How to put a candle to a saint and have him perform a miracle.
Something like this happened on Wednesday in the rescue operation of the five crew members of the submersible Titan, lost since Sunday on its route to the remains of the Titanic, the search for which is an international affair and a global concern.
In this case, when time is running out, the margin of 96 hours of oxygen available in its reserves has been practically fulfilled, the candle to cling to was the detection of some knocking noises that on Tuesday night they recorded Canadian reconnaissance aircraft below the surface in the North Atlantic.
Although at first they disappeared for several hours, the planes picked up those noises again on Wednesday and the flame of prayer regained light.
The experts analyzed whether they were of human origin and their origin.
All search resources, which have increased exponentially since Monday when only the Polar Prince, the supply ship that launched the Titan, was operating on the water, were focused on that area, now defined as twice the size of the state of Connecticut (in total nearly 30,000 km2), located 643 kilometers from the Canadian coast of Newfoundland and 1,450 from Cape Cod, in the state of Massachusetts.
This Wednesday there were five 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 Captain Jamie Frederick, of the United States Coast Guard, based in Boston, from where the logistics are coordinated.
He acknowledged, however, that “we cannot frankly specify what those noises are and we are trying to find out their location”, he clarified.
“The ocean is a complex place, with human, natural sounds and it is difficult to discern which is the source from which they come,” said Carl Hartsfield, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “An acoustic analysis needs to be done, which is being done, but, from my experience, there are animal sounds under the sea that seem to be of human origin”, he stressed.
Frederick also did not specify whether the noises occurred systematically every half hour, as indicated at the beginning.
“The most important thing is that they have continued to feel”, a circumstance that maintains the possibility, or the illusion, of rescuing Stockton Rush, pilot and president of the company that owns the submersible; the French 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,” replied the captain. “You have 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 do all this and we continue to put all the means available in the effort to find the Titan and its crew”, he insisted. “We work non-stop and as quickly as possible”, he said. “Sometimes you have to make a difficult decision, but we haven’t reached it yet”, he confessed regarding leaving the task.
He refused, however, to specify what the upper limit was for maintaining confidence in survival. Frederick spoke on Tuesday of a margin of 40 or 41 hours, the next day, almost at the limit of the calculations, he deviated from talking about figures despite the insistence. “I will not go into numbers or percentages”, he reiterated. “Oxygen is a fact, but there are others”, he said.
A short time earlier, Rear Admiral John Mauder claimed on CBS yesterday morning that the margin had been reduced to less than 20 hours.
The experts specify that the vehicle contains a finite capacity of oxygen. Its consumption, on the other hand, can be lower than usual, with a gain of 10% or nine hours, if the occupants keep calm and breathe less than usual. On the other hand, if the level of carbon dioxide, the invisible gas that is exhaled when you breathe, rises a lot, this period can be shortened.
Another issue is food. In a submersible with the interior of 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.
