Former OceanGate Worker Sent an Ominous Email with Safety Concerns for ‘Titan’ Sub: Report

More ominous details are springing up about the doomed ‘Titan’ submersible.

According to a recent report from the New Yorker, one OceanGate employee was worried about the Titanic-bound tourist expedition years before its fatal implosion, which killed all five people aboard. As fas back as 2018, OceanGate employee David Lochridge was sounding the alarm.

In January, 2018, Lochridge completed a comprehensive search of the submersible (which OceanGate is still advertising for its $250,000 voyages, despite the recent tragedy). Lochridge’s report noted several potentially dangerous flaws, including highly flammable flooring, an iridium satellite beacon secured by zip-ties, and thruster cables that posed “snagging hazards.”

Lochridge’s study reportedly enraged OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who quickly called an emergency meeting. According to employees present, Rush used the meeting to shoot down Lochridge’s report. “We didn’t even have a baseline,” one employee recalled to the New Yorker. “We didn’t know what it would sound like if something went wrong.”

Two weeks later, Lochridge wrote his concerns in an email to a coworker, saying, “I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen.”

Lochridge went on to further question Rush’s role in the upcoming mission: “I don’t want to be seen as a Tattle tale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego.”

Just days ago, retired U.S. Navy Captain Alfred Scott McLaren echoed these sentiments, telling PEOPLE that he wasn’t surprised by the Titan’s implosion.

For the past three years, he told PEOPLE, “I’ve been advising people under no circumstances go to Titanic on that submersible. I didn’t consider it safe because of the way it was constructed and the fact that it had not been tested or certified.”

McLaren summed up his opinion of the submersible succinctly: “It was a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

[via]