FEATURE
not properly inspected before its departure from St. Petersburg, this being despite a previous captain’s complaints to the owner about the state of disrepair of the ship. Secondly, the accident had been predicted already due to the testing done on the Prestige’s sister ships and the findings from those tests. This meant that all prior warnings had been ignored before the ship left port.
All in all, this was a preventable accident and disaster could have been averted on a number of different occasions throughout this whole story.
PIPER ALPHA OIL RIG – 1988 - $3.4BN Next, we look at the Piper Alpha disaster which ended
up killing 167 men and costing $3.4bn in total. Out of all the accidents on this list this one could be the most easily preventable.
In 1988 the Piper Alpha oil rig exploded and burst into flames in the oil rich North Sea region. At the time this rig accounted for around 10% of the North Sea gas and oil production and it is now the worst offshore oil disaster ever.
In the aftermath of the disaster it was found that the cause was during routine maintenance carried out on 100 safety valves, a single safety valve was not replaced, meaning that this disaster was caused by a single human error.
CHERNOBYL – 1986 - $200BN When you think of man-made accidents on a large
scale, Chernobyl is the one that immediately comes to mind. This is the single most expensive disaster on record and that value is still rising, although the current figure is around $200bn so far. There were less than 100 deaths caused by the actual explosion however, there are some that say numbers of deaths due to the radiation poisoning and after effects could be close to 60,000 but these numbers are hard to pinpoint
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The events that led up to the Chernobyl disaster were in isolation not that disastrous but the combination of a number of factors led to the reactor exploding. The accident was as a result of a routine safety test, which was common during the Soviet era and was a simulation of an electrical outage, and the process that was followed to ensure this was up and running within the safety window. Whilst this was a common occurrence the events prior to the 26 April tests were not, there had been an unexpected 10-hour delay which lead to a team of unprepared workers being on shift for the test. This meant that when things did start to go wrong the team were unable to act in time which ultimately caused the reactor to become unstable and rupture.
Once the reactor had ruptured it was like a row of dominoes tumbling. The roof of the building was made from asphalt, which is highly combustible, making the fire impossible to contain. This had been installed despite it being contrary to regulations - a running theme throughout this article. The final nail in the coffin was the slow response time in evacuating the surrounding area once the reactor started spilling nuclear waste into the air, it took 36 hours to start the evacuation causing more lasting damage to those within the danger zone.
Overall, the accident or disaster was very much preventable from start to finish. The test should have been carried out with a team prepared for any issues, the building should have been built according to regulations and once the accident had happened the surrounding areas should have been immediately evacuated. Anyone of these things could have helped minimise the damage and overall cost.
Thankfully, lessons have been learnt from these accidents so that future incidents can be minimised and dealt with effectively.
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