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Disaster Equates To Tragedy And Catastrophe

Human activity like wars, whose death toll, taken over history, exceeds those of every natural calamity. Human greed or foolishness has brought catastrophe in countless ways. From the sinking of the Titanic to the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and more, influence successful changes. Man-made disasters such as space exploration, transportation and public works projects, are the consequences of engineering mistakes.

Why do we consider an engineering failure to be an engineering "disaster". The large loss of life and associated wide spread news reporting, the lack of control over their environment, result in a higher degree of perceived risk. The public perception of the risk associated with air travel is often much higher than that for trains and certainly for bicycles. In 1992 roughly the same number of fatalities occurred (in the United States) in transportation accidents involving airplanes (775), trains (755), and bicycles (722).

The primary causes of engineering disasters are usually considered to be: human factors (including both 'ethical' failure and accidents); design flaws (many of which are also the result of unethical practices); materials failures; extreme conditions or environments, and, most commonly and importantly are combinations of these reasons.

Human-made disasters Aviation Arson Civil disorder Crime Dam failure Hazardous materials Power outage Radiation contamination Space disasters Terrorism Transportation War

Humans design, build, operate, use, maintain, and can wreck engineering products. Humans are fallible. Engineers have to take into account all the potential failures of people, including other engineers, as well as failures of equipment and materials. Design engineering is a structured process using both art and science to create new or improved products-building on experience, bad as well as good. Failure occurs when something or someone fails to perform to expectations.

An engineer in whatever role within the profession needs to know the boundaries of failure. Engineering Disasters is an essential read in the unending quest to avoid catastrophic failures. The modern use of the word `engineer' started with the industrial revolution. As the industrial revolution grew, engineers met to exchange ideas. They copied the style of scientific societies, which originated in Europe in the seventeenth century. The Institution of Civil Engineers' Royal Charter of 1828 defines engineering as: The art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.

By the mid-nineteenth century, engineering societies had been established in the United States and most European countries. The skill of the design engineer is to stay away from failure on the one hand, and on the other be economic in the use of materials and labour. Management has to design the organization, and assess its effectiveness, against the constraints of effective use of resources and avoiding failure. The engineer, in whatever role in the profession, needs to know the boundaries of failure. This requires knowledge and learning.

Disaster equates to tragedy and catastrophe. The emotional perception of risk results in major engineering failures being labelled disasters. Failure is when a person or object fails to perform to expectations. In this broad definition, failure covers the range from disasters to where a product does not perform as well as expected. Learning from failures and mistakes of others is cost-effective and less painful than experiencing them oneself. And the public expects the profession to learn from its mistakes and not repeat them. With an increasingly litigious society, nobody wants to be caught in the witness box thinking I wish I had known that.

Engineering is not precise, and materials have a range of properties. Avoiding all failures might be expensive. A good example is telegraph and power poles. There is a great benefit in standardizing. But there is also a wide range of loading due to different terrain and weather conditions. It would be uneconomic to make all poles stand up to the worst statistical loading. The right engineering solution is to balance the cost of replacing a few failures with economy over the whole population. This is a conscious decision to allow for a few failures.

We are fortunate in seeing fewer failures as engineering knowledge builds. The failures we now see tend to be more complex than earlier ones. The pressure is on investigators to find a quick and simple cause. Investigations get lots of media attention. But the real lessons are often only apparent in quiet analysis after the media hubris has subsided. Engineers can afford to wait and see what lessons can be learned. Lessons tend to be timeless. Hopefully the same types of failure will not get repeated, and lessons from one failure, or near miss, can prevent others - even in different industries.

Disasters having an element of human intent, negligence, error or involving a failure of a system are called man-made disasters. Man-made disasters like power or telecommunication outages may be caused by thunderstorms, tornados or earthquakes and though the root cause is a natural phenomenon, they are considered to be man-made disasters.

The Tools Against this enemy (fire), courage alone is not enough. From the beginning, firefighters have had to find ways to climb higher, shoot water farther, spot fires sooner. Here are some of the milestones in the history of fire-extinction technology. Buckets For almost a century these were the only way of putting water on the flames. In many cities, each house and business had to keep at least one bucket, sometimes painted with the owner’s name. At the cry of “Fire!” everybody was required to race to the site and join the bucket brigade. Hand Pumpers Since at least the ancient Romans, man has sought a mechanical means of spraying water on fires. One of the first people to make it practical was Richard Newsham of London. In 1731 New York City purchased two of Newsham’s simple hand-pumped engines, eventually building its first firehouse to store them. When fires broke out, men dragged the engines to the site and formed a bucket brigade to fill their reservoirs. Then the pumps were manned and water began to shoot out of a gooseneck nozzle emerging from the top. Hoses Leather fire hoses, invented in seventeenth-century Holland, leaked and needed too much care to be very useful. But when, in 1808, a Philadelphia company devised a method of closing the seams with copper rivets, leather hoses quickly made buckets obsolete. However, they still needed constant maintenance with grease and oil to keep them from drying and cracking. With the arrival of canvas and rubber hoses in the 1820s, firefighters thankfully said goodbye to leather hoses forever. Water Mains Until the early nineteenth century firefighters had to rely on wells, rivers, ponds, and reservoirs for water. If one of these wasn’t nearby, the building burned to the ground. New York City’s first water mains were hollowed-out logs. They leaked and clogged, but they were better than nothing. In 1808 one was fitted with the first fire plug—a sort of large cork—and the first real fire hydrant came in 1817. Today firefighters in most high-rise areas use high-pressure mains as their source of water. Fire Alarms The first fire alarm was somebody seeing smoke and yelling. By the mid-nineteenth century New York City had a series of eight watchtowers manned by sentries looking for signs of flame. In 1852 a Boston doctor named William Channing invented an alarm system that could send a telegraph signal from a street box to an alarm office. Soon every big city had telegraph alarm boxes, which lasted until the 1970s, when more efficient telephone systems were developed. Today most alarms come in from home phones and cell phones, with the information sent to centralized dispatch centers. Steam Pumpers Many volunteer fire companies fought tooth and nail against the purchase of the first steam-powered fire engines. At demonstrations, the men proved they could pump harder and shoot water higher than the early smoke-belching machines. But for government officials, the clincher was that the steam-powered engines never got tired. Starting in Cincinnati in the 1850s, every major city switched over to steam. By the turn of the century the most powerful of these could generate more pressure than the average modern-day fire engine. Fireboats Ship and dock fires were once regular occurrences in every American port. In 1800 New York firefighters built the first fireboat, really a hand-pumped engine attached to a barge. In 1867 New York hired a tugboat for putting out fires and outfitted it with hoses and other equipment. In 1873 the Boston Fire Department launched the William F. Flanders, the first fireboat specifically built for that purpose. New York City’s largest fireboat, the Fire Fighter, is one of the most powerful pieces of fire apparatus ever built, capable of pumping 20,000 gallons of water every minute. Ladders As buildings rose to 5, 7, and even 10 stories, firefighters had to figure out how to keep up. In 1882 the FDNY purchased French-made scaling ladders—short ladders with hooks on one end that could be moved up floor by floor—and soon brought its first aerial ladder into service. Today aerial ladders can reach as high as 130 feet, and they ride on special ladder trucks. After the tragic consequences of the first skyscraper fires, however, fire departments realized that they needed a whole new array of tactics. High-Rise Building Codes After 146 people died in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, in 1911, citizens’ outrage led to a wholesale revamping of New York City’s fire code. Buildings had to strictly control the storage of flammable materials; fire doors had to open; fire escapes had to be firmly attached; and sprinkler systems were required in every factory. Other cities followed suit, usually after their own deadly fires, as people realized that the best way to stop fires is to keep them from starting. Motorized Fire Engines The beloved fire horses were the muscle that moved the steam pumpers. In 1901, when New York’s fire chief bought a Locomobile to travel to fires, some firefighters may have suspected that the horses’ days were numbered. The FDNY bought its first (not very fast) gasoline-powered engine in 1909. On December 20, 1922, a team of horses made its last run pulling a fire engine through the streets of New York and then was sent off to a peaceful retirement. Hazardous Materials Units Modern technology has brought great benefits to human life, and also great dangers. In 1945 New York City’s fire department formed the nation’s first fire, gas, and chemical unit in response to the threat of attack during World War II. Its preparation proved crucial in 1949, when a truck carrying chemicals exploded in the crowded Holland Tunnel. Radiation training was added during the Cold War. This unit has since become the model for hazmat squads across the country. A Step Too Far In 1965 the FDNY purchased the Super Pumper, the most powerful land-based apparatus ever developed. It was capable of shooting 8,800 gallons of water per minute (still less than the big fireboats). It was the size of a large semi-truck, however, which made it difficult to navigate narrow city streets, and it needed special tenders—“satellite trucks”—to help it operate. Although it performed well at a number of fires, it was eventually deemed too complicated and expensive and was retired from service in 1982. Andrew Coe

Recognizing failure is something "even the simplest" person can do, and Alexander has noted that even if only a few of us have "sufficient interpretative ability to invent form of any clarity, we are all able to criticize existing forms." He considers this an "obvious point," acknowledging that it is at least as old as Pericles, who is quoted as saying, "Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it." So when a structure collapses or a design fails to live up to its promise, the lesson should be accessible to all, and even a jury of laypersons is presumed capable of ruling on culpability.

Aeronautical and aerospace engineering failures have also been the subject of much professional attention, not to mention extensive coverage in the mass media. Nuclear engineering incidents like the 1979 loss of coolant at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl plant near Kiev, which released radioactive material that spread well beyond its origin in the Soviet Union, have become shibboleths for discussions of the risks of modern high technology. Chemical engineering shortcomings have been the focus in discussions of industrial accidents such as the 1984 release of toxic gas from a Union Carbide insecticide plant at Bhopal, India, which killed more than 2,000 people and harmed about 150,000 more. Mechanical engineering failures can result in death due to exploding gasoline tanks in automobiles and trucks, not to mention less life-threatening but wide-reaching effects such as massive recall campaigns and product liability suits. And electrical and software engineering have had to deal with questions of reliability and assurance in the wake of massive power black-outs and telephone system breakdowns that have inconvenienced tens of millions of people at a time. In short, no field of modern engineering is untouched by the effects of failures and their invaluable lessons.

It appears incontrovertible that understanding failure plays a key role in error-free design of all kinds, and that indeed all successful design is the proper and complete anticipation of what can go wrong. It follows, therefore, that having as wide and deep an acquaintance as possible with past failures should be at least desirable. How and why errors were made in the past cannot but help eliminate errors in future designs. The more general the lessons he or she can draw from the cases, the more likely are patterns of erroneous thinking to be recognized and generalizations reached about what to avoid.

The People Who Fight The Fires

While Hollywood has effectively captured the essence of many professions, it has consistently missed the mark with firefighting. The three main efforts, The Towering Inferno, Backdraft, and the recent Ladder 49 — along with the cable TV series “Rescue Me”—contain some drama but have very little to do with actual fire conditions or the people who fight the fires.

I have heard actors say that humor is the most difficult part of their trade. Firehouse humor is especially hard to mimic. George Hall and Tom Wanstall, in their perceptive book FDNY: New York’s Bravest, captured the flavor perfectly. “Their sense of humor is uproarious and utterly tasteless, often bewildering to outsiders and newcomers on the job. Nothing—but nothing—is sacred in the firehouse—not your race, your gender, your mother, your wife, your kids. Not even your fellow firefighter who’s in the burn ward after going through the roof at last night’s job. Everyone and everything is hammered mercilessly, to the endless delight of all.”

Hollywood thinks of the firefighter’s profession as a drama, when it is actually a comedy, albeit a comedy interspersed with terror, chaos, professionalism, and split-second heroism. When I was newly assigned to Engine 43 in the Bronx, we were preparing lunch after a late-morning fire. One firefighter who looked, and acted, like the cartoon character Yosemite Sam was standing next to the knife drawer. Another firefighter was making such rude remarks about Sam’s wife that I thought he was going to grab a knife and start a fight. Everyone else in the room, accustomed to this sort of dialogue, appreciated the exchange. So did Sam. He quickly took his revenge by mixing the salad with his unwashed, sooty black hands. In the firehouse, everyone’s ego is a target. Experienced firefighters understand that with constant fires threatening life and nerves, with serious injury or excruciating death a real possibility, it’s better to just give up your ego. It’s very liberating.

In addition to its endless entertainment value, the humor mitigates the horrors firefighters deal with. The firefighters have figured out how to be totally rude without being malicious. I never recognize the characters in any of the Hollywood firefighter movies, yet when I sit with my kids and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey, Shrek, or, again, cartoon characters like Yosemite Sam, I can immediately find the corresponding character in the firehouse.

Also, the historical context of the firefighters is absent from the movies. If you were to check the census figures of New York City and compare 1970 to 1980, you might wonder where a million people went. This dramatic drop represents the result of 135,000 arson fires that killed thousands of citizens and hundreds of firefighters.

I asked my captain, Tommy Anello, who spent as much time in the worst neighborhoods of New York as anyone, what he was thinking as he came to work in the late sixties and had to respond to an exploding fire load. “I thought we were winning,” he said, “because we were putting the fires out.” The firefighters never quit. The arsonists ran out of buildings to burn. To omit this sort of historical context is like making a wholly generic war movie. Consequently, Hollywood misses the relationship that existed between the firefighters and the people trapped in those crimeand arson-filled inner-city neighborhoods.

During the seven years I worked in the Bronx, I must have gone to more than 300 structural fires. I cannot recall one time coming out of a burned apartment or house that one of the people still in the hallway or out in the street didn’t say, “Thank you, fireman.” That alone made the rigors of the job worth it.

Next, the fires. You can’t see. Most of the danger comes not from the flames, which could be extinguished or avoided in a burning apartment if there was any visibility, but from the smoke, which is so thick that a high-intensity light worn on a helmet does not even cast a perceptible glow. If you are on the forcible entry team, your job is to break down a metal door, crawl in as fast as you can, locate the fire, leave one member with a pressurized can of water to try to keep the fire at bay, then search the entire apartment for victims before the fire comes and traps you—all while you’re virtually blind. If you stand up, as is done in every firefighter movie I have ever seen, the next stop is the cemetery because it is over 1600 degrees at chest level.

I once spoke with a professional screenwriter about making better firefighter movies. He said that Hollywood wants conflict between the firefighters. I told him that there was very little. Whatever conflict might arise would ignite such general ridicule that it would quickly be extinguished. Another advantage of that raucous, bawdy firehouse humor.

The firefighters I worked with were both blue collar and college-educated —ex-military men, sons of firefighters, and people escaping the corporate world: lawyers, teachers, accountants. There were musicians, professional cooks, accomplished tradesmen, and athletes, all with a sense of humor whether or not they’d had one when they came on the job.

The Hollywood stereotypes simply don’t hold up in this world. This is tough on moviemakers, but if Hollywood wanted to get the story right, it could start by leaving any formula at home and getting the firefighters just to be themselves. Also, a thermal-imaging camera might really capture the feeling of crawling into a burning apartment. All the firefighters who have paid the price for their career choice deserve nothing less.

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