Ex-OceanGate employee tells inquiry Titan sub disaster was ‘inevitable’

David Lochridge says he alerted company to safety fears but was ignored: ‘there was very little in the way of science’

A former marine operator who worked for the company behind the Titan submersible that imploded last year, killing five on its journey to view the wreck of the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic, told an inquiry that he believed such a tragedy was “inevitable” as safety standards were flouted.

David Lochridge, the former operations director for OceanGate, the firm behind the deep sea diving craft, testified during a US Coast Guard hearing that he alerted the company to safety concerns he had about the submersible, but was largely ignored.