“This is an extremely difficult time for the families of the crew members who disappeared aboard the Titan,” US Coast Guard Cutter (USCG) official Jamie Frederick said Wednesday during a briefing. press briefing in Boston.
Time is running out and major searches are continuing in the North Atlantic to find the five occupants of the submersible that disappeared during an exploration of the wreck of the Titanic, and whose oxygen reserves are in danger of running out at the end of the day. midday Thursday, June 22.
Sounds detected underwater Tuesday by Canadian P-3 planes in the search area raised hope and directed the armada of rescuers dispatched to the scene. But “I can’t tell you what those noises are,” Captain Frederick said after research by remotely operated underwater vehicles and a sonar-equipped surface vessel.
The means deployed by the American and Canadian armies continue to arrive at the site where the Polar Prince, the ship from which the submersible left, is stationed. The Atlante, a research vessel from the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) equipped with a robot capable of diving to the wreck of the Titanic, which lies at nearly 4,000 meters background, must arrive on the spot. A Canadian ship with medical personnel and a decompression chamber on board is also on its way. “We currently have five aircraft searching for ‘Titan’, and we expect a total of ten aircraft within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” added Captain Jamie Frederick. “Two robots are actively researching and several more are on their way and will arrive by tomorrow morning” Thursday, he added.
Vastness of the search area
The surface search area is 20,000 square miles, twice the size of the state of Connecticut; it’s also prone to fog and storms, making it an extremely challenging environment in which to conduct a search and rescue mission, said Donald Murphy, an oceanographer who served as chief scientist for the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol .
“The research location, 1,450 kilometers east of Cape Cod [on the northeast coast of the United States] and 640 kilometers southeast of St. makes it exceptionally difficult to mobilize large quantities of equipment quickly,” explained Captain Frederick.
An American, a Frenchman, a Briton and two Pakistani-Britons dived into the abyss on Sunday aboard the Titan, a submersible designed for five people and about 6.5 meters long. Contact with the craft was lost less than two hours after its departure. Tuesday noon, the US Coast Guard had warned that there were “approximately forty hours of breathable air” on board.
