Technology Disasters

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Transcript

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2. Seven people died with the Space
   Shutter Challenger flew apart in flight
   on January 28, 1986, including Christa
   McAuliffe the "first teacher in space."
   Like the disintegration of the Space
   Shuttle Columbia, which also resulted
   in the deaths of seven crew members,
   Challenger's end shook the American
   psyche and marked the beginning of the
   decline of American's manned space
   program. The accident is blamed on the
   failure of an O-ring that sealed the
   shuttle's rocket booster. The failure
   of China's Intelsat 708 resulted in
   more deaths but information about the
   accident remains sketchy and the public
   impact was more limited.
   

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4. The sinking of the Titanic serves
   as a reminder of human hubris.
   Deemed to be virtually
   unsinkable, she sank nonetheless,
   despite engineering designed to
   keep the ship afloat. The
   presence of enough lifeboats to
   carry only about 1/3 of the
   people on board made ship's
   technical shortcomings deadly.
   

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6. In August 1975, the Banqiao dam
   on China's Ru River collapsed in
   under the heavy rain from Typhoon
   Nina, a failure foreseen by
   project critics and in part
   attributable to inadequate
   engineering. The death toll has
   been estimated to be 26,000 from
   flooding and 145,000 from
   subsequent hardships, though
   official statistics of such
   events in China are difficult to
   verify.
   

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7. In 1976 the catastrophe in
   Seveso, an Italian town
   contaminated by leaking of
   dioxine from a chemical plant,
   caused the evacuation on 600
   people and 2,000 had to be
   treated for sickness due to the
   contamination. This accident led
   to a new European directive to be
   put into place on industrial
   sites at risk; it is called the
   Seveso directive.
   

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9. Less than 60 deaths have been directly
   attributed to the Chernobyl nuclear accident
   in 1986. Though various groups have made
   unverified claims that anywhere from 4,000 to
   more than 200,000 people have died as a
   result of radiation exposure in the years
   that followed, the United Nations Scientific
   Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
   (UNSCEAR), following decades of study, has
   concluded that apart from increased thyroid
   cancers, "there is no evidence of a major
   public health impact attributable to
   radiation exposure 20 years after the
   accident." However, the effects of the
   accident continue to be felt on a personal
   and environmental level, inside and outside
   of Ukraine. Though the extent to which human
   error versus design flaws contributed to the
   accident remains open to debate, there's a
   strong case for bad design.
   

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11. Death estimates range from about 4,000
    to 30,000 for the 1984 release of
    poison gas at a Union Carbide Facility
    in Bhopal, India. But like Chernobyl,
    the health effects have lasted decades
    and continue to this day. A variety of
    equipment failures and design flaws are
    believed to have contributed to the
    accident. Eight Indian plant employees
    were convicted of negligence in June
    2010, in Bhopal. An arrest warrant for
    former CEO Warren Anderson, now 90, was
    issued by Indian authorities last year
    but the U.S. will not extradite him.
    

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12. Before the Texas City disaster, there
    was the Port Chicago disaster in which
    320 Navy sailors and civilians died
    from a munitions explosion. The
    explosion occurred on July 17, 1944, at
    the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port
    Chicago, California. Most of the dead
    were African-Americans and the incident
    sparked a mutiny over the dangerous
    conditions. As World War II was
    underway, disciplinary action was harsh
    and the incident continues to be a
    racial sore point. Inadequate attention
    to safe munitions handling, in terms of
    tools and training, led to the
    disaster.
    

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14. The deadliest single-aircraft
    accident to date occurred in 1985
    with the crash of Japan Airlines
    Flight 123. The cause of the
    accident has been attributed to
    improper repairs following damage
    to the tail of the 747SR-46 in
    1978. A single metal plate with
    the a few more rivets could have
    saved 520 lives.
    

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15. • http://www.goodplanet.info/eng/Society/Disaster/Technological-disasters
    • http://www.informationweek.co.uk/11-epic-technology-disasters/
    • http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20110128/162352749.html
    • http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/challengerexplode.jpg
    • http://didyouknowarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/titanic-anniversary-3-that-which-
    remains1.jpg
    • http://bigbluetechnews.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/titanic-sinking.jpg
    • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Banqiaomap.png
    • http://cerch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Seveso-masks.jpg
    • http://outnow.ch/Media/Movies/Bilder/2005/Gambit/movie.fs/01.jpg
    • http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00144/T2_Chernob_01_144384b.jpg
    • http://chernobylgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Chernobyl-Disaster-October-86-
    construction.jpg
    • http://www.bhopalonline.org/place_of_tourist/Bhopal-Union_Carbide_2.jpg
    • http://www.nps.gov/poch/images/20090501184941.jpg
    • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Portchicago.jpg
    

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