This one goes out to Lawrence and a couple of other friends.
I have written previously about NASA’s “System Failure Case Studies” site, where the organizations posts brief analysis of significant failures and the lessons learned from them.
NASA recently redesigned the site: I find it slightly more aesthetically pleasing than I did previously. And one of the things they’ve covered recently is the Piper Alpha disaster.
Some other recent SFCS articles of note:
- the crash of a F-22A Raptor, apparently due to a combination of pilot hypoxia and bad ergonomics (especially when pilots were wearing night vision and cold weather gear).
- The Halifax explosion. It seems to me that this event is mostly forgotten today, but I vividly remember reading a first hand account from one of the survivors in a really old Reader’s Digest at my grandmother’s house:
The Mont-Blanc drifted toward the Halifax shore and then blew apart, with a shockwave equivalent to 2,989 tons of TNT expanding across Halifax at more than 4,900 feet per second and reached across 325 acres. The pressure and temperature (in excess of 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the origin) pushed a fireball of hot gas and debris into the sky that rained shrapnel on people in the streets below. The water around the Mont-Blanc was immediately vaporized and a 52-foot tidal wave swept three city blocks deep into Halifax’s Richmond neighborhood. Windows were reportedly shattered over 50 miles away from the epicenter.
- And the Xcel Energy fire, which comes across as just total all-around incompetence:
Although Xcel and RPI recognized the penstock as a permit required confined space, neither treated it as such during the recoating work…Entry procedures were not developed and the required daily permits were incomplete and lacking detail pertaining to the hazards of the day‘s work activities. Air monitoring was performed almost exclusively at the entrance, about 1,450 feet away from the actual work area within the penstock. Neither RPI nor Xcel provided the CSB with a documented basis for declassifying the penstock space as non-permit required…Xcel and RPI managers did not plan or coordinate the immediate availability of qualified confined space technical rescuers and equipment outside the penstock, although the use of flammable solvent in the open atmosphere of the permit space created the need for immediate rescue because of the potential for Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health (IDLH) conditions
Xcel and RPI killed five workers because of these failures.
On another note, I greatly enjoy the Priceonomics blog, which has covered topics like how does SkyMall work (and their questionable ties to Xhibit Corp), what charities do with those donated cars, and the economics of starting a bike shop.
The latest article has some ties to something I wrote about previously – the pot growers of the Emerald Triangle. Or, as Priceonomics puts it:
Legal Weed is Hurting San Francisco’s Hippies
Some quotes: