Hamish Harding’s stepson is using Blink-182 to “cope” as the British billionaire remains missing on the small vessel carrying five people that vanished two days earlier in a dive to the Titanic wreckage site.
“My stepdad Hamish is on this submarine lost at sea,” Brian Szasz tweeted at Blink-182 members Travis Barker, Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus on Monday. “I’m devastated but coming to the San Diego show tonight so you guys can give me hope and cheer me up.”
In replies to his tweet, the 37-year-old said the outing “helped me cope!“
Szasz, an audio engineer, shared a photo on his Instagram Story Tuesday of his time at the concert. “Yes I went to @blink-182 last night,” he wrote.
He added: “What am I supposed to do sit at home and watch the news? Not sorry this band has helped me through hard times since 1998.”
Szasz also posted about going to the concert on Facebook Tuesday, although it has since been deleted.
“It might be distasteful being here but my family would want me to be at the blink-182 show as it’s my favorite band and music helps me in difficult times!” he wrote, according to screenshots obtained by multiple outlets.
The audio engineer later posted that his mom Linda “asked me to delete all related posts” out of “privacy.”
The carbon-fiber submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply when it went to sea at about 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate Expeditions, the deep-sea exploration company that owns the vessel.
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The five-person watercraft was reported overdue Sunday night. It had lost contact with its support ship, the Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, about an hour and 45 minutes after submerging.
Among those aboard are OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the Titan, Harding, two members of a Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert.
U.S. and Canadian ships and aircrafts had intensified search efforts Tuesday amid oxygen supply concerns. As of Tuesday morning, a total of 10,000 square miles had been searched, according to the Coast Guard.
Capt. Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District in Boston said the Titan, as the submersible is known, had “about 40 hours of breathable air left” around 1 p.m. ET Tuesday, meaning its oxygen supply could get depleted by Thursday morning.
Aircraft detects underwater noisesduring search for missing submersible, US Coast Guard says: Updates
‘Banging’ noise heard during search, internal memo says
Crews detected “banging” and “acoustic feedback” sounds Tuesday while searching for the Titan submersible, according to an internal memo sent to Department of Homeland Security leadership that was obtained by Rolling Stone and CNN.
A Canadian aircraft heard the banging sounds every 30 minutes, according to the memo. Additional sonar was deployed and the banging could still be heard four hours later. The internal update did not state what time the banging was heard or exactly how long it lasted.
In an update Tuesday night, crews said more acoustic feedback was heard.
“Additional acoustic feedback was heard and will assist in vectoring surface assets and also indicating continued hope of survivors,” according to the update.
It is unclear if an early Wednesday update from the Coast Guard is related to the internal memo.
Contributing: Jorge L. Ortiz, Jeanine Santucci, Claire Thornton, Thao Nguyen
