Congressman Says Emergency Response To Submarine Was Failure

(AmericanProsperity.com) – In an interview last week, Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw criticized the Coast Guard’s efforts to rescue the OceanGate Titan submersible that imploded on June 18 on its way to tour the wreck of the Titanic, calling the Coast Guard’s efforts an “epic failure of leadership,” The Hill reported.

The Coast Guard announced last Thursday that debris from the Titan had been found about 1,600 feet from the Titanic, the Associated Press reported.

According to Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, a remote-operated vehicle deployed to search around the Titanic found the tail cone of the sub as well as additional debris in the area that was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Mauger said

A senior Navy official told the Associated Press that after the Titan went missing, the Navy reviewed and analyzed acoustic data from the Titanic site and found an anomaly “consistent with an implosion or explosion” around the time the Polar Prince lost contact with Titan on Sunday, June 18.

According to the Navy official, that information was passed along to the Coast Guard. However, the Coast Guard chose to continue the search since the Navy could not definitively say that the anomaly was caused by the Titan.

While appearing on Fox News last Thursday night, Crenshaw said both the Coast Guard and Navy took too long to deploy the 6K ROV (remote-operated vehicle) which would have allowed them to find the Titan more quickly.

Crenshaw explained that the ROV is the only vehicle that can reach the depth necessary to see what was down there. He noted that the Coast Guard didn’t deploy the remote-operated vehicle until Thursday morning.

The Texas Republican and former Navy SEAL suggested that the situation might have been “resolved differently” if Coast Guard leadership “acted sooner” instead of assuming that the five men were dead.

But since the implosion occurred less than two hours after the Titan launched, it is unlikely that the Coast Guard acting sooner would have made any difference.

Lost aboard the Titan at the time of the implosion were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, prominent Pakistani Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and British explorer Hamish Hardin.