Engineering Disasters

This accident exposed a large amount of lethal defects occurred on those engineers who were involved in this collapse of the bridge. According to Stage 1 Competencies and Elements of Competency(3. 1), a lack of professional accountability can be easily seen throughout above issues. Professional Engineers are needed to be responsible for the reliability of products they created and designed within a variety of severe environments. They are needed to test how the bridge would likely to work over and over under a variety of complex circumstances within the test stage of building the bridge.

The purpose of this report is to highlight significant engineer failures over history. Many of the disasters occurred in the latter half of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century. Starting with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, three aerospace related accidents, Challenger, Apollo 13, and Mars Climate Orbiter. As well as the radiation machine, Therac-25, and the more recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Each of the topics will go in-depth on background information, how the incident occurred, way it could have been prevented, and future implications, or measures taken due to these accidents to avoid future disasters.

The St. Francis Dam was open for use in 1926, following two years of constructions. The dam was built in order to give the city of Los Angeles, and various other areas within the region a source of water. Though the dam itself had good intentions, faulty engineering design, and bad construction ultimately led to the untimely collapse of the dam on March 12th, 1928. After extensive research by various local, state, and federal investigators, it was determined that engineers didn’t take into account or didn’t care for safety measures of the dam. Since the St. Francis Dam was so profitable, many people including non-engineering personnel intentionally ignored the obvious early signs that the dam was going to collapse. No one wanted to lose out on the economic prosperity the dam was giving. The dam itself was for the most part proven to be inadequate even before the dam itself collapsed. The personal who worked on the construction and the maintenance of the dam saw negative signs early on such as cracks in the dam, and leaks. Still, despite these obvious warnings, the engineers and personals ignored these issue. The negligence of these workers and their failure to report or take seriously the warning signs lead to the collapse. This dam disaster was extremely catastrophic, and lead to the death of some 431 people. After the collapse of the dam, many new pages of regulations and engineering code were implemented in order to prevent another collapse of this dam again.

With the constant discovery of scientific principles and new engineering designs, the responsibility often lies in the hands of engineers to decide what is in the best interest of the public. Millions of people around the world use products and structures developed by engineers, every day. Before accepting work from a client, it is important that engineers have a good understanding of their own personal limitations. If work is accepted that they are “not competent to perform by virtue of [their] training and experience” , there is a clear disregard for public welfare and potential for a serious safety hazard. It is again evident that the

Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; this law is not only applied in our studies but in our daily lives. For engineers, this is a law to live by; reminding each engineer that each of his/her actions will have an equal consequence whether it is good or bad. Engineers are trusted and respected individuals who represent not only themselves but the profession as a whole; their title gives them a great responsibility and a reputation to carry. On rare occasions do engineers make mistakes that sometimes lead to disasters that impact the lives of many. For every disaster that occurs as a result of an engineering mistake; thousands of lessons are learned. One disaster that impacted the lives of many and was labelled as the worst engineering disaster in history is the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The chain of events that lead to this disaster where taken as lessons and used to write many of today’s engineering codes of ethics, and improve safety regulations in various industries.

This chapter starts off with an interlude of a man who discusses the fault of engineers. He list the tragedies engineer have caused through what he believes is poor workmanship and skills. The man lampoons engineers especially about the incident in the Kansas where a huge quantity of people were killed. He shows little to no sympathy for engineers despite the innovation they have introduced in the world. The author then turns this man disproval into an idiosyncratic idea by displaying the wonders and challenges an engineers a face. That while they do create fantastical inventions they are still human and therefore are bound to error. Throughout this chapter the author is on the defense. He surmises potential reasons for an engineer’s design

2.1 Analysis of cause ................................................................................................. 6 2.2 Impact on engineering practice .................................................. 9 2.3 recommendations ......................................................................11

