James Cameron denounces “warnings ignored”

2023-06-23 10:08:03

James Cameron is outraged. Passionate about the seabed, the director of Titanic denounced on Thursday the “ignored warnings” concerning the safety of the tourist submersible which imploded near the wreck of the famous ocean liner, killing five people.

The craft was a source of much concern within the small world of underwater exploration, recalled the filmmaker, who visited the wreck many times to produce his planetary success of 1997, which won 11 Oscars.

The keen diving director drew a parallel between this new accident and the sinking of the ocean liner in 1912, which caused the death of 1,500 people. “I am struck by the similarity with the Titanic disaster, where the captain was repeatedly warned of the presence of ice in front of his ship, and yet he ran at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. “, he noticed on the american channel ABC News.

“It’s really surreal”

“That a very similar drama, where the warnings were ignored” happens “in the same place, (…) it’s simply amazing”, slammed the director of the film.’Avatar. It’s really surreal. The US Coast Guard announced Thursday that the OceanGate submersible, missing since Sunday in the North Atlantic, had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” in the depths of the ocean. The five men who were on board are now considered dead.

The risk of implosion of a submersible is always a “primary” concern during its construction, recalled James Cameron, who in 2012 became the first person to dive solo into the ocean depths aboard a craft. submarine that he himself helped design.

“It’s the nightmare we’ve all lived with since we entered this field,” he insisted, pointing to the impeccable safety achieved by most players in the world of underwater exploration. But “many people in the community were very concerned about this submersible” from OceanGate, he recalled. “A number of key players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers.”