(NewsNation) — As the frantic search continues for five people lost on a tourist submarine to view the Titanic, an OceanGate adviser says paperwork is holding up a group with advanced assets that could help find them.
“We need to move. We do not have minutes or hours. We need to move now,” OceanGate adviser David Concannon told NewsNation host Dan Abrams on Monday evening.
Concannon says equipment and assets to help recover the missing Titan vessel are in the Guernsey Channel Islands and ready to go, but they don’t have the authorization to take off yet.
“(They are) the same group, the experts, that did the advanced survey of the Titanic last year,” Concannon explained to Abrams. “They are mobilized. They’re sitting on the tarmac, ready to go. We have a ship off Newfoundland that is ready to take them to the site.”
“We have people whose lives are at stake. You have to move. We have assets that are ready to go and they’re sitting and waiting,” Concannon continued.
Concannon said it’s government paperwork keeping the equipment at a standstill.
“This equipment has been on the tarmac for hours. When I communicate with the U.S. government, I get ‘out of office’ replies, not from everyone, but from key people that have a signoff on this,” Concannon told NewsNation host Ashleigh Banfield. “That’s unacceptable.”
“I don’t want to discourage the government officials that are helping because they’re doing their jobs, but we need to do it quicker,” he told Abrams.
Concannon, who is working tirelessly on search and recovery efforts, is in a race against time. In the event of an emergency, the Titan is designed for passengers to be able to survive for 96 hours, the Coast Guard said.
Concannon said contact with the tourist submarine was lost Sunday morning, but crews did track its last known location. The Coast Guard is working the Canadian authorities to search an area about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.
“Getting there in the 96-hour window before the occupants run out of oxygen: that’s the most important factor. That’s what we have been focused on 100% of the time,” Concannon said.
“If we move fast, we can get to the site in 40 hours from where the ship is now. If we get the assets flown from Guernsey Channel Islands overnight, we can have them mobilized on the ship in a day and we can get there inside the window,” Concannon said. “Now, it’s at the end of the window, but we can get there inside the window where there’s still oxygen in the submersible and that’s what we want to do.”
Concannon has led an expedition and made multiple dives to the Titanic wreckage site in the past. He was supposed to be the expert on OceanGate’s journey to the Titanic wreckage Sunday, but a client emergency kept him on shore. Now, he is trying to find any assets in the world that can bring the one pilot and four “mission specialists” who were on the expedition home.
OceanGate said they are “exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”
“Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate Expeditions said on Twitter. “We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible.”
The vessel takes tourists, who pay thousands of dollars each, to view the remains of the Titanic, which are about 12,000 feet at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg.