A lot of shocking details have emerged since the OceanGate tragedy last month. Many of them concern the actions — and non-actions — of CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the victims aboard the imploding submersible. He ignored warnings. He cut corners. He also seemed to know (or at least joke about) what a death trap he’d built.
Insider spoke to Brian Weed, a veteran camera operator who boarded the doomed Titan for an (ultimately aborted) episode of Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown. He and host Josh Gates were part of a test dive that was to be a “precursor” to the trip down to the Titanic wreckage. Passengers aboard the Titan were infamously bolted inside, making it difficult to get out.
Not long after being bolted inside, Weed asked a pertinent question: What would happen in case of an emergency and they had to quickly flee the Titan. Rush’s alleged response, as relayed by Weed, did not exactly inspire confidence:
“’Well, there’s four or five days of oxygen on board,’ and I said, ‘What if they don’t find you?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re dead anyway.’”
The statement understandably unnerved Weed. “It felt like a very strange thing to think, and it seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean,” he said.
Weed summarized Rush’s response like so: “If you’re out there, and they don’t find you in that many days, you’re just going to die anyway — it’s over for you, so what does it matter if you can’t get out of the sub on your own.”
On top of Rush’s comments, the test dive was plagued with mechanical and communications issues. Eventually it was called off. Weed even wound up pulling out of the documentary show over safety concerns.
“That whole dive made me very uncomfortable with the idea of going down to Titanic depths in that submersible,” Weed told Insider.
Even after the accident, OceanGate was still advertising trips to the Titanic up until last week, when they finally suspended all operations.
(Via Insider)