A former OceanGate employee was fired from his position after voicing concerns about Titan’s safety.
David Lochridge is a former Director of Marine Operations at OceanGate who worked on the Titan project before his bosses fired him for requesting more rigorous safety checks and testing to prove the craft’s integrity.
The company behind oceanic expeditions also refused to class the submersible that is currently stuck 12,000 underwater by allowing independent inspectors to check the vessel and verify whether it is up to the standards.
Fighting back against calls for Titan to be classed, the bosses previously issued a post that read: “While classing agencies are willing to pursue the certification of new and innovative designs and ideas, they often have a multi-year approval cycle due to a lack of pre-existing standards.
“Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.”
The company also insisted its own safety protocols were sufficient while claiming “classing is not sufficient to ensure safety.”
Besides urging the company to have the craft classed, Lochridge also sparked fury amongst his bosses when he disagreed on key safety issues and asked the company to perform further scans to “detect potential flaws” in Titan’s hull.
He also complained about the sub’s viewpoint which was allegedly built to withstand the pressure at a depth of just over 4,200 feet rather than 12,500 feet – the depth of the Titanic wreckage.
In 2018 court documents, OceanGate defended firing Lochridge saying the director “could not accept” the company’s plans, research, and safety protocols.
OceanGate claimed Lochridge “refused to accept the voracity of information” coming from engineers working on Titan’s safety.
Fighting back, Lochridge launched a lawsuit saying “OceanGate refused both requests, and stated it was unwilling to pay for a classification agency to inspect its experimental design.”
He further explained he “disagreed with OceanGate’s position to dive the submersible without any non-destructive testing to prove its integrity, and to subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”
As Lochridge claimed, he was fired for raising concerns about “critical safety concerns regarding OceanGate’s experimental and untested design of the Titan.”
The suit reads: “Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to the experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (‘PVHO’) standards.
“OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters.
The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible.
“Discouraging whistleblowers from coming forth with quality control issues and safety concerns that threaten the safety of innocent passengers would undermine and jeopardize the public policy, and put innocent passengers at increased risk.”
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