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On Monday, a hearing began before the U.S. Coast Guard on the implosion of the private submersible Titan, in which five people died on a trip to the Titanic last year.
The two-week hearing into the disaster will hear evidence about what went wrong and whether physical or design flaws contributed to the accident that attracted worldwide attention.
Tony Nissen, a former chief technical officer at U.S. company OceanGate, which operated the submersible, testified on Monday that he had been concerned about safety concerns during his tenure, U.S. media reported.
Nissen told the hearing, which is being held in South Carolina, that he refused to authorize a dive to the Titanic wreck in 2019 because of concerns about the Titan’s hull. He was fired later that year.
He said the company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, who was among those killed in the implosion, remained unfazed after learning of a possible lightning strike to the submersible in 2018 and potential problems with the hull.
Rush refused to believe the news of the damage and insisted that “everything was fine,” Nissen said during the hearing, according to testimony published in The New York Times.
The ship, which was about the size of an SUV, is said to have imploded upon landing on June 18, 2023.
About an hour and 45 minutes after entering the sea, the Titan lost contact, and a days-long rescue mission followed that kept the world in suspense before the submarine’s failure was finally confirmed on June 22.
The victims probably died instantly in the disaster, which occurred under the enormous pressure of the North Atlantic at a depth of more than three kilometers.
Besides Rush, the Titan was also home to British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.
A debris field was discovered 500 meters from the bow of the Titanic, 640 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada.
The Titanic struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage from England to New York in 1912 and sank with 2,224 passengers and crew on board. More than 1,500 people died.
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