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“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.
These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.
This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission.
We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families.
This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea.
We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time.”
And here’s my opinion:
The victims of this unfortunate fatality signed away their lives for a company that has come under serial public and stakeholder scrutiny over the many faults of the submersible. Reports saying realistically, it could only dive 1,300 meters but they were taking it on 4000 meters sea-depth exploration. Many times the whistleblower was hounded till he got sacked. This same owner who kept saying the submersible was “obscenely safe” “but if you don’t want to take a risk, then don’t get out of your bed” is now caught in the tragedy. I don’t know if stealthily dodging red flags and refusing to open your innovation to proper peer review and regulation is an acceptable norm from corporate America. But this was an avoidable tragic rascality.
For the passengers, they signed to indemnify Oceangate if anything went wrong and could not come back. I think that takes care of that. They knew what they were walking into and they hugged their own deaths willingly. However, singing your life away to a machinery that is bolted 17 times and in 17 places from outside to prevent water seeping in, making it impossible to exit without help, such that except help gets to them, they’re buried in a literal floating coffin through a death that slowly creeps into them while they’re alive and seeing it without being able to lift a finger is truly terrifying. The thought itself is agonizing.
The world needs to start asking questions. We cannot continue to waste lives that can never return. Oceangate CEO, Stockton Rush was reckless and I dare say more about the money than safety. I know the moral of “respecting the dead” always gag our anger to lay it bare but each time I recall how stealthy crooks who game the system for ambition and for greed have truncated the lives of others, I cannot spare them. Years ago, we were mourning Pius Adesanmi after he got wasted owing to the greed of owners of Boeing and their brazen refusal to heed all the warnings and dangers their flying coffin portended from safety standard gaps.
No one should get me wrong. I am NOT against adventures and I do not question people how they spend their money, either to indulge in normal or weird luxuries. But the submersible was far too basic in its control procedure to be allowed to go so deep into such deep impersonal waters, chasing a Titanic that’s far buried in the depth of sea. It was akin to flying the lives of these people on a fragile straying kite. It’s immoral and irresponsible.
Corporate America is a cesspool of infractions with tragic, irreversible consequences. This was a painfully avoidable tragedy.
©️: Akin Fadeyi
