Like putting a candle to a saint and light a miracle.
Something like this happened this Wednesday in the rescue operation of the five crew members of the Titan submersible, lost since Sunday on its way to the remains of the Titanic, whose search is an international issue and a global concern.
In this case, when time runs out, with the 96-hour margin of oxygen available in their reserves practically fulfilled, the candle to hold on to was the detection of some banging noises that were recorded on Tuesday night by Canadian reconnaissance planes under the surface in the North Atlantic.
Although at first they disappeared for several hours, the planes picked up those noises again this Wednesday and the flame of prayer regained light.
The experts were analyzing if they were of human origin and where their origin was.
All search resources, which have increased exponentially since Monday when only the Polar Prince, the mother ship that launched the Titan, operated on the water, were focused on that area, now defined as twice the state of Connecticut. (in total about 30,000 km2), located 643 kilometers from the Canadian coast of Newfoundland and 1450 from Cape Cod, in the state of Massachusetts.
This Wednesday there were five pieces of equipment, with remotely operated robots to dive to great depths, and it was expected to reach ten this Thursday with the contribution of more boats from Canada and the French Atalante.
“We have to be very careful, but we are confident,” said Capt. Jamie Frederick, of the United States Coast Guard, based in Boston, where logistics are coordinated.
He acknowledged, however, that “we cannot frankly specify what these noises are and we are trying to find out their location,” he added.
“The ocean is a complex place, with human, natural sounds, and it’s hard to tell which source they’re coming from,” said Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “You have to carry out an acoustic analysis, which is being done, but, from my experience, there are sounds of animals under the sea that seem to be of human origin,” he stressed.
Frederick also did not specify if the noises were produced systematically every half hour, as indicated at the beginning.
“The important thing is that they have continued to listen to each other”, a circumstance that maintains the possibility, or the illusion, of rescuing Stockton Rush, pilot and president of the company that owns the submersible; French scuba diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet; and British millionaires Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood (of Pakistani origin) and their 19-year-old son Suleman.
“We are on a 100% rescue mission,” the captain replied. “We need to have hope,” he added.
Frederick responded in this way to the question of whether this deployment was already a “recovery” operation of the submersible, with no hope of finding the occupants alive.
“It’s a rescue, that’s why we’re doing all this and we’re going to continue putting all available means into the effort to find the Titan and its crew,” he insisted. “We work tirelessly and as quickly as possible,” she said. “Sometimes you have to make a difficult decision, but we haven’t gotten there yet,” he confessed about abandoning the job.
He refused, however, to specify what was the maximum limit for the confidence in survival to continue. Frederick spoke on Tuesday of a margin of 40 or 41 hours, a day later, almost at the limit of those calculations, he deviated from talking about figures despite insistence. “I am not going to enter numbers or percentages,” he reiterated. “Oxygen is one piece of information, but there are others,” he said.
A while earlier, Rear Admiral John Mauder said on CBS on Wednesday morning that the margin had been reduced to less than 20 hours.
Experts specify that the vehicle contains a finite capacity of oxygen. Its consumption, on the other hand, can be less than usual, with a gain of 10% or nine hours, if the occupants remain calm and breathe less than usual. On the contrary, if the level of carbon dioxide, the invisible gas that is exhaled when breathing, rises a lot, it can shorten that period.
Another issue is that of food. In a submersible inside a van, “food and water rations are limited,” Frederick said.
In this desperate mission, no one considers the cost. The Coast Guard is clear that the priority is to save lives.