Engineers hold a valuable place in our society. They lay the groundwork for and create artifacts based on the foundation of knowledge that science grants. In our culture, however, it is not uncommon for people to be confused about the role that engineers play. Often times, engineers are portrayed as being skilled and knowledgeable, but lack a sense of moral responsibility for their creations. This mentality is shown in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which, the inventor, Victor Frankenstein attempts to defy the natural laws of life and death without first considering the consequences. This phenomenon is not just present in works of fiction. The man who designed the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, said to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,

This analysis was professionally powerful because it would help engineers to recognize and understand systematic errors that can lead to failures. Understanding what engineering is and what engineering can do is to know how failures can happen (Petroski). Among the main causes of this collapse was the lack of accurate inspection because the investigation conducted before were claiming that the bridge was still in good shape as shown by the National transportation Board (NTSB). This shows that in investigating causes of failure and identifying the parties responsible, engineers will not only check strength and stability of their design but also try to investigate business and practices that may be hidden behind the failure.

When an epidemic or catastrophe affects a community or nation depending on the resilience of the-the community there can be different outputs that help limit the aftermaths of the disaster.How the group of people respond or deal with the situation at hand will have a big impact on how it will affect their lives moving on. As humans the direr the situation we find ourselves in, the more likely we are to make a rush or unsound decision.These decisions shape how our lives may be impacted moving on whether for the duration of the catastrophe or many years to come.When the black death hit Europe in the late 1340’s to early 1350’s the Europeans did not know how to react or respond to it the because its victims nor physicians did not know the cause

People who are able to use their experience and knowledge by designing or performing skills to find a solution are considered to be engineers, and in most cases, they usually invent creations to make daily life easier. In particularly, inventions are not always used for their purpose. Thus, it illustrates whether or not engineers are morally concerned with society, especially if something dangerous were to be misused and intentionally harm others. At that point, the engineers should be held accountable for their creation. Considering that possibility, engineers could have prevented such accidents from occurring if they were taught moral ethics. Moral ethics and moral theory are philosophies that help establish society’s way of deeming what is ideal and acceptable from something atrocious and wrong. Through learning moral ethics, student of the engineering program would be able to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong.

Tsunami is not just a single giant wave, it may even consist of ten or more waves which is then termed as: “Tsunami Wave Train” . Tsunami possesses kinetic energy and a mass of water which can cause devastation through kineticism and flooding. There is an international tsunami warning system and certain regional tsunami warning systems are also in placed.

As of lately, there have been many natural disasters to hit around the world, affecting many lives. Although there has been overall a struggle to aid everyone impacted in these recent events, one person has a different mindset on how the citizens will get through this. Author Juan Guisti-Cordero published “In Puerto Rico, we invented resilience”, and goes on to give his opinion on the authorities, and how they are not contributing to lend any sort of help. He also mentions that the country will instead heal without the aid of anyone outside of Puerto Rico. Cordero starts off by immediately delivering emotional appeals, then goes on to state some of the reasonable facts surrounding the recent Hurricane Maria. He then goes back to conclude the opinion piecereverting back to use of pathos, delivering a sense of both emotional and logical appeals.

As well all understand an earthquake are when tectonic plates move against each other which causes an enormous disturbance. These natural disasters are absolutely catastrophic they cause more than 10,000 deaths a year,

Throughout history natural disasters have terrorised mankind. The problem with natural disasters is humans cannot control them, they can create preventative measures and usually can find where the disaster is going to happen but that is the extent of human's ability to control them. When creating preventative measures there is always a budget in mind that keeps everything from being foolproof, which makes large scale disasters sometimes make those preventive measures not enough to completely stop them but only helps reduce cleanup time. In certain cases like large quantities of rain that cause flooding the flood waters are directed towards dams that can hold a certain amount of water before the dam breaks, at max capacity the dam must be opened in some cases causing more flooding downstream causing for a longer cleanup time. In Nick Stockton's article “How Will Huston Handle the Deluge Hurricane Harvey” from August 28, of 2017 in the online version of Wired, he effectively uses logos to show how the project manager is handling rain control during this natural disaster while also showing how casualties and property damage were minimized.