Human Causes in Disasters
Cases considered -
1) Mianus River Bridge Collapse - 1983
2) Johnstown Flood - 1889
3) Ocean Ranger Oil Rig Disaster - 1982
4) PEPCON Explosion - 1988
The 4 documentaries shown in class just reveal how human errors, be it large or even extremely minute, led to some of the biggest disasters in our history. Just a little more attention in detail, just a little less carelesness and mostly just a little less greed could've helped avert many of the forementioned disasters.
Starting with the Mianus River Bridge collapse which was caused by the failure of two pin and hanger assemblies that held the deck in place on the outer side of the bridge. The real problem occurred when the assembly started to rust and caused a fatigue crack which eventually led the whole structure to collapse. Similarly with the other cases, be it the greed of someone to attain maximum profits, or management issues leading to the storage of high volumes of extremely flamable fluids on top of a gasline, humans play a big role in a majority of the disasters that took place during the last century.