- 6 months ago
Dive deep into the disturbing truth behind one of the most tragic maritime disasters in recent history. The US Coast Guard's official report reveals shocking details about how this catastrophe could have been prevented. From regulatory evasion to ignored safety warnings, discover the fatal decisions that led to the implosion.
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00:00This is a 335-page report, and it is critical on every level.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the U.S. Coast Guard's latest report into the
00:092023 Titan submersible implosion, and whether the disaster was preventable.
00:14The mini-sub called the Titan vanished an hour and 45 minutes into its 4-kilometer plunge.
00:21Regulatory confusion.
00:22Before this incident, there really was no regulatory framework, both on the domestic
00:27or international level among maritime agencies.
00:31One of the things the Coast Guard wanted to clarify was why regulators didn't intervene,
00:36and whether there are places regulations could be improved to prevent something like this
00:41from happening again.
00:42It turns out that the answer to that question is yes and no.
00:46They did identify places where better regulations could be in place going forward, but also determined
00:52that OceanGate frustrated regulators on purpose.
00:55The term mission specialists is a workaround.
00:59There are some rules about operating vessels at sea.
01:03Those rules differ depending on whether you are a crew member or you're a paying passenger.
01:09The report notes in its opening summary, and we quote,
01:12By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate
01:18was ultimately able to operate Titan completely outside of the established deep-sea protocol.
01:24End quote.
01:25Avoiding regulation was the company's entire goal.
01:29Stockton was trying to confuse them, insisting that nobody was ever referred to as a passenger.
01:37OSHA's missed opportunity.
01:39Unfortunately, whistleblowers, they're not protected from retaliation.
01:44We're not like the, you know, witness protection program or something like that.
01:48We, you know, what we do is investigate.
01:50Not only did OceanGate want to avoid regulators, but it was successful in doing so.
01:55OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the U.S., was given a complaint in February 2018
02:01from ex-employee David Lockridge.
02:04And while OSHA did attempt to refer this to the U.S. Coast Guard, communication was poor
02:09and a real investigation was not lodged.
02:12As you can imagine, a lawsuit is no easy thing, especially when you're being threatened with theft fraud.
02:17Because of this, the regulators who were meant to be responsible for preventing things like this,
02:22though crucially, nothing like this had ever happened before,
02:26didn't coordinate with each other and didn't investigate OceanGate,
02:29despite whistleblowers trying to save lives.
02:32The reason for this?
02:33A backlog of cases at OSHA.
02:36Please note that at this time, I have 11 cases that are older than yours.
02:42I will be in contact with you as needed.
02:44Thank you for your patience.
02:45In the lead-up to the Fatal Dive 88,
02:56OceanGate's financial situation was growing more and more tenuous.
03:00Adverse weather and issues with Titan regularly led to expeditions being cancelled or delayed
03:05for as long as a year, waiting for the following summer,
03:08which led to many paying quote-unquote mission specialists demanding refunds.
03:13The company did not issue these refunds, and also did not disclose that Titan had any problems,
03:19misrepresenting how safe it was.
03:22That was not public knowledge, and they said,
03:24do not say anything to anyone.
03:26Why?
03:26Money, obviously.
03:28Mission specialists also weren't shown that infamous waiver until after they'd already paid,
03:33and sometimes not until the dive was about to be carried out.
03:36According to the Coast Guard, this was, quote, intentional to pressure them into signing.
03:41The team always says, you know, there's no guarantee you're going to see the bow,
03:44there's no guarantee you're going to get down there, because there's so many variables.
03:49Safety protocols weren't followed.
03:51That day, Stockton told me it would be nothing for him to spend $50,000 to ruin somebody's life.
03:57We're not talking about normal safety protocols, as any properly classed and registered vehicle has
04:02to follow, which OceanGate obviously ignored.
04:05We're talking about the company's own internal safety protocols, which also weren't followed.
04:11This was described by the Coast Guard report as a toxic safety culture.
