Disasters happen suddenly, seemingly without warning. In a disaster, order gives way to chaos. On July 6 two disasters occurred practically in our own back yard and in retrospect they may have been avoidable. In the early hours of Saturday, July 6 a train carrying 72 oil tanker cars rolled unmanned down 11 km of track derailing in the idyllic Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic. The ensuing fireball is believed to have killed 50, many of whom were still enjoying their Friday night celebrations at a popular local bar. Later that day three teens died after a Boeing 777 flying from Seoul, South Korea crash landed at San Francisco International Airport. In both cases routine transportation went suddenly and catastrophically wrong.
It is events like these which remind us why we get our iron rings. Like many professionals we have a responsibility to the people who are affected by our work. The question being asked now is the natural one; if we were to travel back in time, could these disasters have been prevented? Is there potential for new rules that could keep this type of disaster from ever happening again?
Blame for the runaway train is now being directed towards the engineer who was in charge. In the late evening of July 5 he parked the train in Nantes, the town neighbouring Lac-Mégantic. A fire at 12:15 a.m., approximately 40 minutes after the train’s engineer had gone to a local hotel to sleep, may have caused the power systems on the train to be turned off. This would also stop the compressors which are responsible for maintaining the required pressure in the air brakes. A gradual pressure decrease from the 125-140 psi of an engaged air brake to around 70-90 psi at which the brakes release may explain why it wasn’t until 1:30 in the morning that the train began to roll towards Lac-Mégantic. It is common practice in this situation to apply hand brakes on individual cars. The train engineer claims to have set 11 hand brakes to hold the train before leaving, a statement which his company is now publicly disputing. Although the black box has been recovered, the extent of damage caused by the intense flames after the train’s derailment means it will be some time before facts replace speculation.
One potential solution being proposed by Edward Burkhardt, president and CEO of Rail World Inc., the American parent company of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), the railway at the center of the Lac-Mégantic disaster, is to stop the practice of leaving trains unmanned. This means they will require someone to be on the train at all times, including when it is waiting overnight for a new crew. Burkhardt also defended the company practice of running most trains with only a single person crew.
Tighter regulations will undoubtedly result from this disaster, as well as a more somber look at the state of railway transportation in this country. Of particular interest is the fact that, according to the Globe and Mail, in June of this year a tanker wagon spilled 13 000 liters of diesel near Lac-Mégantic. Was the rail track itself improperly designed? Should there even have been a railway track so close to the historic downtown of this small town? Should regulations for train track proximity to urban populations be reconsidered?
The human side of this disaster is especially horrific. Even several days after the derailment and subsequent explosions the site was too hot for proper investigation. As time passed the list of missing was whittled down to 50 presumed dead. In this town of only 6000 people that number is felt throughout. Remains being removed from the site are unrecognizable and police were forced to ask family members for combs and other personal items that might allow DNA identification of the deceased. Genevieve Guilbault, spokesperson for the Quebec coroner’s office, admits that due to the intensity of the explosion some of the bodies may never be found. Many of the dead were likely celebrating the beginning of the weekend at Musi-Café, a local pub which hosted live music. On the day of the derailment there was a birthday party in progress. Some of the attendees were parents whose children were away from the disaster site with babysitters or grandparents.
In addition to the horrific loss of life, this disaster will likely pique already heated political debates around the oil sands. The majority of the tank cars held crude oil. Currently transportation by train is considered preferable to pipelines for crude oil transportation from places like the Alberta oil sands.
Now let us look at the second disaster that occurred on July 6, the crash of Flight 214 from South Korea to San Francisco. The plane crashed into the sea wall while landing after 10 hours and 23 minutes in the air without incident. Shortly after coming to a rest on the tarmac a visible fireball destroyed the top of the aircraft. Preliminary analysis seems to suggest that airspeed was to blame for the crash landing, an article on the website of tech magazine Wired notes that the plane was approximately 35 miles per hour below the targeted landing speed of 157 miles per hour. The fact that the pilots did not notice this substantial descent below the targeted airspeed is highly unusual given that all the important systems for flying the plane seemed to be completely operational. The plane crash may be the product of pilot error after a long exhausting flight. Wired points to the fact that the pilot flying the plane at the time was just finishing his transition training to a Boeing 777 from an Airbus A320. The two airplanes have different set ups for manual flight, which would be in use when landing and may have caused confusion.
After the disaster Deborah Hersman, Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board remarked that safety features built into the planes design worked as desired. For example, landing gear snapped off on impact, a design intended to decrease chances of puncturing the fuel tanks on the wings possibly saving lives.
Of the three deaths from the Asiana Airlines flight all might have been preventable even after the crash landing. With flames breaking out both inside the cabin and outside the plane first responders’ first priority was to stop the flames and create a safe path for survivors. For several victims, including three flight attendants, who landed on the tarmac after the tail was ripped off, this meant they were also sprayed with the white fire retardant foam rendering them less visible. A 16 year old girl was killed by a fire truck. Her friend, who is also thought to have been near the tail, was not found or assessed by emergency workers until at least 20 minutes after the crash.
As with the train disaster in Quebec there are high hopes that safety in commercial aviation will be improved by the knowledge gained from this disaster. Although the definitive facts of the crash will not be known until a report is released in a projected 12 to 18 months, there is speculation it will look at increasing pilot complacency from overly automated cockpits as well as effective emergency response on the ground.
Although fiery, devastating and terrifying when something goes wrong, both trains and planes continue to have better safety records than the average highway. Because of high levels of regulation, insistence on impeccably good design, rigorous testing and frequent maintenance these industries continue to be relatively safe. However, we must be cognizant in our designs of the worst case scenarios and how they can be prevented from happening. In both these cases there were critical errors made where identification and fixing of the problem was possible before loss of life occurred. Noticing the problem before it leads to disaster, is what being a good engineer is all about.
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