A former OceanGate staffer told a colleague he feared the company’s CEO would kill him and others in a ‘quest to boost his ego’, a series of stories have revealed. leaked emails.
David Lochridge, a former director of marine operations for OceanGate who worked at the company until 2018, was fired after raising concerns about the future Titan’s safety during much of its construction process.
These warnings were reportedly issued from the factory but have been consistently rejected, it is claimed.
Yesterday it was revealed that the crew would have spent their last moments in the dark, listening to music, it is believed.
It has now emerged that Lochridge emailed project partner Rob McCallum – who also left OceanGate for security reasons – shortly after he was fired in 2018.
In a series of posts, he said he feared CEO Stockton Rush would end up dead on the submersible.
THE OceanGate Ship was first reported missing on Sunday, June 18, when the crew including British explorer Hamish Harding and CEO of diving company Stockton Rush had not surfaced.
French submersible pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, along with his son Suleman, were also traveling aboard the submarine.
Four days after she went missing, the US Coast Guard said the submersible Titan had been destroyed by a “catastrophic implosion” with the loss of the five people on board.
The New Yorker claims that Lochridge said in an email: ‘I don’t want to be taken as a Tattle tale, but I’m so worried he’s killing himself and others in an attempt to boost his ego. .”
The engineer is said to have continued: “I would consider myself quite brave when it comes to doing dangerous things, but this submarine is an accident waiting.”
“There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive the thing.”
Days before sending the email, Lochridge inspected all the important facets of the submarine – which he was already extremely familiar with – and quickly found a litany of red flags.
On the one hand, court documents from a lawsuit since settled by the canceled show from OceanGate staff, Lochridge found glue coming loose at the seams of the vehicle’s ballast bags and mounting bolts misplaced threatened to cause a rupture.
Additionally, the seasoned diver also found issues with the sub’s ceiling faces, noting that they had visible dive holes, while the Titan itself boasted grooves that deviated from standard parameters. .
There were also snagging hazards, the suit notes, with important components allegedly attached with zip ties.
Lochridge was also concerned about the presence of flammable floor coverings, as well as interior vinyl wraps which he claimed would routinely emit highly toxic gases when ignited.
That said, in that long list of potential safety risks, Lochridge’s main concern – and the part of the sub that would ultimately fail during its dive last month – was the carbon fiber core, responsible for holding the passengers alive in the icy depths where the wreckage of the Titanic resides.
There, the external water pressure is around 6,000 pounds per square inch, a pressure that would be felt from all angles around the ship’s all-important hull.
As for Lochridge, the fact that the pressure chamber was made of carbon fiber – a temperamental material not used in any other deep ocean submersible, makes it largely untested.
Lochridge argued the Titan needed more testing – claiming passengers could be put at risk when it reached “extreme depths”, according to the lawsuit in Seattle District Court.
“The verbal communication of the key items I have addressed in my attached document has repeatedly been rejected, so I now feel I must make this report so that there is an official record in place,” reportedly wrote. Lochridge about his refusal to sign the sub.
“Until appropriate corrective actions are in place and closed, Cyclops 2 (Titan) should not be occupied during future testing.”
As a result, according to the New Yorker report, Rush was furious – and fired Lochridge almost on the spot.
Contact our press team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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