OceanGate‘s former finance director reveals she quit her post when the CEO asked her to take the controls of the doomed Titan submersible.
The unnamed former finance director said that after the chief pilot David Lochridge was fired after raising safety concerns, she couldn’t trust late CEO Stockton Rush.
She told the New Yorker: ‘It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting, I could not work for Stockton.
‘I did not trust him. As soon as she was able to line up a new job, she quit.’
She added that several of the engineers were in their late teens and early twenties, and were at one point being paid fifteen dollars an hour.
The former finance director of OceanGate has said she was offered the remote controls by CEO Stockton Rush, pictured here
OceanGate bosses fired David Lochridge, pictured here, who was Director of Marine operations for the Titan project
The five men onboard had all died after the Titan sub, pictured here, imploded on its expedition
Lochridge was fired in 2018 after OceanGate disagreed with his demand for for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible, including ‘testing to prove its integrity’.
OceanGate, which charged up to $250,000 for a seat on the submersible, suggested that seeking classification could take years and would be ‘anathema to rapid innovation’.
In 2019, OceanGate said seeking classification for Titan would not ‘ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea’.
Classification involves recruiting an independent organization to ensure vessels like ships and submersibles meet industry-wide technical standards. It is a crucial way of ensuring a vessel is fit to operate.
In a court document filed in 2018, lawyers for the company said Lochridge’s employment was terminated because he ‘could not accept’ their research and plans, including safety protocols.
OceanGate also claimed that Lochridge ‘desired to be fired’ and had shared confidential information with others and wiped a company hard drive.
The company said he ‘refused to accept the voracity of information’ about safety from Titan’s lead engineer.
Lochridge had relocated from the UK to Washington to work on the development of the Titan – which was previously called Cyclops 2.
French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) was on the sub along with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition
Five people had been on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding (left) and Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who was just 19
A former Royal Navy marine engineer and ship’s diver, he was described by OceanGate as an ‘expert in the field of submarine operations and rescue’.
Lochridge stated he could not accept OceanGate’s research and development plans.
Based on Lochridge’s position, OceanGate terminated his employment, the legal filings reveal.
Rush died aboard the submersible which imploded on descent to see the wreck of the Titanic last month.
Onboard with him had been one of Pakistan’s richest men, Shahzada Dawood, alongside his son Suleman, British billionaire Hamish Harding, and French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Huge chunks of metal are unloaded from the Horizon Arctic ship at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
The sub lost communication with its operator, OceanGate Expeditions, less than two hours into its dive to the famous shipwreck last month, with five people on board.
A large-scale rescue operation including planes and a fleet of vessels had been scrambled to the area 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, as oxygen supplies in the sub dwindled.
It was then announced that the five men on board had been killed instantly after the submersible suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’.
Last week, debris from the submersible was hauled ashore in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk