Disasters—The Search for Their Causes
“WORST year in history,” headlined The Times of London regarding air crashes during 1985. The death toll of about 2,000 confirms that it was history’s worst year for aviation fatalities.
The worst fire ever in a British soccer stadium brought disaster to the English city of Bradford in May 1985. Flames raced through the wooden grandstand holding 3,000 spectators, leaving 55 dead and hundreds injured.
Elsewhere last year, natural catastrophes caused a tremendous loss of life. The September earthquake in Mexico City killed over 9,000 people. A few weeks later in Colombia, a huge mudslide resulting from the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano virtually wiped out the town of Armero, killing over 20,000.
Getting to Root Causes
Once a disaster strikes, a thorough investigation into its cause begins and may take weeks or months. Was it negligence, faulty machinery design, or even sabotage? Was adequate warning given? What were the safety procedures? Did someone shortcut them?
The claims of victims seeking compensation hinge on where the responsibility lies. In a gas leak at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, described as “the worst industrial accident in history,” over 1,700 were officially listed as killed, with some 200,000 injured. There are claims reportedly amounting to more than the chemical company’s Indian assets. With such interests at stake, establishing the cause and apportioning the blame is a painstaking business.
Today’s large aircraft carry two flight recorders, or black boxes as they are called. One details dozens of bits of information about the aircraft’s performance every second. The other is a cockpit voice recorder that contains the crew’s communications right up to the instant of the crash. These black boxes are so vital in helping to determine the cause of air accidents that enormous efforts are expended to recover them.
Investigators also question survivors in a search for clues to the cause of a crash. In Japan an off-duty flight attendant survived the world’s worst single-plane air disaster. She was able to provide experts with important details of the jet’s flight in their efforts to determine the cause of the tragedy that took 520 lives.
Valuable Lessons Learned
Once the cause is known, attention switches to preventing similar catastrophes. The soccer-stadium fire in Bradford was traced to rubbish under the stand, apparently ignited by a cigarette or a lighted match. As a result, officials formulated guidelines to improve safety at sports facilities.
At England’s Manchester airport, a fire aborted a jet airliner’s takeoff, killing 55 people. As a result, a critical eye was turned on evacuation procedures. Also, the fire-resistant furnishings used in aircraft cabins were carefully examined.
Thus, valuable lessons are learned from a thorough examination of what causes disasters. Negligence, poor workmanship, faulty design, and other factors show how the human element figures prominently in man-made calamities.
But what about natural disasters? What does the search into their causes reveal?
Predicting Natural Disasters
There has been considerable success in forecasting natural disasters such as may be caused by hurricanes. In the Caribbean, “the probability of early warning” has increased to “almost 100%” says one report. It adds: “Most forecasts can give 24 hours warning of the expected arrival time and the force of the storm.”
Advance warning of other types of disasters is much more difficult to achieve. But on one occasion, the Chinese achieved success in predicting an earthquake. By observing the peculiar behavior of animals in an area of Liaoning province, authorities were alerted to an impending catastrophe. They evacuated the city of Haicheng. Soon after, an earthquake struck, devastating 90 percent of the city. Because the warning was obeyed, there was minimal loss of life.
However, earthquake predictions are seldom precise enough for emergency evacuation. An example was the horrific death toll, officially put at 242,000, in the 1976 T’ang-shan quake in China. Scientists can locate many danger areas, but they cannot predict just when an earthquake will strike. Thus, while the 1985 earthquake in Mexico came as “no surprise to seismologists,” as one report said, it still caused enormous devastation.
Preventing Natural Disasters
Experts give little hope of preventing such disasters. In fact, according to the book Natural Disasters: Acts of God or Acts of Man?, “people are changing their environment to make it more prone to disasters, and to make themselves more vulnerable.”
As an example, in overcrowded areas of the world the earth is often stripped of vegetation, making droughts and floods more likely. In addition, there are countless examples of people living in disaster-prone areas who fail to act on official warnings.
Can anything be done to stop the natural forces that account for disasters? In connection with earthquakes, scientists noted that liquid pumped down a deep well caused a series of small tremors in the area. They hope by this means to release the tension of the earth’s crust and minimize earthquakes. But so far they have had little success. As the book Disaster! concludes: “Not enough is known at present about the safety of the procedure . . . to justify its use in densely populated areas.”
Other attempts to avert natural disasters have not proved to be any better. Consider what has been tried with hurricanes. For some 25 years, aircraft have flown into the eye of hurricanes to “seed” them with chemicals to try to dissipate the force of the storm. Yet hurricanes continue to bring death and devastation.
Attributed to the Supernatural?
Since predictions are uncertain and prevention not really possible, many blame superhuman powers outside the physical realm. The book Disaster! comments: “In a culture that has tried to make everything predictable, nature’s violence is the one variant, the one oddity, that no one can explain or prevent.”
It is little wonder, then, that many attribute natural disasters to God. But is this proper? Are disasters really “acts of God”?
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Reuters/Bettmann Newsphotos