A hearing will finally be held by the U.S. Coast Guard on the deadly Titan submersible tragedy that unfolded last summer.
The Titan submersible tragedy occurred last year in June, when the deep-sea vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, imploded during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean.
All five people on board were killed, including OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British businessman Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman Dawood, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The submersible lost contact with its support ship less than two hours into its descent. After a massive search and rescue operation involving multiple countries and agencies, debris from the Titan was found near the Titanic wreck site, confirming the submersible had suffered a catastrophic implosion.
Here’s some of what Fox 4 KDFW reported on the upcoming hearing:
The U.S. Coast Guard has announced when it will hold a long-awaited public hearing about the deadly Titanic submersible disaster that killed all five people on board in June 2023.
The hearing will begin on Monday, Sept. 16 at 830 a.m. ET and is set to convene over several days, through Sept. 27 if necessary.
The hearing will examine all aspects of the loss of the Titan, including pre-accident historical events, regulatory compliance, crewmember duties and qualifications, mechanical and structural systems, emergency response and the submersible industry, the Coast Guard said.
When the experimental Titan submersible was lost and found to later have imploded, the Coast Guard quickly convened a high-level investigation into what happened, but that investigation is taking longer than originally anticipated.
The Coast Guard said a livestream will be made available to watch the hearing.
The Titan had been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around the sunken ocean liner in yearly voyages since 2021.
The craft made its last dive on June 18, 2023, a Sunday morning, and lost contact with its support vessel about two hours later. When it was reported overdue that afternoon, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the area, about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.