5 Historical Disasters Predicted by People Nobody Believed
#2. The RMS Titanic
There is something particularly tragic about disasters that could be avoided. Not the accidents that occur suddenly, but the ones in which a person rose, cited the danger, and declared that this was going to turn out badly, and was ignored.
There are numerous moments in history.
Here, I am not talking about someone who has predicted the danger by magic. Here I am talking about the engineers and scientists who raised concerns over defective equipment, who have predicted disastrous failures.
They had the data. They knew the risks. They spoke up. But nobody listend them and ended up in disaster, killing people.
1. The Space Shuttle Challenger
On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger was launched, and the launch was witnessed by millions of Americans.
It was a special flight because it carried Christa McAuliffe.
She was a teacher who was chosen to be the first civilian in space.
Lucky, right? No.
Exactly after 73 seconds, Challenger took off, and it exploded. There were 7 crewmen, including Christia. All of them died in that explosion.
This tragedy shocked the country. Yet it did not astonish one particular man, Roger Boisjoly.
Boisjoly was a mechanical engineer at Morton Thiokol. This company produced the solid rocket boosters of the shuttle.
Although it was only in the months prior to the launch that Boisjoly had contended that cold weather would most likely cause the failure of important O-rings and consequently, the entire vessel.
The O-rings are rubber seals that would not allow hot pressurized gas to escape the rocket boosters.
But Freading temperatures in Florida during the day of the launch led engineers to express concern regarding the plastic O-rings that closed up the rocket boosters on the ship.
Overnight temperatures had fallen to 36°F (2°C) at least, well below the operating temperature of the O-rings.
Boisjoly and other Morton Thiokol engineers had a conference call with NASA officials the night before the launch. They advised the postponement of the launch.
The engineers were precise: the cold would make the O-rings stiff, and the seal would be weakened. Hot gas would escape.
But NASA managers pushed back.
This was not the first time they had gone out in cold weather. The schedule was tight. It was political pressure; the launch itself had not happened several times. The worries of the engineers were overridden.
According to the post explosion investigation, both Jesse Moore, NASA Associate Administrator of Space Flight, and Gene Thomas, Launch Director, had no idea of the concerns.
The O-ring was the one that failed, just as Boisjoly predicted. Hot gas spurted out and burned the external fuel tank. Challenger disintegrated at 48,000 feet.
Boisjoly used to live the rest of his life with the disaster.
He has given evidence to the Rogers Commission that investigated the accident, become an active promoter of engineering ethics, and warned of the risks of overlooking expert warnings.
2. The RMS Titanic
We all have heard about the famous ship, TITANIC. But most of us don’t know that the Titanic was warned several times.
The Titanic was a technical wonder that symbolized the best in human technology.
But it crashed into an iceberg on 14 April 1912.
The fact that not many people know is that the Titanic had several ice alerts during the day on 14th April.
The U.S. Hydrographic Office had already reported on the ice in the route area several days earlier. A report of ice was made on a few days at the location of the Titanic catastrophe prior to April 14 in the office’s Daily Memorandum.
The Titanic was warned of a field of icebergs ahead of it by the ship Mesaba to a certain degree. The wireless operator received the message and was bombarded with personal messages from passengers who wanted to send a telegram. He did not know the significance of a great field of icebergs, and so he neglected it until he had completed his other missions.
In the meantime, Captain Edward Smith continued on with the ship at the speed of 22.5 knots, it’s almost full speed in spite of the warnings of ice.
This was primarily done to enhance the image because the Atlantic liners were known to be fast and time-sensitive. Ships went at full speed and ignored the warnings taken as guidance.
The Hydrographer later wrote.
It is a sad and wonderful coincidence that the sinking of the Titanic was occasioned by an iceberg, the report of which she had sent by radio. Had she hearkened to the solitary warning which she sent, she might have saved herself.
The lookouts in the crow’s-nest had no binoculars either; they had been packed away in a cabinet, and the officer who had the key had been changed before the voyage and had forgotten to hand them over.
The Titanic was at the full blast of its speed, going through an ice field without any proper lookout gear and with several special warnings that there were icebergs in its course.
There were more than 1,500 deaths in the frozen North Atlantic, all due to the fact that the warnings were taken as recommendations, and speed was considered a priority over safety.
3. Chornobyl Nuclear Disaster
This is also one of the well known disaster in human history.
In the Chornobyl Nuclear disaster, in April 1986, reactor 4 erupted and sending massive amount of radiation across the rest of the europe. Approx 30 people died immediately, And other had to go through radition related illness.
This incident is usually traced to operator error, Yes opreators did make errors. But there’s something more disturbing.
Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the KGB, had expressed concerns about the Chornobyl nuclear plant seven years before the disaster in 1979. The construction may have contained severe defects that could result in failures and accidents. Yes, it’s true. It was predicted.
This was by design, and the RBMK reactor was unsafe. Western reactors are stable even when operating at low power levels, unlike this one, which had a positive void coefficient.
When cooling water was changed to steam, the reaction increased in speed but was not decelerated. This was a design flaw that was tolerated since the reactor was economical to construct and had the capability to make weapons-grade plutonium.
In fact, a serious reactor release happened in 1982 at Chornobyl that caused a secret leakage of radiation. However, the secrecy of the incident did not allow people to discuss the problem openly, analyze it, and learn the lesson.
The operators turned off several safety measures on April 26, 1986, during a safety test. Once the reactor had gotten out of control, they attempted to perform an emergency shutdown.
However, the control rods caused the response to become more active rather than less active in the early seconds due to a design flaw. During the test, operators ignored the warning indicators of issues.
The reactor went off in a minor nuclear explosion.
The secretive culture of the Soviet Union ensured that even following the explosion, the Soviet Ministry of Health concluded that the Soviet Union was not obliged to take any extraordinary actions such as evacuation of the citizens out of the city.
On the 26th of April, families in Pripyat continued with their day without any thought of the irradiation of their city.
The accident would have been avoided at several stages: the reactor would have been made in a safe manner, previous accidents would have been openly examined, operators would have received appropriate training, safety mechanisms would not have been turned off, and the warnings during the test would have been taken into consideration.
4. Yungay Avalanche
In 1962, an earthquake caused an avalanche that claimed the lives of about 4,000 individuals in Peru in the Ancash region.
The villages were poorly built to withstand any avalanches from the neighboring Mount Huascaran.
Two mountaineers, David Bernays and John Sawyer, had examined the mountain and the communities below after this disaster. They discovered that the town of Yungay was in grave danger and that another earthquake may trigger an even larger landslide.
They warned the government, and they also warned the residents.
The government’s response? Based on media hype, they ordered the two to renege on their story, or they would spend time in prison. They also instructed the frightened people of Yungay to go back to their homes and trust in God.
Anyone who was still not complying was sent to court on the grounds of disturbing the peace.
Eight years later, on May 31, 1970, an earthquake that occurred underwater, on the coast of Peru, caused a massive avalanche and landslides that swept thousands of people in the region of Ancash.
Ice, rocks, and snow that fell down from Mount Huascaran at more than 120 MPH covered the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca.
The avalanche was three-quarters of a mile in breadth.
It covered the whole town of Yungay with meters of rubble. About 25,000 people of Yungay were buried by the wave, and only a few people (350) managed to survive.
On the whole, the number of deaths in the area has been estimated to be 70,000.
Some of the survivors were a few hundred individuals who, being at the local cemetery on elevated grounds, had been watching a circus show.
They stood by as the town vanished away in a few seconds.
Bernays and Sawyer had anticipated it accurately. They had warned everybody who would listen. They were threatened with prison for telling the truth by the government.
70,000 people died.
5. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in NYC was a sweatshop in the real sense of the word.
It had locals who were mainly young immigrant women, many of whom were teenagers, who worked long hours in congested environments to make women’s blouses.
Violations of fire safety were evident. The stairwells and doors of the building were locked to enhance productivity and to bar union officials from access to and exit from the building, restricting movement. Employees were packed on the floors with blocked exits.
Pieces of fabric, very combustible. People were smoking even though they were at risk of fire.
The plant had been known to be engaged in safety violations. Workers complained. The organizers of the unions were concerned. The inspectors were aware of the problems.
Nothing changed. Workers’ safety was not a priority among the owners, as they valued productivity and avoidance of theft.
On March 25, 1911, a fire started on the 8th floor. It quickly spread into rags and wooden tables. Employees ran to the doors and discovered them chained.
Some broke through a door. Others were seen climbing down a fire escape, which collapsed under their weight. People jumped out of the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors, dropping to their deaths on the sidewalk below as crowds of horrified people looked on.
The number of workers who died was 146 in under 20 minutes.
Most were women aged 14–23. Some of them died because they were not in a position to flee through locked doors.
The catastrophe resulted in the introduction of new workplace safety regulations. However, those laws did not appear until 146 people were killed in a fire that many people had predicted would happen.
References;
https://www.ranker.com/list/disasters-that-could-have-been-prevented/melissa-sartore
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/poh-titanic-ice-report
https://www.ems1.com/leadership/articles/why-are-warnings-often-unheeded-6Wd8EEw9p4S0z5ju/
https://www.watchmojo.com/articles/10-people-who-tried-to-warn-us-about-terrible-disasters
https://www.cracked.com/article_23240_6-famous-disasters-you-didnt-know-people-predicted.html
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/chernobyl-early-warnings-to-the-aftermath
https://go2tutors.com/17-historical-disasters-caused-by-human-error/
https://larry-jones.medium.com/new-evidence-about-warnings-to-the-titanic-cac221c63a73
