'Presumed human remains' found at Titan debris site, says U.S. coast guard
CBC
The U.S. coast guard says it will conduct a formal analysis of what it calls "presumed human remains" that have been recovered from the wreckage area of the Titan submersible.
The remains were "carefully recovered" from the site, almost 700 kilometres off the coast of St. John's, the coast guard said in a news release Wednesday evening.
The vessel Horizon Arctic returned to port today, carrying the presumed remains and shattered pieces of the Titan, 10 days after it went missing with five souls on board. All five were deemed lost at sea last week, when debris was found near the wreck of the Titanic.
"The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy," said Jason Neubauer, chair of the Marine Board of Investigation.
"There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again."
Neubauer expressed his gratitude for the inter-agency and international recovery effort.
A crane lifted the submersible's nose cone, pieces of its hull and a section of the tail into the air and lowered them to the Canadian Coast Guard dock in St. John's.
"It's just a very eerie feeling here this morning, knowing that people were on that, and that's all that's left," said Sarah Grenning, who stopped her morning run to watch the pieces being offloaded. "Those are people's sons and fathers and relatives. It's just unfortunate."
All five people on board are believed to have been killed by a sudden implosion. That includes OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, whose company built the Titan with an experimental design using carbon fibre and titanium.
In previous interviews, Rush acknowledged the materials were not standard for deep-sea submersibles.
"I'd like to be remembered as an innovator," Rush told vlogger Alan Estrada in 2021. "I've broken some rules to make this. I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. The carbon fibre and titanium, there's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did."
The remnants of the submersible — those pieces of carbon fibre and titanium — will now be turned over to investigators to figure out what went wrong. Transportation safety boards from the United States and Canada, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard and RCMP are now probing the incident.
They may try to piece the vessel back together, according to a marine investigations expert who spoke with CBC News earlier this week.
"Just like an airline crash, they may try to reassemble the sub to put the parts together like a puzzle to determine where the failure point was," said Tom Maddox, founder and CEO of Underwater Forensic Investigations. "In the case of a massive implosion that's not going to be an easy task because much of the craft would have disintegrated."
A suspended Moncton structural engineer faces more lawsuits alleging design flaws in buildings that require repair.
Sajjade Tugano has come a long way since he first set foot in Chibougamau, six hours north of Quebec City, in the depths of winter in November 2021.
A national mentor-based hockey organization that helps marginalized youth through the sport is paying tribute to one of its members and youngest coaches.
After months of asking the City of Saskatoon to do more to solve its homelessness crisis, advocate David Fineday took to the stand at city council Tuesday.
A community organization wants to breathe new life into a historic building in Regina.
Some Prince County residents are walking away with more answers after attending Tuesday night's public information session in Albany, P.E.I., on the Wejipek Wind Project.
After just a few months of using vape detectors in a couple of bathrooms, a B.C. high school principal says it's reduced vape use in those areas to basically zero.
Burlington MP Karina Gould gets boost from local young people after entering Liberal leadership race
A day after entering the Liberal leadership race, Burlington, Ont., MP and government House leader Karina Gould was cheered at a campaign launch party by local residents — including young people expressing hope the 37-year-old politician will represent their voices.
Anold Mulaisho was born intersex and wonders where they fit in, in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order for the United States to recognize only two sexes, male and female.
WARNING: This story contains references to suicide.
Subway service is down on Line 1 between Sheppard West and Lawrence West due to a broken power rail, the TTC said Wednesday morning.
A long-term care home in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood has cleared one more hurdle to add desperately needed beds to its property, a move that's been praised by housing advocates but opposed by locals concerned about the impact on the neighbourhood.
A Charlottetown resident is calling on the P.E.I. government to do more to protect homeowners after reading about a recent oil spill very similar to one on his Montague property 20 years ago, which he says ruined him financially.
WARNING: This story includes details of abuse.
Two years after Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly declared she was taking the unprecedented step of moving to confiscate millions of dollars from a sanctioned Russian oligarch with assets in Canada, the government has not actually begun the court process to forfeit the money, let alone to hand it over to Ukrainian reconstruction — and it may never happen.
Alberta business and oilpatch leaders are returning home from Washington this week after the U.S. presidential inauguration festivities — and gritting their teeth after a roller-coaster of emotions.
Youth workers in Toronto's Jane and Finch area are flipping the script on negative stereotypes about their communities with a new fundraising campaign that offers anti-bias training in exchange for donations to bolster their programming.
In a sudden move that came late Tuesday evening, city officials rolled out cots and temporarily opened a warm building in east London as frigid temperatures continued.