Disasters Engineered

Follow two monstrous engineering catastrophes The Deepwater Horizon disaster with 11 fatalities and the largest marine oil spill in history resulted from a poorly planned well and faulty blowout preventer In 1986 the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its maiden flight killing seven astronauts due to aerodynamic forces from a gasket failure

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 caused by a routine test gone awry led to an explosion that released radioactive particles into the atmosphere The aftermath saw 31 people killed In 1984 the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred when a Union Carbide pesticide plant in India leaked methyl isocyanate gas exposing over half a million people to toxic fumes The immediate death toll was around 4000

Research suggests the Titanics sinking was inevitable due to structural weaknesses including poor expansion joints a coal bunker fire and lowquality iron rivets More than 1500 died In another tragedy the Hindenburg airship caught fire 200 feet above New Jersey in storm conditions killing 30 A spark ignited hydrogen from a leaking gas container made of flammable cotton fabric and latex

In 1966 a landslide in Aberfan Wales caused by rainsoaked mining spoil tips piles of waste material removed during mining operations killed 116 children and 28 adults engulfing a school and other buildings In 2019 the collapse of a tailings dam a structure used to store byproducts of mining operations at the Corrego de Feijao mine in Brazil released toxic waste killing 115 people

The MS Herald of Free Enterprise sank in 1987 due to negligence in closing the bow door leading to seawater flooding killing 193 passengers An inquiry cited poor design and supervision In 2012 the Costa Concordia ran aground after its captain Francesco Schettino caused 32 deaths with a reckless sailpast The captain abandoned ship with passengers still onboard and was sentenced to prison

A plane crash in England left 47 people dead after failure to follow safety procedures In France 13 people were killed after a tire was slashed by debris on the runway causing the tire to explode and shoot pieces of rubber into the engine thereby causing a fire What followed were improvements modifications and even decommissioning of certain aircraft to prevent future incidents like these

A 2005 levee system failure in New Orleans Louisiana killed more than 1800 people and flooded in excess of 100000 homes In Tacoma Washington poor design and a lack of preconstruction experiments caused the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse in 1940 These engineering failures proved devastating but they acted as a catalyst for greater design testing and hopefully big safety improvements

A bridge collapse in Italy led to the death of hundreds followed by displacement from their homes In Bangladesh a building collapse killed thousands and raised concerns over the treatment of workers in the garment industry The effects of these engineering failures are felt throughout their respective areas and beyond as questions haunt construction strategies and global fastfashion ethics

A 2019 munitions explosion in Cyprus and a 2105 factory explosion in China lead to the death of hundreds of people and the destruction of multiple homes and structures In Cyprus the blast goes down as the fifth largest nonnuclear explosion in history and in China a huge crater now stands where that factory once did Investigations were conducted to understand what exactly caused these blasts

In Ankara Turkey and in Clapham Junction Station in London severe highspeed train collisions lead to the death and injury of hundreds of passengers as well as the destruction of an overhead walkway These lethal disasters were caused by a combination of rushed renovations insufficient signaling systems and faulty wiring leaving too much room for the predictable occurrences of human error