The Titan Disaster & Launch the World! The Ethos of the World’s Lifesaving Rescue Coordination Centres
Launch the World is a phrase one will hear within the walls of the world’s lifesaving facilities known as Rescue Coordination Centres (RCCs). Engrained in the ethos of these facilities is the ideal that saving lives must take advantage of All Available Resources. Lifesaving knows no borders. It is blind to the rescuer's political origins, or whether aid is rendered from a government, an NGO, or the private sector.
What matters is the coordination and cooperation among all those whose efforts may be brought to bear to ensure the imperiled are saved. And this is not only at the operational level, among those whose hands pull the distressed from the water, but at the global strategic level, among those whose hands are on the helm of the enterprise writ large. The International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (IAMSAR) Manual implores nations to “effectively use all available resources for SAR [search and rescue], including global, regional, national, private, commercial, and volunteer resources.”
Launch the World means not holding back, and moving heaven and Earth, when necessary, to locate those in distress and render aid. Launching the World is precisely what happened on June 18, 2023.
Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, those in distress are seldom, if ever, saved by individuals alone. Instead, they are saved by teams of talented women and men who collaboratively form a search and rescue (SAR) system. Choreographing a complex response requires a diversity of skilled teams fulfilling a myriad of tasks from on scene technical rescue, piloting SAR vessels and aircraft, providing medical expertise, and arguably most important of all, coordinating all of these resources in the most effective manner possible to ensure those in peril have the highest probability of survival. This is the function of SAR Coordination.
Search and rescueSAR is coordinated at multiple levels. Local systems are generally coordinated by regional authorities such as municipal and county emergency services, leveraging resources ranging from dedicated volunteer responders to full-time response teams. Moving up, each U.S. State has a designated SAR Coordinator who oversees a larger SAR System spanning the entire state, often involving a robust and diverse array of operational and support organizations and personnel. At the U.S. National level, these efforts are coordinated programmatically by the National Search and Rescue Committee, which the U.S. Coast Guard chairs. Moving even higher, one will find a Global SAR System.
This Global SAR System is a network of organizations, resources, and Rescue Coordination Centres (RCCs) working together to aid distressed persons. This network has been established through several international treaties. Stemming from those treaties, the International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (IAMSAR) Manual, jointly published by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), establishes “a common aviation and maritime approach to organizing and providing SAR services.”
When a distress event occurs and one nation requires the aid of another, they have available standardized terminology and processes to allow for easy coordination from virtually any region on earth. If one were to travel to the Moroccan RCC, you would find positions, processes, and polices similar to those found in the Maltese RCC, the Hattian RCC, the New Zealand RCC, or those RCCs located throughout the U.S. Through the long and painstaking process of rallying support for international convention, and developing those conventions into actionable doctrine, the worldwide enterprise of saving life in the maritime and aeronautical domains has made great strides in standardization. While localized needs and challenges will always result in some level of diversity from one region to the next, the foundations upon which SAR systems rest are largely standardized worldwide.
So what does it look like when these global systems are activated? The response to the tragic loss of the OceanGate Titan submersible provides a poignant example. On the 18th of June, 2023, a phone call was made from the Research Vessel Polar Prince to the U.S. Coast Guard First District’s Command Centre, an internationally recognized RCC. The call indicated that a submissible vessel was overdue and possibly in distress. The talented women and men of the U.S. Coast Guard’s First District assumed the daunting responsibility of SAR Mission Coordinator (SMC), the duty outlined in the IAMSAR as having overall responsibility for responding to a distress incident. SMCs receive robust training based on international standards and have years of experience.
In short order, under the oversight of the highly competent SMC, SAR resources from numerous agencies and countries were dispatched. These resources ranged from a U.S. Navy cable laying vessel, Canadian long-range military aircraft, U.S. Air Force C-130s transporting the elite Pararescuemen, the International Ice Patrol, several U.S. Coast Guard aircraft and vessels, and civilian research vessels. The effective coordination of the sheer number and diversity of resources was made possible only by years of collaborative training, advanced planning, and international convention standards and common terminology.
Just as importantly, the SMC had a multitude of tools at their disposal to help them plan the search. In a case of historic irony, the computer system used to search for survivors during the Titan response was based on a science originating in World War II. Incredibly, Search Theory was initially developed to give the Allied Forces an edge in the hunt for enemy vessels. What began as a science of war in the 1940s today saves thousands of lives worldwide every year. In the case of the Titan, given some initial uncertainty regarding the event, surface searches were planned using the U.S. Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System (SAROPS), which calculated likely search areas based on complex oceanographic models and then planned an optimal use of the myriad of available resources.
Tragically, as we know today, saving the lives of the people onboard the Titan was not possible. However, it may come as a surprise that the level of uncertainty in the opening stages of a SAR response is not uncommon, and our lifesaving SMCs and other coordination personnel have become extraordinarily adept at making the best decisions possible with limited, imperfect, and often erroneous information. These highly skilled professionals know it is better to move heaven and Earth for even the slightest chance of saving a life than holding anything back. Whenever there is doubt, they will push the proverbial distress button and Launch the World.
The International Association of Search and Rescue Coordinators (IASARC) was founded to promote the continued professionalization of SAR Coordination. This international professional association comprises leading experts united, alongside our partner organizations, in the shared mission to Advance the Profession of SAR Coordination through challenging professional certifications, advocacy for improved law and regulation, and scientific advancement. Our vision, our calling, is to create a world where every life in distress that can be saved is saved.
