 Can you believe it that this channel has now been running for seven years? That's pretty crazy to think. The channel starts in 2016, and as is a tradition, this time of year, I normally put out an omnibus of every video that's come out from the last 12 months. So without further ado, here we go for, I don't actually know how many hours this is gonna be because I haven't even put the video together yet before recording this, but it's probably gonna be over 15 hours, maybe even 20 hours, so have fun. And hopefully I'll see you for the next video. And hopefully next year will be year eight. Thanks for watching. A bridge being struck by a cargo vessel seems to be a story as old as time and a bit of a cliche, plainly difficult video subject. Although so far on this channel, I've mainly covered similar events in the USA. Today's disaster shows it can happen anywhere. It is the evening of the 5th of January, 1975, and four cars have plunged into the Derwent River. Within the blink of an eye, the occupants of the vehicles became the victims of a sudden and catastrophic structural collapse. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. Today we're looking at the Tasman Bridge Disaster. We begin our story in the city of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia in the 1940s. The city is one of the most populous regions on the Australian island state of Tasmania. Hobart straddles the estuary of the river Derwent, where the city extends along both sides. Neither to say this requires methods to cross from one side to the other. Much like other cities built along the river, ferry services and bridges supply the demand to travel from either the east or west of the city. The suburb of Clarence in the eastern side of the Derwent had developed at a much lower pace than the western city and its suburbs. Originally, the city had a bridge built in 1830, roughly 20 kilometers upstream from the eastern shore's suburbs. This led to a lopsided development of the city's major population centers. In 1942, Hobart and its suburbs had a population of 65,000 on the western shore and in comparison to Clarence on the east, they only had around 4,400. Because of this in 1943, the city gained a new crossing, a floating arch bridge with a lift span near the western shore. This would spark major population growth in the eastern suburbs of the city, which would triple between 1943 and 1964 from 4,400 to about 28,000. The rather limiting and not particularly permanent looking float bridge was looked to be replaced in the 1960s. This led to the Tasman Bridge, a four-lane span built next to its predecessor. Due to this bigger bridge, population on the east side exploded, yet again jumping from 28,000 to over 40,000 in just 10 years. However, eventually, the city would have to rely solely on its bridge as the local government funding for ferry services dried up, forcing commuters onto the roads. By the early 1970s, as many as 25,000 cars crossed over the Tasman Bridge every day, making the crossing essential for the east side's population. Now let's take a look at the specs of the Tasman Bridge. With the float bridge being a bit long in the tooth, the new Tasman Bridge was conceived to provide a 24-hour connection, not requiring traffic to stop like it did for the original lift section to open for shipping. The seven million pound bridge consisted of 21 spans supported by 10 foot wide reinforced concrete columns with a 350 foot wide navigational span between pier numbers 14 and 15. This meant shipping was intended to pass closer to the eastern bank of the river. To support the piers, piles were driven into the riverbed. One set under pier seven was the deepest in Australia. The bridge measured at 4,650 feet with a waterway width of 3,500 feet. The bridge deck was 57 feet wide, which accommodates four lanes of traffic and two walkways. Construction ran from April 1960 to December 1964, with the first ship passing under the construction in August 1964. Although the bridge actually had its official opening on Thursday, the 18th of March, 1965, the bridge would serve the city well for 10 years, allowing the eastern side to grow into a larger and larger suburban area. The bridge became essential in stitching the two sections of the city together, but just under 10 years after its official opening, a section of the bridge would fall, the disaster. The Harbor at Hobart is one of the deepest in the world, and this influenced the Tasman Bridge's design with its navigational span. This, needless to say, meant that shipping was a common sight along the Derwent River. Both commercial shipping and cruise ships make their way under the bridge. One such vessel was the Lake Illawarra, a bulk carrier. She weighed in at 7,274 gross registered tons and 10,380 tons dead weight, measuring in with a length of 139 meters, or 458 feet, with a beam of 18 meters or 59 feet. The handy-sized, classified vessel has a top speed of 12.5 knots, roughly 14 miles an hour, delivered by a single-prop steam turbine powered driveline. She was in her second decade of service in the 1970s, being launched in 1958, and was an Australian-built and operated vessel. She is a regular sight along the Derwent, and on the evening of the 5th of January, 1975, the vessel is navigating along the river towards the Tasman Bridge. This evening, her destination is upstream from the city of Hobart. The Rizdon Zinc Works refinery in Lutana, Tasmania. And she has a complement of 42 crew aboard. She is carrying 10,000 tons of zinc ore concentrate, which is probably pretty handy given her destination. In command this evening is 60-year-old Captain Boleslaw Pelk, with Robert Bank, age 45, on the helm, making steering adjustments under the captain's orders. The Lake Illawarra by 9 p.m. is roughly 1,300 meters, just over 1,400 yards from the Tasman Bridge. Captain Pelk, after seeing there was no traffic on the river, ordered full shipping speed from the engine room, which would bring the vessel up to roughly eight knots. Although picking up speed, the ship wasn't acting as it should. The Lake Illawarra started to move off course towards foul ground and shallow water. Pelk seeing this ordered a turn to starboard, but this didn't fix the problem. The ship was not in line with the bridge markers, which were there to guide ships through the opening. Bank received another order, steer due north, but the bail swung quickly, but it was not enough. Steer to 101, Pelk ordered. He was trying to line up the ship with the channel at the same time as trying to correct the swing. But this quite drastic adjustment swung the ship far to starboard. All of these movements were ordered whilst the ship was at full shipping speed. By now the distance to the bridge had almost halved. Stop engines ordered Pelk. Banks turned hard to port, but the Lake Illawarra continued to the bridge. At 300 meters, roughly 350 yards, Pelk ordered the engine room to put the engines full of stern. But still the Lake Illawarra advanced. Panic, Pelk ordered, double full of stern. Then dropped both anchors, quickly followed with triple full of stern. But it was too late. The ship was on a crash course to the bridge. With the port anchor dropped and the engines of stern, the bow turned starboard. The ship slapped into the bridge. Meanwhile, Captain Pelk and Banks had thought they had, although having hit the bridge, not hit it too hard. Banks even said, thank God it didn't hit hard. But the bridge's fate was sealed. The roadway above had cracked. The electrical wiring that was used to connect the two parts of Hobart was sparking in the evening sky. Soon enough the realization on the ship's bridge was that a collapse was imminent and would result in tons of concrete landing on the ship. 7,000 tons of roadway and concrete crashed onto the ship. The ship, with the impact of the bridge and now extra weight began to sink. She momentarily settled on the riverbed only to continue her descent as her weight of cargo pulled her down. Some crew started jumping overboard but disaster was not only aboard the Lake Illawarra but also on the Tasman Bridge. Darkness had consumed a crossing and four cars could be seen from the river's banks, headlight on, falling from the bridge into the water's all-consuming obscurity. Frank Manley and his family were making the crossing. As they went over the peak of the bridge Manley slowed to what he thought was a broken down car. His wife shouted, look, the bridge is gone. Manley slammed on the brakes of his Holden Monaro. The first two wheels went over the cliff edge that had now formed on the bridge. The car became beach teetering on the edge of darkness. In a bizarre stroke of luck, he and his family had narrowly avoided death but just look at how close he was. Murray Ling and his family managed to stop before the edge but was rear-ended pushing his car also onto the broken section. Luckily his old Holden station wagon two did not topple down to the river. As many of the sailors bobbed in the water one question hit them, what about the engine crew? These poor people had no warning issued to them. It would be later discovered that the engine room telegraph still read full of stern. Emergency response were swift. Many had seen the ship crash into the bridge from the shore. Some locals using small boats raced to the crash scene and recovered many of the ship's crew. By morning the full scale of the disaster became apparent. Multiple witnesses had reported up to 10 cars had gone off the bridge. The police in the morning would say we can only rely on reports about who had not arrived home by late night. Three unsupported spans and 127 meter section of roadway had disappeared under the collapse. Although disastrous, luckily due to the time of day and the fact that it was a Sunday, more vehicles were not involved. Over the coming days, police divers located and recovered four vehicles as well as undertaking a comprehensive survey of the wreck of the Lake Illawarra on the 13th of January. In total, 12 had died, seven aboard the ship and five from the cars. The city was split in two and with 12 dead and millions of dollars of damage caused a big question hovered over the disaster. And that was how and why. The investigation. Witnesses and survivors were painstakingly questioned and their stories corroborated. Engineers were asked for opinion on the bridge's design. The piers either side of the main shipping channel had been designed to withstand a blow from a 20,000 ton ship traveling at nine knots but none of the piers on the bridge had been strengthened to withstand a blow from a passing ship. It would make the cost of such a bridge prohibitive, engineers said. A maritime court of inquiry started on the 30th of January, 1975 and investigated the collision. It would slam the crew, but mainly Captain Pelk. They found that the ship went out of control about two ship lengths or roughly 300 meters, just over 300 yards from the bridge. Due to a number of turns, the ship was going too slow and had lost its steerage way. The inquiry found Pelk at fault and suspended his license for six months. He was quoted as saying, I'm eager to get back to the sea. I've been at sea for 40 years and it has always been a cruel sea. No matter what people say, it's a tough profession. But this wasn't going to be the case. A and L, the ship's operator, quietly retired Pelk in November, 1975. Aftermath. After salvage being ruled out, the ship would stay sunk just below the bridge, although parts would be cut away for repair works on the bridge later on. The city would experience a drastic change in the way its suburbs experienced the region, with extended journey times and desperate for the little ferry services that ran across the river. The eastern suburbs became more independent post disaster as the detour using the older bridge to the north added several hours to a round trip. In March, 1975, a joint Tasman Bridge Restoration Commission was appointed to rebuild the Tasman Bridge. In October, plans began. It would not only restore the crossing but also add an additional lane. The two halves of the city would be reunited with a temporary bridge opened a year after the disaster. But Hobart would have to wait in total two years to see the Tasman Bridge rebuilt being completed in October, 1977. Well, one big implementation, post disaster was the use of pilots. Although not foolproof, the sunshine skyway would have a lot to say about that. It is definitely an improvement in safety. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share like licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John in a currently wet and miserable corner of Southern London, UK. I'd like to thank my patrons and YouTube members for your financial support. If you're enjoying this outro song, you can check it out on my second channel, made by John. I also have Instagram, Twitter and Spotify if you fancy checking out more of my content. And all that's left to say is Mr. Music, play us out please. It is a cold January evening and some 80,000 people have just watched a nail biting football match. For nearly 88 minutes, not much has happened until an exciting goal, then an equalising goal in the last few minutes of play. The game is an old firm fixture, where Glasgow's two biggest teams face off. As such, it's always well attended and right to the end of the season. The game is an old firm fixture where Glasgow's two biggest teams face off. It's always well attended and rivalries between the two groups, or fans runs high. After the game, thousands look to make their way home. Some walk, others catch a bus, but a popular way home is via the Glasgow subway. To get to Copeland Road Station, football fans need to negotiate stairway 13. As the crowd is funneled down the stairway, a crush begins. Many are shuffled along by the way to the bodies. This is a common occurrence, but in the push, someone loses their footing, then another and another. This triggers a chain reaction as more and more people join the top of the stairway. An avalanche of bodies tumbled down the stairs. Many were trapped and couldn't move. When all is finished, 66 lives would be lost. Welcome to Plain and Difficult. My name is John, and today we're looking at the 1971 Ibrox disaster. Background. Today our story starts in Glasgow, Scotland, but more specifically the suburb of Ibrox, located south of River Clyde, which is around here on a map. The suburb's name is derived from Scottish Gaelic, which roughly means Badger Den. Glasgow's history and by extension, Ibrox's goes way back to before the sixth century, but we will fast forward to the 1800s for today's video at least. The Rangers football team in the late 1800s was ever increasingly in need of a permanent purpose built home. This resulted in the first Ibrox Park completed in 1887, but it proved over the following 10 years to be nothing but a headache for the club. It was not the right size for the games the club wanted to host, and as such, a new ground was planned. This would be the current day stadium site. Opened in 1899, it boasted a capacity of pretty much as many people as you can squeeze inside. This would lead to the first of the park's major disasters, just three years after opening in 1902, where a wooden terrace would collapse, killing 25. But we won't dwell on this too much, as it's likely to be covered in another future video. However, this disaster resulted in the removal of the wooden terraces on the site of the east and west stands. These were later replaced by earthen mounds. By 1910, the capacity was officially at 63,000, and Scotland had found itself the home for three of the world's largest football grounds at the time. The park would continue to see redesigns and developments over its lifetime. The banking of the terraces increased now to get out of these terraces staircases were provided. These were steep and ran down the back of the terrace. You can see the western one here in this picture. There was also an eastern one around about here, which was called Stairway 13, but we will come back to this in a bit. Now in 1939, the stadium would see a pretty big crowd of nearly 130,000 people, one the largest in British history in a football stadium. Post-war, the stadium would receive floodlighting and coverings for the north and east terraces, which leads us to the 1960s. Stairway 13. The 1960s would be a deadly time for the park. The stadium had issues with herding fans off the site safely. You see Copeland Road subway station was right near the corner of the east stand. As such, it was a popular method of leaving the area post-match. The subway was pretty handy, running in a circle line throughout the city. You could in theory jump on any train regardless of the direction and eventually reach your destination. The subway also only had 15 stations after all. As such, heading for Copeland Road was a pretty popular way to get home. Because of this, the nearest exit to the station was number 13 and its associated stairway, which gained a name, quite understandably, Stairway 13. After the final whistle blew, crowds would pour down the long and steep sets of stairs to exit 13. Lead us to say this can be a recipe for disaster. If you've ever been in a big enough crowd before, it doesn't take much to get separated from the group or even get pushed in the wrong direction. In 1963, concerns were raised over a number of incidents of overcrowding on Stairway 13. This was sparked off when, on the 16th of September 1961, two people were killed in a crush. The club installed safety measures, but two more crushes in 1967 and 1969 injured 8 and 26 people respectively. However, the club hadn't consulted any professional firms as to what safety precautions should have been taken. But this would just be the prelude to one of the worst accidents in British football history in the early 1970s. The Disaster. It is the afternoon of the 2nd of January 1971 and some 80,000 people have piled into Ibrox Park to watch a favourite New Year's tradition, an old firm match. The Rangers the Celtic game kicks off and for the most part, on this bitterly cold day with thick freezing fog, is rather uneventful. However, at the last minute, Celtic winger Jimmy Johnstone scored a seemingly winning goal. Looking like the match was lost, Rangers fans started to leave Ibrox. Many hoped to quickly get on the subway before the rest of the crowds piled out after the final whistle blow. But just seconds later in injury time, Rangers player Colin Stein scored, equalising the game. With the final whistle now blown, the numbers leaving the stadium would increase significantly. From the East Stand, the stairway 13 was the obvious choice of egress, as hundreds crowded the stairway the usual crush developed. A couple of spectators lost their footing on the steps. Many fell, but numbers joining the staircase continued. This caused a cascade effect of more and more people falling over. One would later say, as we went down the stairs, what was apparent was that as we went down, our angle slowly progressed towards the horizontal and I was quickly aware that we were falling. People who had fallen over on the lower stairs had more people fall on top of them, creating a crush several people deep. More and more people unaware of the crush below made their way onto the top of the stairway, adding to the weight of those who had lost their footing. As the weight mounted up on the fallen bodies, those underneath could not breathe. This created a condition called compressive asphyxia. This is a mechanical condition where expansion of the lungs is prevented by compressing the torso. This in turn restricts breathing and thus causes death. Within just a few minutes, the pile of human bodies was up to six feet deep in some places. The victims couldn't escape due to the weight. Shouts came out from the crowd to stop pushing, but the flow of people was like an unstoppable wave. Eventually the flow was stemmed and as people at the top of the crowd managed to free themselves, more and more of the trapped were also freed. Due to the crush, many of the injuries were related to restricted blood flow, internal bleeding and severe bruising from the sheer weight placed on their bodies. However, these would be considered the lucky ones. After some 45 minutes, the cries for help have been dulled. You see, because of the compressive nature of the disaster, some victims have been made unconscious and many others had little air to shout out. Eventually first responders including ambulance workers and the police managed to free some of the more trapped victims, taking them and laying them out on the pitch for medical care. Several lives were saved that evening on the picture eyebrows, but for 66 this would not be the case. All of the victims were under the age of 50, half were under the age of 20. In addition to the deaths, there were over 200 injured. The disaster was over with just a few hours after it had begun, but it had raised the question, how could this have happened? Just a few weeks after the disaster, starting on the 15th of February 1971, a fatal accident inquiry was held to investigate and officially determine the circumstances of the 66 deaths. The inquiry found some pretty worrying things about safety at Ibrox Park. The inquiry found that there was a grossly excessive crowd pressure present that lifted many victims off their feet, not allowing them the chance to select which of the seven lanes on the stairway to take. It was found that all on the stairway were travelling in the same direction, which stopped rumours of the crush being caused by fans going back into the stadium after the first goal. I also found that the regulation of crowds fell squarely at the feet of Rangers FC, due to Ibrox Park being private property. It was also found that the club's directors had not considered the safety of the park's stairways, which is pretty worrying due to the number of fatal and near fatal crushes on the site during the 1960s. Although damning of the club, the inquiry praised the first responders and the police, who acted as quickly as possible to try and rescue many of the injured. Another inquiry by Lord Wheatley was set to explore the ways to improve safety across the industry, more deeply, than the fatal accident inquiry could have done in its seven days of hearing evidence. Wheatley were published as findings on the 3rd of May 1972, which would lead to legislation in the form of the Safety of Sports Grounds Act of 1975, which designated any sports ground with accommodation for more than 10,000 spectators or more than 5,000 spectators for grounds hosting Premier League and English Football League matches, as requiring a safety certificate to admit spectators. A civil damages trial was raised at Glasgow Sheriff's Court in May 1974 by the widow of one of the Ibrox victims. The ruling, like the fatal accident inquiry, was damning for the football club, saying the accident was due to the fault and negligence of the defenders, Rangers FC. The site was extensively remodeled in the 1970s to encompass an all-seating capacity of 44,000, which would eventually be increased to 50,000. You see, reducing the number of occupants and making the site all-seating drastically helps with crowd management. But although the improvements were enacted, it would prove not to be the end of football match disasters in the UK. But this will probably be a story for another video. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share like licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently windy corner of southern London, UK. I'd like to thank my Patreons and my YouTube members for your financial support, as well as all of you viewers for tuning in every week. If you want to see random photographs, I have Instagram and I also have Twitter, which is where I normally put up my hints for future videos. If you like this outro song that's playing right now, then feel free to go over to my second channel made by John, where you can watch the video in full. And all that's left to say is Mr. Music, play us out please. It is March 1981, and construction workers are preparing to pour the concrete full the roof of the new apartment block. Most of the concrete framework has already been completed during the pour, however, the newly built structure would fail catastrophically, killing 11 and injuring over 20 more. Today's video, we're back in Florida to what seems to be a state tradition, the collapse of a concrete structure. My name is John, welcome to Plainly Difficult, and this is my video on the Harbour Key Condominium Collapse. Background. Our story starts in the land of the Florida man, officially known as the US state of Florida, but today more specifically, Cocoa Beach, a small coastal town which is around here on a map. The area's economy was closely linked to NASA's operation from the nearby Kennedy Space Center, in which many locals were employed either directly or via third party companies. As such, when the Apollo program was shelved in 1975, the local economy crashed. Unemployment went to 14%, but the local jobs market would improve after the announcement of the Space Shuttle program just a few years later. This would bring new people to Cocoa Beach, and as such, new housing was needed. Cocoa Beach was undergoing a bit of a building boom in the 1980s, with new condos being built along State Road A1A. Part of this demand would be plugged with plans to build a new five-storey concrete-framed set of apartment blocks. The developer was to be Milwaukee-based town Realty. They had built other buildings in the area, and to help, they contracted out a local firm for construction work called Univel Inc. The building plan. The Cocoa Beach apartment blocks were planned to be made up of five stories and were to be 242 feet long and 58 feet wide. The structure would rely on reinforced concrete and framed with multiple columns of 10 by 18 inches wide with narrow ones of 10 by 12 inches at the ends of the building. The floor slabs were to be 8 inches thick, although slightly thinner for the balcony sections. However, I should point out that state regulations were actually a requirement of 11 inches. Both the slabs and the columns were reinforced with ATSM 60-grade steel. To hold the steels in place during concrete pouring, things called chairs were used. These ensured that the vital reinforcement is at the correct depth. You see, if it's not in the right place, the concrete section can bend as the load is spread unevenly. The facade walls of the building were made of non-structural masonry. Construction works began in 1980 with preparation of the site and building the blocks foundations. The structure itself would begin to be built in February 1981 when the ground floor formwork was begun. The schedule for frame construction was to add around a floor a week and this would involve starting at the south half of each particular floor slab cast on a Tuesday. Replacement of steel bars in the north half of the slab and casting of the columns over the south half were carried out the next day. On Thursday, the columns in the south half were stripped and then the north half of the slab was cast and the forms below the south half of the slab were lowered. On Friday, the forms in the south half were replaced by reshaws and flown to the same location in the story directly above and the columns over the north half were cast. The following Monday, the columns in the north half were stripped, the steel bars in the south half of the slab above were placed and the flying forms below the north half were lowered. Now all of that was pretty much a bit of a mouthful. But although quick, soon enough after the first floors were added workers started to notice some worrying indicators of a disaster ahead. Several workers raised concerns that cracks had started to show on some of the concrete work. After each level's flying form was removed cracks could be seen on the slab at the mid span and where the columns met the floor. A foreman circled the cracks with a crayon and called out the structural engineer on the 10th of March 1981. By now the second and third floors were in place. The suggestion from the engineer was to place more reinforcing bars in the mid spans. Joins between the columns and the floor slabs were described by some workers as having a honeycomb or spider's web cracked face. Slabs around the north and south end second floor apartments had deflected almost immediately after their forms were removed. Deflection is a type of bending or sagging of a concrete slab. Worrying little quirk was found during the construction on the fourth floor. Workers discovered on the east side near the lift tower a puddle of water. Well what does a puddle of water have to do with anything you might ask? Well this was hinting at the building becoming uneven. The depression was refinished with a concrete skim but bizarrely the water began to reappear. Multiple issues were highlighted by workers on almost every part of the construction. Parts of the structure had its rebar exposed after form removal which needed to say exposes the structure to corrosion and this was due to poorly poured concrete. Concrete quality was also very poor with a low water content meaning it dried out too quickly for it to be properly finished. The project received its concrete from two sources. The first was from a ready-made supplier. This accounted for roughly one third of the development. The other was from an onsite batch plant. Although issues were raised construction continued all the way to the top floor. This was because nothing had failed so far. Well, until it would. The disaster. The time had come to start pouring the Cocoa Beach Condominiums roof. Workers began their shift on the 27th of March 1981 and I'm sure no one expected they would end up. The building at this point had in the south end the exterior walls for the first two stories and in the north end construction of masonry walls was completed in the first three stories. Each floor had some level of activity on it with various stages of the project being undertaken. On the roof the concrete was being placed around column H. As the poor had continued throughout the day some workers noticed some trembling throughout the building. At roughly 2.45pm a work on the fifth floor heard a popping sound. At roughly 3pm around the centre of the building at the fifth floor suddenly gave way in what would be described as one long slide with one thump. Within seconds the entire structure plummeted into the ground with massive piles of concrete and rebar. Anyone nearby swamped to where the building was to try and find and save any workers. These people were just a few minutes before having a normal day at work. Due to the area undergoing a building boom many workers on other projects helped with the rescue work. Some even turned up with heavy equipment. Emergency responders and air force members reached the site and helped with the rescue efforts. Floor slabs were cut away into approximately 20 feet square pieces by air hammers and removed by mobile cranes. The work continued over the weekend as heavy equipment removed the concrete and other debris. It would only be Sunday that workers got down to the foundation where the final two bodies were removed. In total 11 were killed in the collapse with 27 more injured. Now as with all of these types of incidents the question of how and why must be asked and this would lead to an investigation. The investigation. The National Bureau of Standards would head up the investigation into the collapse. Investigators would visit the site on March 28th and 30th 1981 just one day after the collapse followed up by a second visit that was made on the 7th to 8th of April. Investigators found that the slabs broke away from the columns at the slab column interface as well as a number of vertical reinforcements bent severely. Hinting would have been damaged during fabrication. A number of conflicting eyewitness statements from the workers on site raised questions about how the building was being reshalled. You see reassuring is a vital part of concrete building construction. After the forms are removed, when the newly poured concrete is set enough reshores are added to support the structure as a concrete hardens. This is because even though it looks solid, concrete gets fully set over a period of time in which it needs extra support. This is where the reshores are vital as if they are removed too early then the concrete hasn't gotten strong enough to support itself and more importantly the weight put on top of it. This issue can be even more dramatic if the concrete is of poor quality. The investigation would not just involve on site visits but also forensic examination of the whole project from design to concrete mix. They found the concrete was of poor quality especially around the samples taken from the 5th floor which was discovered to be less than 85% of the required 4000 psi of compressive strength. After all that was said and done the investigators released its report and it was really damning of the whole project. They found that the placements reinforcing bars in the concrete slabs were inconsistently placed which violated the ACI code requirement for clear spacing. This inconsistency created a congestion that prevented flow of concrete into the space between the reinforcement bars which in turn caused issues with the bonding of the concrete to the rebar. The concrete slabs were only 8 inches thick instead of the required 11 inches to satisfy the American Concrete Institute's building code minimum. During construction lower individual chairs for supporting the top layer reinforcement bars were used reducing the effective shear capabilities of the slabs. This caused the structural integrity of the building to be severely reduced and the addition of extra weight during the pour of the roof was the straw that broke the weakened concrete camels back. The damning report helped recharging two engineers an architect and the two contractors with negligence, misconduct and failing to conform to state and local building laws. Both engineers gave up their license to practice engineering in the state of Florida. Unival, one of the contractors folded almost immediately under the financial strain and the developer contractor Town Realty out of Milwaukee agreed to a settlement out of court to avoid litigation. We have continued to develop properties to this day even including several more in Cocoa Beach. The disaster helped the state show up its enforcement of construction projects but it wouldn't fix it completely as well we know from a number of recent collapses that nothing is foolproof. Strangely enough one of which also involved a construction project that all started in the 1980s and this came to light very recently and was called Champlain Towers Now a number of you have noticed that I haven't been doing disaster scales at the end of my videos anymore. Well this is because the ratings were getting a little bit erratic. So I'm launching a new scale called the Balls Rating and it will have 5 set ratings. The first is not great. After all the story has found its way onto the plain difficult channel. The second is bad day at the office. Next is Oh Balls People will remember this. The fourth is outright negligent and the fifth and final rating is dumpster fire. This week's video will be rated outright negligent. This is a plain difficult production. All videos are produced by me John in the currently wet and windy corner of southeast London UK. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. I like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the viewers for tuning in every week. I have a second channel which is mainly for my music so feel free if you want to check that out it's called May by John and I also have Instagram and Twitter where I post up random photos. And all what's left to say is Mr Music play us out please. It is a March morning and residents in the East Harlem area of Manhattan, New York are going about their normal business. Trains passed East from 16 and 117th street on the Metro North Railroad. To anyone in the buildings that overlook Park Avenue not much out of the ordinary can be seen. Until approximately 9.30 in the morning and an explosion consumes two multi-use buildings. In a blink of an eye the calm activity of the city is destroyed. Confusion and chaos in shoes. But what caused the explosion was it a terrorist attack industrial disaster freak accident. Well that's what we will find out in today's episode. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult Background Well I'm not going to go back too far as New York's history is rich and diverse but stretches back several hundred years. But I'll try and fill you in into what's relevant for our story. We'll go back to the late 1800s Victorian New York As a side note here do we call this period of American history Victorian? I'm guessing not. I suppose you'd call it by... The Grantian Period? Well all modern cities needed reliable facilities such as fresh water and sewage. Just asked the residents of London Soho 150 or so years ago there was a project to give New York a sewer system It actually started in 1848 and much like in London was spurred on by a number of deadly cholera outbreaks. But I digress In the early 1870s Park Avenue was dug up in a project to add reliable sewage to the area. Park Avenue by the way is around here on a New York map. A brick lined oval sewer was constructed roughly in 1873 It was 15 feet below the street and was 32 inches wide by 48 inches high. Just over 10 years later the area was dug up once again for the addition of services to the residents and Park Avenue. This was to hook up gas lines in 1887. An 8 inch wide cast iron gas pipe which was installed roughly around the same time a 12 inch cast iron fresh water line was also added. These were about 4 to 5 feet below the roadway and were separated by 2 inches apart from one another. Now it goes without saying that these amenities are somewhat difficult to maintain due to being buried several feet below ground. In the early 2000s the city started to get some odd reports of the pavement outside building 1646 Park Avenue sinking into the ground. These reports resulted in the road being patched up. In 2004 a report of a sewer undermining condition was made which would require further investigation. In 2006 it was discovered that the brick sewer had been breached between 116th and 117th East Street in the same area that the pavement issues had been reported. Due to the difficulties of repairing the city decided to monitor the situation. Three more reports of the pavement sinking were received by the New York Department of Environmental Protection and the New York Department of Transportation in 2007, 2009 and 2010. Needless to say this was a bit of a known issue for the pavement and road outside building 1644 and 1646. In 2011 the road portion of Park Avenue outside building 1644 and 1646 found itself dug up once again. There was a new building being constructed at 1642 and the four-story high residential building needed a new gas supply. This is where Consolidated Edison comes into our story. They are the company that are in charge of the utility supply in New York City. As such when 1642 needed to be hooked up to the gas main, Con Edison were there with the diggers. Usually when old cast-iron pipes are exposed they are replaced with a more modern HDPE type. The size of the gas pipe remained at eight inches wide. To get the gas from the main to the new building a two-inch diameter HDPE gas service line and a fusion welded plastic service were connected. Around the same time mains water and sewage were connected to the new building. Later on in 2011 the damaged sewer was inspected once again and was seen to not have to have continued to degrade at least that much. And thus Park Avenue had a new building. Some new gas lines tranquility and harmony. Well, if you believe that you are watching the wrong YouTube channel. The disaster. It is 9.06 in the morning of the 12th of March 2014 and Consolidated Edison's customer helpline is about to receive a phone call. Well, that's what it's there for after all. The call is from a resident in the building at 1652 Park Avenue and the phone call is to report the smell of natural gas. This took roughly six minutes to complete concluding with the advice to evacuate the building. The con Edison rep advised that someone will be there within 45 minutes or so. At 9.12 in the morning the emergency response team at Con Edison were informed of the reported leak. Several telephone conversations followed between the customer service rep the emergency department and the New York fire department. The last of the calls happened at 9.19 but in just 11 minutes disaster would strike. Meanwhile at 9 o'clock in the morning residents of building 1644 and 1646 were oblivious to the unfolding emergency. At roughly 9.30 buildings 1644 and 1646 exploded blowing out the brick facades of the structures and debris was thrown out into the road. Shortly after the two buildings collapsed into their own footprint the mixed residential and commercial spaces were now just a pile of flaming rubble. Almost immediately the first 9-1-1 calls came in and three minutes after the first fire buildings were on the scene. At roughly 9.39 in the morning the dispatch Con Edison engineer arrived to what could be described as a bad day at the office. Anyone who could began assisting the injured. Windows in nearby buildings were shattered and debris was thrown up to a block away. Some had even landed on the elevated section of the metro north railroad. This necessitated the line being shut down until the late afternoon. Around 100 New York police department officers were on the scene from 10am and helped to create an exclusion zone around the still burning buildings. Strangely at 1.30pm a hole started to appear outside the destroyed buildings in the roadway. The explosion had damaged the water main and it had eroded the ground around it. A couple of hours later a smaller explosion ignited in the hole. This would later require digging out and filling with steel plates and gravel. The residual fires were burned for another 6 days hindering recovery work but finally extinguished on the 18th of March. In total 8 people had lost their lives with another 50 being injured. Understandably explosions in US cities aren't the most common event so needless to say the cause had to be found out. Spoiler alert it had something to do with the mysterious case of the sinking road. The investigation. Strangely well at least I think it is the investigation came under the purview of the national transport safety board. It's actually quite handy as NTSB reports are usually easy to find and make pretty good source material for one of my videos. But they weren't the only to investigate. Unsurprisingly the question of the explosion source had to be found and this came from Con Edison as well. It's not too difficult to put together reports of gas leaks followed by a big boom after all. The New York fire department concluded upon its survey of the wreckage that explosion had originated from building 1644 inside the first two floors which were occupied by a church. Con Edison conducted pressure tests on the pipeline either side of the destroyed buildings and only minor leaks were detected. This pointed at one probable failure point. The welded T-joint from the gas main to building 1642. The joint was investigated and it was found to be faulty likely due to improper preparation before welding. But how did the T-joint fail because clearly it wasn't leaking after immediate installation even though it was faulty. Well the NTSB would conclude that the instances of the ground sinking outside 1644 and 1646 was actually being caused by that damaged sewer which washed away the soil supporting the gas mainline. This in turn allowed the mainline to sag which put extra stress on that joint. The joint then fractured and allowed gas to seep next door where it was just a matter of time before the inevitable would happen. So the blame game had to stop at the feet of Con Edison and the city who was in charge of the sewage. And also as well the New York State Public Service Commission. The city would refute the NTSB findings and turn on Con Edison which in 2017 resulted in a settlement from Con Edison to New York City for a grand sum of $153 million. With reportedly about $25 million going to the victims. Now I'm going to rate this disaster as negligence as the leaking sewer was known about for the best part of a decade and just left. And also as well as the poor gas main T joint. I'm also going to rate it a 4 on my legacy scale. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share a lot licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK. If you want to find out hints on future videos then by checking out my Twitter. I also have Instagram as well which I put up random photographs. If you're enjoying this outro song then feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it in full. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching and music man play us out please. It is the 27th of January 1925 and an old retired Field Marshall takes his last breath. Throughout his career death and destruction was a necessary evil spanning nearly 50 years he has achieved many accolades. With many battles under his belt and the high rank of Field Marshall it is often customary for the person's legacy to extend beyond their family and be recognised in the naming of roads and buildings. You see the person we are talking about is only linked to this week's video in name but the name would become a byword for neglect tragedy and the ever looming spectre of brutalist high rise apartment blocks that litter British cities. That man's name was Field Marshall Francis Wallace Grenfell his name is remembered not for his actions on the battlefields of British colonialism but instead a horrific building fire in the 2010s. Welcome to Plainly Difficult my name is John and today we are looking at the Grenfell Tower Disaster. Background Our story begins nearly 50 years after Grenfell's death with a need also common that is housing a need that would drive the UK to source quickly and easily built residential buildings No more requiring social housing arguably was the nation's capital. One such development was the infamous Ronan Point out towards the eastern end of London's vast metropolitan area but another would be out in the west. This would be in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea near Notting Hill to the east of Latimer Road Tube Station which is around here on a map. In 1964 plans were proposed for redeveloping the slums of Nottingdale into a modern and brutalist social housing estate. These were all the rage in the 1960s where London was still redeveloping after the destruction caused during the Second World War. The plan from architects Clifford Wearden and Peter Deakings was to build a housing estate, shopping piazza and a new Latimer Road London Underground Station to connect all the buildings which would include a couple of tower blocks and a few smaller residential buildings elevated walkways were planned. The original plans also looked to place decking over the roads for public spaces thus hiding vehicle traffic from view. The newly reborn in 1965 Royal Borough Kensington and Chelsea did not show much interest in creating two-story roads. I'm still trying to decide whether this was a good or bad concept. Probably bad as history has shown we aren't very good at maintaining concrete infrastructure. As anyone who has ever had to rely on the Hammersmith flyover would probably agree with and thank the sat nav gods I have never needed to drive down there recently. Well long story short the new estate was to be less innovative after the council refused some of the more modernist concepts. But it didn't mean that it was a cookie cutter estate. It did have some interesting features. Deacons had previously helped with the designs of the Barbican housing estate as well as the Golden Lane estate so by now he was a bit of a brutalist design veteran. The plans would end up being scaled back when London Transport saw no need of building a new station. But the main tower block was retained. It would be named after a field marshal Mr Grenfell. The disaster ronin point would directly influence design considerations for the main tower on the Lancaster Road west estate as it was known. As such Grenfell would be built with an attention to strength. The idea was for the building to last well over a hundred years. To achieve this Grenfell had a central core containing the lift a single staircase and vertical sections for the services like water telephone and electricity. Coming into the core were external perimeter columns. A central boiler room was provided for hot water. This was situated in the basement and fed the whole housing development. Construction for phase one would begin in 1970 with Grenfell seeing initial works beginning in 1972. The building would be 67.3 meters tall or 221 feet tall and originally contained 120 one and two bedroom flats. 20 of the 24 stories would be used for residential with the bottom four being used for non-residential purposes to help with the flexibility of accommodation. All internal partition walls were not structural. This could allow for reconfiguration later on. Something pretty handy for a local authority. Because of its flexibility it was slightly unusual from other tower blocks of a similar vintage. And this was because it allowed the flats per floor to be six instead of the more common four. The floors contained a two bedroom flat at each corner which was the standard arrangement for the time. But in between on the eastern west face was a smaller one bedroom flat. Externally the building comprised horizontal structural concrete spandrel panels, sliding aluminium framed windows and non-structural white window infill panels. The tower was completed in 1974 and soon after opening its doors the council started welcoming families to their new home. Grenfell and its refurbishments and updates. As with most buildings throughout its life it would undergo a number of modifications. One such was in 1985 with the replacing of front doors to the flats to self closing fire resistant types. In the 1990s in an effort to combat rising crime a key fob system was installed meaning in theory only residents could access the building. Between 2011 and 2013 the fire doors were again replaced with more modern compliant ones. Talking about fire we need to discuss the design theory and thus fire safety theory prevalent in the UK when Grenfell was built. You see there was a glaring issue with high rise blocks which Ronan Point highlighted but it was known before and that was a fire. If there's a fire say here how can anyone get out safely? Well how about if you don't need to get out at all? In theory if the flat is fire resistant enough then occupants can sit it out until help arrives. This was mentioned in the 1962 British standard code of practice number three chapter four precautions against fire. The assumption should no longer be that buildings must be evacuated if a fire occurs and high rise residential buildings should therefore be designed so that occupants of a floor above the dwelling which is on fire may if they choose remain safely on their own floor. It may be necessary to evacuate the floor on which the fire occurs and in some circumstances those floors which are in the immediate vicinity of the fire but the occupants of these floors should be free to reach safety in any other part of the building via the staircase. This would be known as the stay put strategy which in the event of a fire elsewhere in the building the occupants are advised to remain in their own flats unless they are directly affected by fire, heat or smoke. All of this is fine and well as long as the building is actually fire resistant. The thinking behind the strategy does have merit as mass exiting of a building would hinder fire and rescue efforts as well as the risk of a potential of a staircase crush event think a mini Ibrox 1971. But again it is really dependent on the actual building there were issues with tower blocks of this era and one such is the single staircase now the tower block had had a few upgrades through its life but after 40 years of overlooking Latimer Road it was time for a major overhaul and refurbishment this came around with a planning permission request in 2012 around the same time lead better construction limited was appointed as lead contractor but before works began in June 2014 Royden Maintenance Limited was eventually appointed the design and build contractor this was because they undercut in price the works were to include repurposing some of the previously uninhabited levels of the tower these were the lower couple of levels it would result in the creation of 9 new flats this would also include structural work in addition to this a newer more efficient heating and smoke extraction system were to be employed as well as renewed services piping and upgrades to the towers lifts but the main thing at least when he passed us by that would see the whole building was that it was to be reclad receive new windows and generally receive a more modern fresher external appearance essentially the tower was to get an entirely new external wall attached to the original facade this would in theory add to building installation thus improving efficiency the cladding also offered a modernized look to the tower hiding away the arguably dated Brutus facade after all it was nice saw in the line of sight of the trendy and expensive Notting Hill I can being a little bit facetious but improved external looks were one of the council's official goals Royden subcontracted out to Harley facade limited the external cladding work whilst we're on the subject let's look at the cladding in greater detail the external cladding was made up of several layers firstly directly connected to the original external walls was PIR foam installation followed by a two inch cavity and finished off with another layer of cladding in the form of ventilated rain screen panels made of aluminium composite material the composite cladding was made of 3mm thick core of polyetherene bonded between 0.5mm thick sheets of aluminium these were mounted to the building via aluminium mounting brackets the new windows would be mounted and glued to the PIR installation UPBC window jams would be mounted over the original wooden window frame and the installation it would create a wider window ledge as it covered the extra layers added to the concrete facade this system was more cost effective compared to others available on the market the tradeoff was however that the more expensive options were more fire resistant the materials used in the refurbishment would be a pretty hefty saving for Kensington and Chelsea TMO the organisation formed to manage all of the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea's housing nearly £300,000 in total a pretty big cost reduction on a £8.7 million refurbishment project this and amongst other savings would have reason for that contract to change in 2014 regardless the refurbishment was signed off and there it stood tarted up to look pretty a home for nearly 300 people a home that should be safe somewhere to put your stamp on a place of comfort entertainment a space for memories but occasional sadness but not a death trap well until it was the fire it is the evening of the 13th of June 2017 and a resident of flat 16 on the fourth floor is returning home the time is 23.30 and the Halu Kebedi goes to his living room the two he's sharing flat 16 with are asleep Kebedi goes to sleep on a mattress in the living room shortly after he is woken up by probably one of your worst nightmares a fire alarm he found out that his hot point fridge freezer in the kitchen was on fire he goes to wake up the two other residents in flat 16 soon after at 54 minutes past 12 he makes a phone call to 999 Kebedi banged on his neighbours doors to alert them of the fire and he began to evacuate the building 6 minutes after his call the first of the London fire brigade reached the scene the fire could be seen glowing through the window of flat 16 with two engines on site another two were dispatched more calls came in and the advice was given for residents to stay in their flats was because of the stay put doctrine there was no central alarm in the building and many higher up were not aware of the fire below the first firefighters entered flat 16 at 107 at 108 the flames started to melt the upvc window frames and fire began licking up outside the tower the flammable cladding caught a light the cavity between the cladding and insulation acted as a chimney sucking the flames up at 114 in the morning the firefighters started tackling the blaze in flat 16's kitchen but it was too late and the flames had most definitely spread seeing the unfolding disaster more engines and an aerial appliance were requested water jets from the ground couldn't reach higher than the fourth floor smoke had spread to above flat 16 into flat 26 some residents on the fifth and sixth floors started to evacuate by 118 in the morning 34 of 293 residents had escaped and between 118 and 138 110 had escaped the flames spread up further behind the aluminium cladding by 130 in the morning the fire had spread in a shockingly fast rate and had reached Grenfell's roof by now around 20 fire engines had been dispatched to Grenfell soon after Met Police officers arrived to create an exclusion zone and London ambulances began to arrive to treat the walking wounded the smoke had spread into the lobbies of several floors many were trapped inside the flats by the ever increasing smoke and flames the only staircase had filled up with smoke between 130 and 158 only another 20 had managed to escape fire continued to spread sideways on the exterior and by 142 had reached the northern side firefighters were given flat numbers of confirmed trapped residents however communication via radio had broken down instead the rescue efforts relied on runners and slips of paper to inform the fighters where the residents were actually located this slowed down communications meaning that firefighters by the time of reaching the flats found them to be empty as residents had fled the smoke although many were still on the phone to 999 dispatch their updated locations couldn't be passed on to those trying to find them after 2 o'clock in the morning many desperate residents tried to communicate their location by flashing lights in their flats and sadly as many as four had no option when facing the flames but to jump from the building the final two people to be rescued were at the 605 and 807 in the morning but sadly not everyone had managed to escape the fire would continue to blaze all the way to the 16th of June when in the evening it was officially declared over the rescue efforts changed to recovery and evidence gathering a total of 151 homes were destroyed by the fire these were not just in Grenfell tower but also the smaller free-story blocks adjacent to the high rise the fire caused 72 deaths including one who died in hospital a day later and another who died in January 2018 many were children and even a stillbirth was attributed to the fire needed to say the disaster cut deep into the local community needed to say an investigation would follow and this would come in the form of the Grenfell inquiry which was announced by the then prime minister Theresa May on the 29th of June 2017 and oh boy it would uncover the neglect that went into that tower the investigation and inquiry soon after the disaster on the 29th of June Theresa May announced that Sir Martin Morbick a retired judge would take the lead in the inquiry the tower was covered in scaffolding and a protective wrap to help preserve the evidence within it was pretty clear the start of the fire was the fridge freezer in flat number 16 this melted away the upvc window frames and jams that covered the highly flammable insulation once this was exposed fire was then able to spread into the cladding the investigation quickly found the cladding to be the cause of the rapid spread very surprising to many in 2014 the council were warned of their decision to use this type of cladding and insulation combination and it was advised to only use it in combination with a non flammable insulation it was also known as early as 2012 that Grenfell had some serious safety management issues these included poor emergency lighting, firefighting equipment was improperly maintained including out of date extinguishers and other material going unchecked for years these issues were just put aside and ignored hoping they would disappear some residents even formed a group called the Grenfell Action Group and even created a blog they had in 2013 published a health and safety report from 2012 raising concerns about the fire safety of the building the group also pointed out the lack of appropriate escape routes and that the hallways were allowed to fill with rubbish blocking off the paths of escape that did exist in an ever classy move in 2013 the council threatened the bloggers with legal action saying that their posts amounted to defamation and harassment even more tragically two of the blog writers Mariam Elguari and Nadia Chalke would be amongst those who lost their lives in the fire all of these concerns were apparent in Grenfell way before the refurbishment it was found during the inquiry that in November 2016 the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority served a fire deficiency notice to the Kensington and Chelsea tenant management organisation listing multiple safety issues at Grenfell that required action to be taken before May 2017 and unsurprisingly many of these were still not fixed in June now this would be hard to see as anything other than criminally negligent and on the 27th of July 2017 the Metropolitan Police issued a public notice to residents saying that they had reasonable grounds to suspect that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea tenant management organisation may have committed corporate manslaughter now of these charges have yet to be raised as the Grenfell inquiry has only just wrapped up it is divided into two phases phase one which has been the primary source for this video was released in October 2019 this covered the facts about the refurbishment and the night of the fire phase two we'll try and find out who was at fault for allowing the refurbishment to take place as it did as such charges are unlikely to materialise until at least 2023 or even 2024 sadly this means that it could be seven years after the disaster until some action was taken legally some charges were brought for fraud however in a disgusting effort of profit from others' pain 21 people tried to claim compensation for either being in the town when they weren't or for family members who also weren't they were charged and found guilty and sentenced for their fraudulent activity but what of the town now well it's still there awaiting the end of the inquiry from there it will be demolished and turned into a memorial for these victims the disaster shows the end result of negligence penny pinching and underinvestment the sum 300,000 pounds saving would be eclipsed by the estimated £100,000,000 to £1,000,000 in costs associated with the disaster the disaster would also lead to the UK cladding scandal which would financially ruin many as overnight their apartments became worthless due to insurance companies refusing to cover externally clad buildings it also caused many residents to be rehomed or even just evicted as some buildings became condemned now there is a whole social and economic side to this disaster that I haven't even touched but that's because I don't feel quite qualified enough to speak on it but I do recommend reading the inquiry report and phase two when it's released although you'll probably be saddened and even more likely angered by the story of Grenfell now this subject I'm going to give the rating of outright negligent and nine on my legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons actuation share a light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of south London UK if you like this outro song then please feel free to check it out in full on my second channel made by John I've got Instagram and Twitter so you can check them out if you want to see any random photographs I post up I'd like to give a very nice warm thank you to my patrons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as you my loyal viewers who always come back every week for your dose of disaster and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us out please using concrete is as old as recorded history albeit in different forms nevertheless it is the building material responsible for some of history's most iconic structures its prevalence has never really reduced liquid stone is essential in almost any construction project from shed bases to today's subject power stations concrete is most definitely vital and misjudgments in the process can have catastrophic results today I'm looking at the Willow Island disaster my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult background our story starts and pretty much ends in the 1970s in Willow Island West Virginia the region is getting a new coal power station called the Pleasants power station the new plant was to have two electrical generators producing a name plate capacity of 1300 megawatts the new power station would require two cooling towers the first would be built during 1977 being completed in August of the same year soon after the second tower started to rise into the sky each tower had a base diameter of 358 feet with a height of 430 feet above ground level bay were of the natural draft variety now coal power plants are all about making steam to drive turbines just like in nuclear powered power plants as such once turned into steam you want to recover your coolant this is where the towers come in the ones at the Pleasants plant took the hot water from the system and cooled it through direct contact with fresh air to increase surface area for the coolant the water is sprayed into the tower via nozzles cooling towers are a pretty interesting type of structure as it has a wider base than its top and has different thicknesses as well as being circular because of this concrete is really the only feasible construction material although brick chimneys and towers exist brick laying takes time and requires a certain skill and this costs money if you're interested in brick towers check out Fred Dibner's life and career he spent most of his life maintaining and ultimately dismantling these types of structures or just ignore my side tangent altogether anyway how were these towers at Pleasants power station built the construction method the builders had to use a complex combination of formwork and scaffolding throughout the project this would follow the construction all the way from bottom to top to accommodate this the scaffolds would be physically attached to the rising building this is different compared to other building methods where a scaffold is just mounted to the ground and rises up with the tower to create each sections lift the forms were placed then the concrete would be poured and once cured the next section could be built after each lift formwork and scaffolding would be removed and placed above for the next lift to raise up the concrete cranes were used but rather being fixed to the ground they were also mounted to the newly made lift by the scaffolding now this seems like a lot of weight relying on fresh concrete but I'm no expert I'm just a faceless voice and yeah you don't want to see my face the concrete would be reinforced with steel both horizontally and vertically now with over 400 feet to build it's no surprise a method for building the towers would need to be quick this building method would rise at roughly 1.5 meters a day or roughly 4 feet the method, although in theory cheaper than a massive pile of scaffolding relies on the previous lifts concrete to be as strong as it can be it also vitally relied on correct geometry of the cranes and scaffolding for the whole system to have strength and any weak link of the methods chain would yield not enough strength but clearly it worked the first tower was built using this method after all the contractors used for the project were very well known in the industry at the time New Jersey based research cultural safe hands you might think and until the 27th of April 1978 you'd have no reason for concern the collapse it is the morning of the 27th of April 1978 and the builders are planning to undertake another day of concrete work so far 28 lifts have been successfully completed with the scaffolding working its way up the structure cooling tower number 2 is roughly 166 feet or 51 meters tall at 6.30 in the morning carpenters began removing wedges holding up the formwork some of the wood was discarded and new dimension wood was cut and set in place this took place on the second level of the four level scaffolding an hour later the iron mungers arrived and started hoisting the reinforced steel to the top of the tower around the same time the field engineer would arrive and at 8.30 in the morning the scaffolding was jacked up to its new position the formwork was being removed from the previous day's lift and being repositioned for that day's lift number 29 before 10am two buckets of concrete had been craned up to the top of the fourth level of scaffolding which was now anchored to the previous day's work cracking was heard from the tower as the second bucket was raised after roughly one cubic yard had been poured the next bucket was sent up as this went up to the platform the 28th lift began to fail the crane pulling the bucket of concrete fell into the cooling tower center the previous day's lifts peeled away from the tower sending scaffolding and workers on top plummeting down into the hollow of the building that morning there were 51 workers on the scaffolding and none survived the fall immediately other builders on site rushed to dig out anyone they could find at the same time calls went to 911 and ambulances and firetrucks from Belmont Parkersburg Vienna and St Mary's in West Virginia and Marietta in Ohio arrived to assist coworkers who had helped to drag the victims out of the rubble were there to assist in identification sadly due to the damage many were only identified by the contents of their pockets OSHA was on the accident site pretty quick to begin the process of investigation they even turned up on the same day of the disaster we have another team from the National Bureau of Standards arriving a couple of days later these two organizations sought to find what caused tower number 2 to fail especially when the other had been so successful in its construction using the same methods the investigation investigators scoured the disaster site and found not much left at the 28th lift it was thought that it had been pulverized upon contact with the ground reinforcement bars were found to be bent hinting that they hadn't fractured kind of ruling them out as a potential cause they also found that the scaffolding hadn't failed causing the collapse neither did they find issues with the hoist cables during the investigation they found that the concrete was not strong enough to support the scaffolding this was the official theory and was published in the 1979 report and the Bureau of Standards summed up in its conclusions the imposition of construction loads before the concrete of lift 28 had gained adequate strength to support these loads the imposition of concrete loads before the concrete of lift 28 had gained adequate strength to support these loads long story short the concrete hadn't been given enough time to cure but that wasn't the whole story our good old friend corner cutting reared his ugly penny pinching head OSHA found that rather than following the carefully planned positioning of the cranes for raising the buckets different positions were used to allow more buckets to be lifted and thus pull the concrete more quickly they also found a worrying lack of field tests of the concrete they were making allowing inconsistencies in each lift the anchoring for the scaffolding was also found to be lacking with some bolts missing due to the need of an incorrect grade it was also found that there was only one escape ladder which would have hindered any escape on the 8th of June 1978 OSHA cited the Willow Island contractors with 10 willful and 10 series violations which would result in a settlement of $85,500 a measly $1,700 per victim but the verdict on the case of the disaster wasn't agreed upon by everyone the power plant's main contractor hired a private engineering firm to investigate the failure they were a bit more doubtful of the concrete theory instead pointing the finger of blame at the feet of the unique scaffolding method the consultants, Lev Zetlin associates said problems originated due to lack of understanding of the scaffold system by the workers and also due to its systematic misuse lack of technical and management supervision was also an underlying pause to this collapse OSHA was aware of the problems with the scaffolding method even as early as 1977 lawyer Ralph Nader began researching OSHA reports soon after the collapse and he found some worrying concerns and OSHA inspector had seen that the scaffolding used in the first towers construction needed repairs and that they had been modified without any knowledge of the engineers OSHA rejected the Nader report still upholding the concrete theory the disaster would improve concrete and masonry standards across the industry which can only be seen as a good thing but we all know this still was not enough now I'm going to rate this disaster as a free obol's people will remember this and 5 on my legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons actuation share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I have youtube members and patrons who support the channel financially as well as all the rest of you who tune in every week to watch my disaster videos I have twitter and instagram if you fancy checking out some random photographs I post up there and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go to my second channel made by John to check out the full video and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please railways are arguably one of the most safest and environmentally friendly modes of transport high speed rail for me personally chumps flying in terms of comfort view and ease of use although take that term of high speed rail the pinch of salt as I'm mainly talking about UK railways however nothing is perfect and as we've seen in this channel before disastrous events can most definitely happen for the most part I've covered UK and US rail disasters but today's subject shows any country is vulnerable today I'm looking at one of Germany's worst rail incidents my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult background our story starts not in Germany but Japan 1959 would be the genesis of modern high speed rail Japan had a narrow gauge interconnected rail network due to the terrain lines were intertwined with hills and valleys although making for beautiful scenery journeys were hardly swift as part of economic development for the country a new more direct form of rail transport was devised and it would run on the larger standard gauge the same that we have here in the UK right back to 1959 the Shinkansen project or known internationally as the bullet train had begun starting the world's first high speed rail service passenger running began on the 1st of October 1964 and it became an immediate success making the island of Honshu feel ever smaller but almost overnight triumph of high speed rail didn't go unnoticed outside of Japan's borders one of the countries who saw the concept as an ideal addition to their rail network was that of France and this would result in the 1970s with a TGV at a similar time across the border in Germany they were also planning a high speed rail network beginning in 1968 the Deutsche Bundesbahn began planning the initial concept which would develop into trial runs in 1985 the trial set called the intercity experimental would set the world's speed record for a train in 1988 at a whopping 253 miles per hour or 406.9 kilometers per hour clearly the concept worked as such the first generation of high speed trains were ordered from a consortium of manufacturers with the first deliveries taking place in 1989 this new class of train was named the ICE-1 ICE-1 a modern train so Germany's first iteration of their standard high speed train was called the ICE-1 the formations of ICE-1 trains consisted of two power cars one at each end and either 9 or 12 intermediate cars the intermediate cars are for passengers and are made up of first and second class accommodation with an addition to a Buffett car each power car had attractive possibility of over 200 kilo newtons or 44,962 foot pounds of torque with a power output of 4,800 kilowatts or just under 6,500 horsepower there were some cars with a lower power output of 3,800 kilowatts an hour or just over 5,000 horsepower which had more conventional IGBT power converters upon beginning revenue service the ICE-1 set could reach a operating speed of 250 kilometers an hour 155.3 miles per hour and a few years later in 1995 this was increased to 280 kilometers an hour or 174 miles an hour at the time in the early 90s the ICE-1 was one of the most advanced trains in the world boasting 10 computers per power car this allowed the driver to interrogate and monitor many of the power and control systems aboard the train thoughts can be reported automatically via radio to the depot for future maintenance and in total 120 power cars were produced now the intermediate passenger cars were constructed of a lightweight aluminium silicone alloy now although modern aerodynamic and fast the new trains weren't without issues one more obvious to at least the passengers was not the ability of the buffet car that allowed glasses to shuffle around the tables a little disconcerting for your cold drink no doubt and it hinted at a greater issue than just a few spilled beverages wheels, wheels, wheels when the first ICE-1 first entered service it was equipped with monoblock wheels essentially the wheel was cast as one piece which is then hardened monoblocks are beneficial fair light for a train wheel cost effective and robust that is in comparison to the traditional wheel and tyre design yes you heard me right trains can have tyres but it's not exactly what you think bear with me you see train wheels used to be very expensive but due to the friction between the wheel and the rail they are susceptible to wear because of this life expectancy could be extended by making the contact surface replaceable this was another piece of metal mounted around the wheels perimeter and is known as the tyre wheel and tyre set ups had been gradually phased out in preference for monoblock wheels although wear was still an issue monoblock wheels were much cheaper to cast which in combination with regular inspections and re-profiling with laves offered an overall cheaper option so the I.C.E one had monoblock wheels and as predicted they wore down over their service life and gained flats this is where the wheel gains flat spots it's that whooshing or thumping sound you can sometimes hear on a train as it moves along the track nothing out of the ordinary but due to the higher speeds the worn down conditions would create a resonance and vibration which was the reason for the cups and glasses walking around the table tops when a train was at cruising speed so how to fix this problem and increase comfort well the suspension could help somewhat but engineers looked at an alternative wheel design they looked to the trains cousin the tram tramways across the world still use tyre on wheel design but with a soupy twist due to the tight corners trams are expected to endure they are equipped with a wheel profile that isn't ideal for higher speeds to combat the overall rough ride they have a design called resilient wheels they also helped with track wear something all too common on the short sections between stops generally experienced with trams where acceleration and deceleration are some of the biggest causes of track wear you really want the track to last as long as possible especially if you have to dig up a whole road to get to it and by the way I'm using Croydon tram footage here because it is one of the networks in the world that use this design so resilience wheels have something a bit different than normal tyre on wheel design they have rubber dampening rings between the main wheel and the tyre so the steel tyre is still the point of contact with the rail but it does have additional dampening properties the version employed on the ICE one had a 20mm thick or 0.79 inch rubber damper with a relatively thin metal tyre attached on top however during 1997 Hanover's transport operator began to report issues with their trams resilient wheels fatigue cracks were discovered rather worryingly on these wheel design especially when the average speed was only around 10mph Deutsche Bahn was informed of the fatigue cracks but replied they had not seen any issues with their ICE 1 sets so the trains were now vibration free the new wheels proved to be quite effective nothing to worry about I suppose well until there was the disaster it is 10.30 in the morning of the 3rd of June 1998 and a 12 car and 2 power car ICE 1 set are departing Hanover the train is rather aptly named for this channel the Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen the train is working the Munich to Hamburg route it had stopped that morning at Augsburg Nürnberg Wurzburg Fulda Kassel Göttingen and Hanover before its 10.30 departure for its final leg to Hamburg at roughly 6km or 3.7 miles a shade one of the trains wheels on the 3rd axle on the first car failed the steel tyre separated from the wheel and was flung up into the floor of the passenger saloon a passenger saw the floor penetrated by the tyre with the carriage now severely vibrating it took his wife and child to the 3rd car to inform the train manager also known as the guard upon reaching the train manager the passenger explained what he had seen rather than stopping the train via the emergency alarm and brakes the manager insisted on personally inspecting the issue this was in line with company rules but to me sounds absolutely insane by now the train was vibrating in the time it took for the manager to make their way to the first carriage the train had travelled roughly 2 miles or 3km this was along some plain track but points were coming up before the manager could inspect the damage the train thundered over two sets of points the damaged part of the wheel and embedded tyre ripped into the check rail part of the points the carriage was lifted off the track and one of the derailed wheels kicked the lever for the points this caused the set of points to move out of position which then switched the 2nd bogey of the 3rd carriage onto another track that ran parallel to the main line the 3rd coach now with each set of wheels on a different track was twisted as a result it was thrown into a pile on the bridge which spanned the railway coach 4 left the track and hit the embankment near the bridge killing 3 railway workers instantly by the time coach 5 had got to the bridge it had begun to collapse pummeling the carriage with nearly 300 metric tonnes of material the remaining coaches jackknifed into the collapsing bridge in a zigzag pattern the front power car coasted to a stop nearly 3km or 2 miles past Esked station the train had finally come to a rest a little over 30 minutes after it had departed Hanover the enormous crash elicited a sound nothing else needless to say this drew many local residents to the disaster site local emergency workers declared an emergency at 1102 elevating it to a major emergency just 5 minutes later over a thousand workers assisted in the treating of the wounded when it came to casualties there was a clear divide between who survived and who didn't pretty much if you were past this point it wouldn't have been a good day some carriages had crashed into the bridge at speeds up to 120 miles an hour or 200km an hour this resulted in 8 of the carriages being roughly the same length of just one yes it really was that bad by the afternoon 88 had been given emergency treatment 27 of which had been airlifted to hospital access to some of the wounded and victims was hindered by the pressure resistant windows which required specialist cutting tools to remove in total 101 people lost their lives with 88 severely injured and another 100 or so having minor injuries it would take many days for the victims to be recovered any intact bodies were autopsied and the less than whole remains of many others hindered identification by the 8th of June recovery crews started removing the train from the site of the accident transporting it to Aachen University now with Germany's second worst rail crash the cause had to be found and spoiler alert it might have had something to do with those new designed wheels the investigation the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany was tasked with finding the cause of the derailment and after conducting interviews with witnesses and examining the accident site they began to zero in on a failure point initially a collision with a road vehicle was suspected due to the wreckage of a car on the track but it would later be discovered to have likely been parked on the bridge the Mark III VW Golf was linked to a railway worker one of those on the track who had been a victim inspection of the leading power car saw no impact damage either ruling out some kind of deliberate attack on the train inspection of the track on the approach to the bridge and points found scratches and chunks taken out of the concrete sleepers this is around 3 miles or 6km south from the crash site this hinted at some kind of debris hitting the ground metal was found embedded in car 1 and this looks suspiciously like a stripped wheel tyre eventually investigators managed to piece together the cause of the derailment it was discovered that train inspections a day before had noted the failed wheel to have a flat spot in the weeks leading up to the disaster 8 reports of flat spots had been logged on the train's digital logbook but Deutsche Bahn had deemed them not serious enough to warrant replacement inspections on the wheels had only been done using handheld lamps in the depot as the more complex computerised inspection setups gave too many false positive warnings investigators soon discovered that the new wheels although used on trams hadn't actually been tested at high speeds instead having engineers rely on theoretical and mathematical predictions of wear patterns at the time Germany didn't have sufficient test facilities to properly hash out the issues on high speed rail wheels they found key issues in the use of the tired wheels the tyres were flattened into an oval shape each time the wheel rotated which in regular service was as many as 500,000 times per day and each rotation caused a little bit of fatigue on the thin steel tyre when compared to the monoblock wheel design cracks could form on both sides of the tyre as the tyre became thinner due to where the wear was exaggerated resulting in those fatigue areas turning into cracks the investigation would lead to criminal proceedings against key members in Deutsche Bahn pretty soon after the disaster DB paid out roughly 30,000 Deutsche Marks around 19,000 dollars in the late 90s money to each victims family as an initial form of compensation but needless to say this figure would increase over the years the wheels of the tyre design were changed back to monoblock and point work near potential obstructions were better risk assessed in 2002 two Deutsche Bahn officials and one engineer were charged with manslaughter which would result in a quite long 53 day trial the trial ended in April 2003 with a plea bargain and a 10,000 euro fine for each person the train manager did have to defend his actions of not stopping the train upon reports of damage but as DB's policy was to check before stopping the train it was absolved of any blame sadly stopping the train there and then could have averted disaster so I'm going to rate this video as a bad day in the office and an 8 on my legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike license plain difficult videos are produced by me in the currently dry but very cold corner of southern London UK I've got instagram and twitter so check them out if you fancy seeing random photographs and I'd like to thank all my patrons and youtube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have a second channel which is where you can listen to this outro song in full and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us out please and thank you for watching it is 1923 and Victor Emmanuel the third of Italy is exploring the site of the disaster as the king casts his gaze across the ruined homes stream from the glano dam the question of how must have crossed his mind this dam was only just built no usually you'd only want a king to visit the successful completion of a project instead he is roaming the after effects of a catastrophic dam failure and needless to say this is not good today we're looking at the glano dam failure my name is John and welcome it is plainly difficult background our story starts here and the beauty of the scalby valley in the province of Bergamo in Lombardi, northern Italy in the early years of the 20th century a proposal was put forward to exploit the gleno river for hydroelectric power the region was home to the bigano textiles company that wanted some of that juicy electricity to run their factories this would result in a proposal being put forward in 1907 for a dam across the gleno to create and hold a new reservoir this would in turn be used to power a hydroelectric power station it would take nearly 10 years from proposal to project commencement when in 1916 clearing works had begun preparing the site for a new dam's foundations the original plan submitted in 1913 were for the dam to be a masonry gravity type however these plans would change in 1917 not long after the stone masonry basement close to the lower part of the valley had been constructed it turned out that the gravity dam would have cost a bit more than the project had anticipated such the dam was re-envisioned as a narrow reinforcement concrete arch type it would be 220 meters long which when seen from the top down would look like an S shape adding total the dam had 25 arches with a height of 45 meters the new design was to make use of the first plans gravity dam's foundations when you look at pictures of it like many italian projects from the time it's pretty impressive and pretty well pretty however it's beautiful facade was hiding some worryingly ugly defects as early as 1920 concerns were raised about the quality of the mortar used on the dam the concrete was also not the best and in a strange form of recycling the steel reinforcement made use of surplus anti-grenade nets from the first world war this would hardly create uniform strength throughout the structure although allowed to change from gravity to multiple arch type design no one actually reviewed the project's permits the concrete wasn't given enough time to cure as well and if that wasn't enough of a concern any worker who raised these points was politely asked to piss off even though the project had issues by the start of 1923 roughly 80% of the dam had been completed water had even begun to collect in what would become the gleno reservoir and by completion in October of the same year some 4.5 million cubic meters of water was being held back by the dam for the construction was for the generation of electricity after all and as such the associated power plant had a capacity of 3,728 kilowatts the new dam and reservoir now offered many generations of power for the region electricity modernity what's not to like well until it all came crashing down the disaster by December the dam and lake were complete the reservoir was full testing the strength of the structure but unfortunately at roughly 6.30 am on the 1st of December 1923 the dam began to shift this was noticed by a worker however before anything could be done just 45 minutes later an 80 meter long breach was formed in the central portion of the dam within a blink of an eye the 25 meter tall central section was gone and a torrent of water battered its way down the valley the first victims were in the village Bugigio which was almost completely obliterated Vendezzo Afrazoni of Coler as well as Corna di D'Affo Polvo and Valboana power stations were also hit together with a bridge water would pummel the valley as the lake emptied its some 4.5 million cubic meters of water to add further destruction the flooding, like what we've seen before in other dam disasters picked up debris along the way smashing buildings and other infrastructure the flow of debris and water reached speeds of up to 45 kilometers an hour in the ensuing chaos officially 356 people would lose their lives although this figure is thought to be much higher with some estimates of over 600 as many hundreds were reported missing after the disaster the reservoir was at an elevation of 1,535 meters and the flood waters would finally settle at Lake Aizio at an elevation of 186 meters the water had dropped over a kilometer in elevation in less than an hour the flood had destroyed three villages, five power stations as well as other businesses and factories although happening in the 1920s hundreds of photographs would be taken of the aftermath the Italian public fascinated as well as shocked by the disaster bought newspapers by the ton load in order to get as much information on the gleno dam's failure now clearly the dam didn't work as intended and with rather a large death toll and several villages smashed up a large question had to be asked how did the gleno dam fail? investigation almost as soon as the water settled and the casualty numbers were calculated engineers started picking through the rubble of what remained of the gleno dam it wouldn't take long to see that construction methods and materials were shall we say a bit s*** the grenade nets were seen and the poor quality of mortar and concrete were pretty apparent upon initial investigation during the foundation construction it was found that pretty much anything was thrown in amongst the concrete this included tar, scrap metal wood and the usual junk of waste food, cigarette butts and newspapers this didn't give the concrete a proper base to adhere to eyewitness reports stated that the sand used wasn't properly washed resulting in chunky and more importantly crumbly concrete mortar was found to be more porous allowing water from the reservoir to seep in between the joints even the fact that the reservoir was filled too quickly was a cause as the vital concrete hadn't been given enough time to cure investigators found inadequate checks by the civil engineers board lack of qualified technical staff during work poor management of the workers and a conspiracy of silence created by most workers veering dismissal if they raised concerns all these poor design and construction choices meant that the dam was too weak to hold back the reservoir this was caused by water seepage into the foundations which eroded any bonds between the structure and its base it was just a matter of time before failure would occur the disaster essentially doomed however any future art style dam in the country although this style of structure wasn't actually the cause instead it was the bodge job as well any other style built in a poor fashion would have failed just like Glenno did on the 30th December 1923 the public prosecutor charged Rose and Charge of the dam construction they were accused of causing disaster through negligence with multiple counts of manslaughter the trial would last a few years taking place between January 1924 and July 1927 it ended up with the conviction of the managing director of the concessionary firm and of the designer both were sentenced to three years and four months in prison this would be later reduced to two years they were also ordered to pay compensation but again this was overturned but this would not be the last of the dam failures in Italian history but maybe these will be the subject for a future video oh yes and on my new disaster scale I'm going to rate this one as a dumpster fire this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license plain difficult videos are produced by me and in the currently surprisingly sunny corner of southern London UK if you like this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you'll be able to listen to it in full I'd like to give a very nice warm thank you to my patrons and youtube members for your financial support as well as you my loyal viewers who always come back every week for your dose of disaster and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us out please today's video I'm looking at a disaster back in Blighty albeit very far from my freezing corner of south London it's quarter past noon on the 11th of May 2004 and emergency workers are searching the rubble of a disaster site the search for survivors and victims has only just begun the site they're working on in Grove Park Mills Mary Hill Glasgow is officially owned and operated by CL Plastics Ltd but locally it is called the Stockline Plastics Factory the disaster would highlight that British plants were no safer than anywhere else on earth bursting the at least nationally perceived bubble of UK industrial safety of course we know this to be a wrong assumption my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult Stockline Plastics this is my second video about a disaster in Glasgow as a side note I'm not sure I've mentioned this on my previous video the city has one of the best transport museums I've ever been to anyway great museums aside our story starts with the opening of the Stockline Plastics Plant in 1969 it was flanked by Hope Hill Road Grove Park Street and Grove Park Place which is around here on a Glaswegian map the site had been used for over a hundred years originally seeing use as a textiles factory but later being repurposed into a paper mill in the late 1800s the main building was a product of