate about the future of private submarine exploration.
Lochridge joined the company in the mid-2010s as a veteran engineer and submarine pilot and said he soon felt he was used to giving the company scientific credibility. . He said he felt the company was selling them as part of the project “so that people would come in and pay money,” and that wasn’t okay with him.
“I was, I felt, a show pony,” he said. “I was made by the company to stay there and do discussions. It was difficult. I had to go up and make presentations. Everything everything.”
Lochridge referred to a 2018 report in which he raised security concerns about OceanGate operations. He said that with all the security problems he saw “there was no way to stop this.”
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 their concerns because they were more focused on “bad engineering decisions” and the desire to get to Titanic as soon as possible. possible and to start earning money. He was eventually fired after raising safety concerns, he said.
“I didn’t want to lose my job. I wanted to do the Titanic. But to dive safely. It was also on my bucket list,” he said.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion.
OceanGate’s former director of engineering, Tony Nissen, began his testimony Monday, telling investigators he felt pressured to prepare the ship to dive and refused to pilot it for a trip several years before the Titan’s last journey. Nissen worked on a prototype hull that preceded the Titanic expeditions.
“‘I’m not going in there,'” Nissen said he told Rush.
OceanGate’s former director of finance and human resources, Bonnie Carl, testified Monday that Lochridge had described the Titan as “unsafe.”
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submarine had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. This and Titan’s unusual design have brought it under scrutiny in the underwater exploration community.
During the final dive of the dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the depth and weight of the Titan while descending. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from the Titan crew to Polar Prince before the submersible implosion stated, “everything is fine here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submarine was reported late, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. The wreckage of the Titan was later found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.
Scheduled to appear later in the hearing are OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein and former chief science officer Steven Ross, according to a list compiled by the Coast Guard. Numerous law enforcement officials, scientists, and government and industry officials are also expected to testify. The U.S. Coast Guard subpoenaed the witnesses who were not government employees, Coast Guard spokeswoman Melissa Leake said.
Among those not on the hearing 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 would not comment on reasons for not calling specific individuals to a particular hearing during ongoing investigations. She said it is common for a Marine Board of Inquiry to “hold multiple hearing sessions or conduct additional witness 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 fully cooperated with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began.
The ongoing Marine Investigation Board is the highest level of marine damage investigation conducted by the Coast Guard. When the hearing concludes, the recommendations will be submitted to the commandant of the Coast Guard. The National Transportation Safety Board is also conducting an investigation.
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