04:15The Coast Guard now says OceanGate's Titan submersible implosion was preventable.
04:20The Guard's final report on the tragedy says CEO Stockton Rush was warned many times about
04:25how dangerous his submersible was, and not only ignored the warnings, but threatened anyone who
04:30raised concerns.
04:31The report says that employees within OceanGate were belittled for raising issues.
04:35Many documentaries released in the aftermath have featured interviews with former employees,
04:40many of whom were fired, like David Lockridge, or quit, like Emily Hammermeister and Bonnie Carl.
04:46It's culture that caused this to happen.
04:50It's culture that killed the people, 100%.
04:52In one chilling example cited by the Coast Guard, the reason Titan used only four bolts
04:58to attach the dome was that it was quicker.
05:01That's despite the design requiring 18.
05:05And I was not going to bolt anyone inside of that sub.
05:08And that was something that a lot of my co-workers at the time agreed on, and none of which stayed
05:14with the company much longer.
05:15The result of the non-stop firings and departures of experienced employees was that OceanGate
05:32ended up being staffed by young, inexperienced engineers.
05:36That's not to say they weren't knowledgeable, competent, or good at their jobs, but you
05:40can't buy experience.
05:42And anybody who objected to Russia's company-wide decisions found themselves on the chopping block.
05:47He had said, you know, we want you to be a female, young pilot.
05:50We want you to be the face of the company.
05:52This is again related to the toxic safety culture.
05:55Since even when those young engineers and professionals did point out safety problems, which many did,
06:01let's not forget, they were fired or forced out.
06:05I did speak up.
06:06A lot of people did.
06:07Like, they discussed their concerns.
06:10They're like, what do you mean?
06:10Like, this failed.
06:11You're going to keep going?
06:12The ones left were stuck choosing between either keeping their careers or potentially
06:17sabotaging themselves, since Rush also threatened to blackball people who went against him.
06:22The delays.
06:24Sam, the report also finds that the team didn't notify anyone of a problem for more than seven
06:30hours.
06:30Are they offering any explanation for that?
06:33That's another one of the big questions.
06:34Why didn't anyone say anything?
06:36At 1047 a.m., the Coast Guard says the implosion happened, with the sound traveling all the
06:42way through the ocean to the support staff on Polar Prince.
06:46Yes, that bang heard in the clip of Wendy Rush reacting didn't come through the equipment.
06:50They heard it from the outside.
06:51Yeah.
06:52Yeah.
06:53It should be about 500 meters.
06:58What was that bang?
07:00But the Coast Guard wasn't notified until 7.10 p.m., over eight hours later.
07:06This was after Polar Prince had spent hours conducting grid searches for the Titan, waiting
07:11for it to surface.
07:12Now, even if the Coast Guard had been notified immediately, it obviously couldn't have saved
07:16anyone.
07:17The Titan carries 96 hours worth of oxygen, and a third of that is now gone.
07:30They may have as little as 60 hours before breathing becomes impossible.
07:35Transportation costs.
07:36This vessel was made with carbon fiber.
07:39It is a cheaper material.
07:40But to describe the carbon fiber, essentially you're looking at, if I can describe to it
07:45as a number of hairs.
07:46The big question about Titan has always been, why carbon fiber?
07:50Why use an untested material that can catastrophically fail in exactly the situation Ocean Gate used
07:56in?
07:57Well, with the Coast Guard report, it looks like we finally have our answer.
08:01The lighter Titan is, the cheaper it is to transport.
08:04Yes, Stockton himself made a big deal out of how light carbon fiber is for deep sea operations,
08:10but the real reason was, unsurprisingly, cost-cutting.
08:12Do you have any questions about what's going on, about acoustic monitoring, about carbon
08:17fiber, problems we had, rumors of problems we had, actual problems we had?
08:22According to the report, while Rush did also believe that a lighter vessel would have better
08:26buoyancy, the cheaper shipping costs were a key factor.
08:30It's easy to see why, considering Ocean Gate was based in Washington, but conducted its
08:35operations from St. John's in Newfoundland.
08:38The report found the Titan's carbon fiber design was fundamentally flawed.
08:43Ocean Gate failed to follow established engineering protocols for safety and testing.
08:48The parking lot.
08:49This report also says Ocean Gate failed to conduct proper maintenance, or even protect
08:55the Titan from the elements.
08:57How do you do that if you're sending something so deep into the water?
09:00Despite pinching pennies over Titan's weight, Stockton still didn't bother to bring Titan
09:05back to Washington from eastern Canada in the winter of 2022-2023.
09:10He didn't even bother to store it properly in Newfoundland, instead leaving it outdoors
09:15in a parking lot in St. John's.
09:17We already knew about this, but the report goes into detail about how Ocean Gate reached
09:22this decision, and yes, it's because storing it improperly was cheaper.
09:27According to the Coast Guard, the quote given to Ocean Gate to cover Titan was $1,750.
09:33Almost nothing, relatively speaking.
09:36If water gets in there, and you sit it out in freezing conditions and that water expands,
09:40it breaks fibers.
09:41The reason for all this was a dispute between Ocean Gate and the Memorial University of
09:45Newfoundland, because Ocean Gate was trying to demand certain tax exemptions from the
09:50university.
09:51100% certainty that sub could not go freezing.
09:56It's critical to keep the water out.
09:58Something that hadn't been talked about as much before the report was the way Ocean Gate
10:03chose to transport Titan once it was at sea.
10:06Here's how the launch is supposed to go.
10:08The sub is attached to a huge floating platform.
10:12Motorboats drag it down the big orange ramp into the sea.
10:15Images from before the disaster show Titan being towed behind Polar Prince aboard a platform,
10:21which is officially called the Launch and Recovery System, or LARS.
10:25But questions were raised by the Coast Guard about why this was done at all, when it would
10:28have been possible for Ocean Gate to charter a ship that was already outfitted to carry
10:33a submersible on deck.
10:35The platform submerges to around 30 feet, where the water is much calmer than on the surface.
10:41Towing was actually dangerous, because not only did it mean people couldn't often access
10:46Titan, but also, earlier in 2023, the tow line got caught in Polar Prince's propellers.
10:52We still don't really know why this was done.
10:55At this point, divers are supposed to detach the sub from its launch platform.
11:00So apparently those floats there came off the platform and that wasn't supposed to happen.
11:20It was the hull.
11:28We've known from the moment the sub disappeared that the carbon fiber hull was almost definitely
11:33the cause of this catastrophic failure.
11:36Thanks to the Coast Guard's investigation, which involved a forensic examination of the
11:40recovered wreck, we now know that this was correct.
11:43The hull did fail.
11:44Worse, the real-time monitoring system, or RTM, Ocean Gate used, did report many anomalies
11:51and events ahead of Dive 88 that indicated a failure.
11:55But these were simply ignored.
11:57So, the good news is, we started to see evidence of failure before it happened, which is one of
12:02the test objectives.
12:04The Coast Guard points this out.
12:06The RTM worked, it did measure a delamination acoustically, and had this been heated and the
12:11hole repaired or replaced, the implosion that June could have been avoided.
12:18I would say that was it.
12:20Trying to stop?
12:21Yeah, I think so.
12:22Let us know in the comments whether you'll be reading the US Coast Guard report into the
12:26implosion.
12:27Had he'd survived, he would have likely faced criminal charges, including four counts of
12:33manslaughter.
12:41Couldn't he have been
12:50he took a while?
12:52I think so.
12:53He took the case of grass behind him.
12:54He took us into the case of grass.
12:58He took us into the case of grass.
12:59He took us into theéšľ.
13:00He took us into the small förm Sol.
13:01I think so.
13:02He took us into the small forest to the heart.
13:05Now, the foundation is a deep source of grass.
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