2023-06-22 00:00:00
Rescue teams focus the search for the Titanic submersible, which disappeared on Sunday with five people on board near the remains of the Titanic, in the area where noises of undetermined origin were heard in the last hours, in a race against time, since the oxygen of the ship is running out.
“We don’t know what the noises are” heard Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, US Coast Guard spokesman Captain Jamie Frederick told a news conference, asking to remain “optimistic and hopeful.” Communication with the 6.5-meter-long submersible Titan was lost on Sunday two hours after it began its descent toward the remains of the mythical ocean liner Titanic, located almost 4,000 meters deep and about 600 km from the Canadian island. Newfoundland, in the North Atlantic.
So far, searches with the help of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) have yielded no results.
Who are the passengers of the Titan?
On board the Titan are British millionaire Hamish Harding, president of the Action Aviation company; Pakistani Shahzada Dawood, Vice President of Engro, and his son Suleman; the French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operates the submersible, and which charged $250,000 per tourist.
At the moment, five ships, to which another five will be added in the next few hours, are participating in the search in an area of 20,000 square kilometers, approximately the size of El Salvador, at a depth of almost four kilometers, while from the Air planes ply the sky in search of any sign of the submersible.
Boarding this ship implies accepting certain discomforts throughout the approximately ten hours that the trip should have lasted. The interior of the OceanGate submersible resembles that of a “minivan,” Mike Reiss, a writer-producer who worked on “The Simpsons” and undertook the same journey last year, told his podcast.
No toilet, no seats, no food
In each dive, the five crew members – the pilot and the four passengers – are forced to take off their shoes and sit cross-legged on the same floor, since there are no seats, to fit in the 670-centimeter-long cylinder.
Inside the ship there is only one window to be able to see the outside “in turns,” CBS journalist David Pogue, who was also a passenger on the Titan in November, told US public radio NPR. Even so, you can also see what is around you through some screens that connect with cameras on the surface of the device.
Likewise, the Titan has a black curtain that separates the latrine from the space where the crew members sit: The toilet is a small black box, as can be seen in one of the videos where the CEO of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, explains the operation of the submersible.
Three times “death” on the first page
Rush travels as the artifact’s pilot and is one of five people currently aboard it. Reiss recalls that before the trip – which can cost up to $250,000 – passengers have to sign a “long waiver document that mentions the possibility of death three times on the first page.”
On the other hand, he also talks about the fact that there are usually sandwiches and water available for travelers in the device. However, Reiss says that many of the visitors have told him that they do not eat during the journey because of the excitement, so they never use the “toilet”.
For his part, Pogue noted that many of the submersible’s parts “seemed thrown together.” Without going any further, the ship is controlled by a video game controller, whose design resembles one of the characteristic Xbox or PlayStation controls. The same CEO of OceanGate details in a video that they have two spare controls, “just in case.”
Reiss described the journey as “a car you drive drunk across the ocean”.
Without a radio and without GPS, the crew members have 96 hours of oxygen. This Wednesday, the submersible only has about 10 hours of oxygen left after it disappeared on Sunday, so rescue teams are working around the clock and travelers have “limited rations” of food.
As if that were not enough, if the submersible remains at the bottom of the sea for a long time, the crew faces very low temperatures, with a cold just above freezing point and with the possibility of developing hypothermia.
Pogue pointed out that in the trip “you are on your own” and there is only one way out: “There are no reinforcements, there is no escape route, it is to reach the surface or die.”
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