Were the warning signs ignored? What you need to know about this week’s testimony on the Titan submarine disaster

Last year, five people hoping to see the wreck of the Titanic died when their submersible imploded in the Atlantic Ocean. This week, a Coast Guard commission investigating the Titanic disaster heard four days of testimony that raised serious questions about whether warning signs were ignored. The commission plans to hear five more days of testimony next week.

Here’s what the witnesses have said so far:

Chief engineer says he wouldn’t board the Titan

Testifying about a dive that took place several years before the fatal accident, chief engineer Tony Nissen said he felt compelled to prepare the Titan and refused to fly it.

“I don’t want to get involved,” Nissen told Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate, the company that owns the Titan. Nissen said Rush was a difficult employer, with demands that often changed from day to day and a focus on costs and deadlines. Nissen said he tried to keep his conflicts with Rush hidden so others in the company wouldn’t know about the friction.

The Titan suffered a breakdown a few days before its fatal dive

Chief Scientist Steven Ross said that during a dive just days before the Titan implosion, the ship experienced a problem with its ballast tank, which provides stability to ships. The problem caused passengers to “tumble” and collide with the bulkhead, he said.

“One passenger was hanging upside down. The other two managed to get stuck in the bow,” Ross testified.

He said no one was injured but it took an hour to get the ship out of the water. He added that he did not know if a safety assessment or hull inspection had been carried out after the incident.

This was not the first time the Titan had problems

A paying passenger on a 2021 Titanic mission said the trip was cut short when the ship began experiencing mechanical problems.

“We realized the ship could only go around in circles and make right turns,” Fred Hagen said. “At that point, we obviously weren’t going to be able to sail to the Titanic.”

He said the Titan had resurfaced and the mission had been aborted. Hagen said he was aware of the risks involved in the dive.

“Those who wanted to go were either delusional if they didn’t think it was dangerous, or they accepted the risk,” he said.

One employee said authorities ignored his concerns.

Operations Director David Lochridge said the tragedy could have been avoided if a federal agency had investigated the concerns he repeatedly raised with them.

Lochridge said that eight months after he filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a caseworker told him the agency had not begun investigating and that there were still 11 cases to be processed. At that time, OceanGate was suing Lochridge, and he filed a countersuit. A few months later, Lochridge said, he decided to withdraw from the complaint. He said the case was closed and both lawsuits were dismissed.

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

After Lochridge’s testimony this week, the federal agency responded that at the time it “promptly escalated” its safety concerns to the Coast Guard.

Some had a rosier view

Renata Rojas, a member of the Explorers Club who lost two paying passengers on the fatal dive, struck a different tone in her testimony. She said she felt OceanGate had been transparent in planning the dive and that she never thought the operation was unsafe. A passenger on a previous dive, Rojas was volunteering with the surface crew when the Titan imploded.

“Some of these people are very hard-working people who were just trying to achieve their dreams,” she said.