its time being constructed of timber supported by grid of cast iron beams it had a stair tower added in 1907 and in the 1970s had its pitch roof replaced with a flat one if it had turned into a plastics plant it would undergo some changes on the main building one third of the ground floor was used as a dispatch area and the remaining two thirds housed the coating shop this was where plastic coating was applied to metal components to do plastic coating you need ovens and of course that needs heat this came from 8 ovens on site 6 electric and 2 gas fabrication was undertaken on site at a different building this was where the plastic and metal items were well fabricated by the early 2000s stockline plastics was mainly storing and selling bulk plastic sheeting with the ability to alter and cut the sheets to customer requirements so the LPG pipe work and storage on site was installed by Calla Gas which for those of you who are not from the UK are a major supplier of LPG and you see their tanks all over the place well Calla installed the gas work and this included a 2 ton tank and a buried pipe into the main building for the LPG ovens the pipes ran through the basement of the main building then went to the ground floor and ran along the wall to the LPG ovens much of the pipe work was made of galvanized steel but the pipe work between the storage vessel and the point of entry to the basement did not have much else in terms of waterproof coating most of the screwed iron fittings, straight couplings bends and elbows joining the lengths of pipe work were ungalvanized after installation in the 1960s the yard of the site was raised by approximately 1.1 meters this meant that the pipe work running into the main building became inaccessible and visible from the outside it still could be seen from the inside the location of a steel floor made internal inspection also not possible the health and safety executive undertook several inspections over the site's history a reoccurring concern that was raised was the location of the tank in 1998 Johnston oils took over the supply to the site from Calla Gas they requested Calla remove their tank which was completed in March and Johnston oils went and installed a 1 ton tank of their own but due to the company not being involved in the original installation of the pipe work the liability of Johnston oil only went as far as the first regulator during the new tank install a soundness test was undertaken and no issues could be seen but this wasn't actually a full visual check of the system thus the unprotected and only partially galvanized pipe work went virtually unchecked in 2002 another soundness check was undertaken during a regulator change and again no issues were reported but again this wasn't a visual check of the system so I need to address the rather confusing naming of the site I've been calling it so far the stockline plastic site although it was actually called and owned by ICL Group me calling it stockline was no mistake however due to stockline being the main public facing part of the business in fact if you wanted to buy then that was the arm of the organization that would have fulfilled your order stockline was mainly based out of the warehouse with ICL plastics and ICL tech actually using the main building for production and admin so all was quiet at ICL plastics not much in the way of disasters had affected the site well until it would on a deadly day in 2004 the disaster is the morning of the 11th of May 2004 and workers at ICL and stockline plastics are working as normal with no hint of what was coming orders were being processed and general admin was being undertaken in the main building at about midday an explosion erupted from the Victorian main building within seconds the over pressure caused the structure to collapse virtually into its own footprint emergency services were called and by quarter past 12 the police had a control point on site a major incident had been declared by half past as the rescue began initially five fire crews were in attendance but the number would swell over the afternoon triage was set up nearby for the injured of which there were many debris had scattered the buildings and into the nearby streets the injured were sent to various hospitals around Glasgow and by mid afternoon 24 had been rescued from the rubble but another 16 were feared to be still be buried by 9pm the last survivor was recovered leaving a total of 9 losing their lives and 37 injured amongst the victims were two of the company's directors bodies would be removed for the next three days with the final victim being found at 11.25am on the 14th of May in total 300 emergency workers would assist in the rescue and recovery efforts the site was handed over to the police and thus the cause of the disaster could be investigated the investigation fire investigators and the police scoured the disaster site looking for any hints as to the cause the report into the disaster would be provided by the health and safety executive they are the government organisation that usually investigates these kind of things the building's basement and floor had shown the most damage at the Hope Hill road end hinting at the starting point of the explosion the Grove Park street end was severely damaged but remained semi-standing the LPG tank had been dislodged and the warehouse was largely intact this allowed investigators to zero in on the epicentre the concrete floor was destroyed in the main building this damage was a hallmark of a large sudden force that would be produced by an explosion for example from below the steel floor blood samples from one of the victims found in the basement was discovered to have traces of propane in it this hinted strongly at a propane leak before the victim passed away this pointed the finger at the LPG storage and plumbing situation at ICL plastics leaders to say it was time to dig up the pipe work for a thorough inspection and what they found was a smoking gun of sorts upon excavation they found the pipe to be severely corroded where it made its way into the basement of the main building there was a crack that was around 70% of the circumference of the pipe which had allowed LPG to leak out into the basement it was found that the soil around this section of pipe nearest the building was highly corrosive due to the high runoff of rainwater from the building leading to the soil to be almost constantly damp the section had been covered during the yard raising with backfill on concrete which aggravated the corrosion the LPG leaked and accumulated in the basement where it was only a matter of time before a spark would set off the whole building the LPG system on the site was clearly the issue but who was to blame? well criminal and civil proceedings unsurprisingly would come next in 2006 the Crown Prosecution Service had enough to charge ICL under the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 they're accused of failing to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of employees while at work in failing to identify that the pipework conveying the LPG gas from the bulk vessel storage to the premises presented a potential hazard and risk to appoint one or more competent persons to assist in carrying out such risk assessments to have a proper system of inspection and maintenance in respect to the LPG pipework concerned and finally to ensure so far as there was reasonably practical that the pipework was maintained in a condition that was safe and without risk to employees the next year on the 17th of August 2007 at Glasgow High Court ICL pled guilty to the charges and the two companies under ICL Group ICL Tech and ICL Plastics were ordered to pay £200,000 each in fines so today's subject I'm going to rate it as negligence as well that pipe was allowed to corrode which sadly led to the disaster and I'm also going to rate it a 5 on my legacy scale might be lower if you're not from the UK and would definitely be higher if you're from Scotland this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently cold corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreons and my YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you who tune in every week for your weekly dose of disaster if you're enjoying this outro song then please feel free to head over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it and watch it and watch the video in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please when this event hit the headlines I was around 5 to 6 years old although I didn't really grasp what it was I could tell from my parents faces that it wasn't a good thing all the beef burgers and the freezer were thrown in the bin and we were only allowed to eat fillet of fish whenever we went to McDonald's subconsciously this must have influenced my becoming a vegetarian in my early teens nowadays there are hundreds of veggie friendly options mmm tofu but back in 2001 and 2002 it was a little bit more difficult well that's enough talking about my dietary choices let's get started with the video piles of bodies are burning in fields all throughout the British countryside it is the 1990s and this hellish scene is scarring the British pride in their farming products the mass culling is understandably no one's first choice but it seems the only way to stamp out an animal born disease that has made the leap to humans the cattle farming industry makes up roughly 38% of the UK's entire agricultural product and the last thing the country needs is piles of dead unsellable cows the disease is always fatal with a prognosis of roughly 13 months after onset of symptoms it is officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy which if consumed infected meat can cause variant crutsveld jacob disease more casually known as mad cow disease welcome to scandal a plainly difficult documentary series background it is the 1940s and the United Kingdom as well as the rest of the world collecting itself after nearly six years of devastation war has bludgeoned the UK economy industry has been stripped of resources and manpower and a victorious yet now poor nation seeks some way to move forward the country is in debt and has been operating under rationing for many of the essentials for the average British person's diet sugar, meat, fats and cheese at the start of the war Britain was importing half of its meat 80% of its fruit and 70% of its cereals and fats from abroad as such this became the wake up call for the UK to become more food independent as well as build thriving rural communities and economies successive governments fostered this economic development the growth continued in the 1970s with the UK joining the EEC now there was an even bigger reason to farm more tariff free trading the UK by the 1980s had achieved over 100% domestic milk demand and 97% meat demand quite a turnaround of importing 50% some 40 years before this market was worth 5 billion pounds to the UK economy but how was this turnaround achieved well glad you asked as this would prove to be a vital cog in the wheel of disaster the UK had made use of a scheme of selective breeding to create cattle with the ability to produce more milk coupled with a high protein diet the industry found that soy based feed was good but not good enough instead they discovered that meat and bone meal yielded as good if not better milk produced than the more natural alternative and what was better was that it was made of animal waste and was as such a hell of a lot cheaper than soy you may ask what those waste products are well I don't think you're going to like it imagine every bit of livestock that you think you would normally throw in the bin you know the bones, blood and pretty much everything else left over but vitally also the brain as well it was all mashed together to make feed much of the livestock products used were from cows so basically the industry was feeding cows cows the high protein feed was mainly for increasing milk production and as such dairy cows were the most unknowingly cannibalistic population in the farming industry but these dairy cows would eventually find themselves in the slaughterhouse as around two thirds were eventually used for beef production the cattle to enter the human food chain they had to be killed in a licensed slaughterhouse in the UK but the numbers in the country had dwindled to around a thousand registered premises by the 1980s the side effect was that cattle had to travel longer distances now I'm not going to describe the slaughterhouse process but it should be said that the waste products that made up meat and bone feed came as a byproduct from the rendering process part of the whole meat production line rendering is a process of recovering any waste products from livestock and vitally for our story in the 1980s was completely unregulated in the UK and thus diseased animals quite often found themselves being turned into feed 1983 an unknown illness it is October 1983 veterinarian Mr Ray Williams is attending a cow that has been exhibiting some strange behaviour he is at Coleman farm in Wiltshire and over the next year Williams would see at least five more cows exhibiting very similar symptoms the animals are showing signs of distress shaking, poor coordination and trembling of the head the cows although showing normal hunger were also losing weight the animals were destroyed and thus no autopsy was made but these few victims would prove to be just the start of a mysterious condition in January 1985 Mr Williams discovered another cow from the same farm but a different unit exhibiting the same strange symptoms not wanting to miss out on finding out what the cause was he sent this cow which would now be named cow 36 to a veterinary school in Langford the animal was slaughtered and given a partial post-mortem in the report the cow was stated to have progressive nervous signs, hyperonecia, tremors, mania and hind leg ataxia but whilst Williams was dealing with this strange illness little did he know that another farm called Pitchham over a hundred miles away in Sussex had an animal showing the very same strange symptoms cow 133 as it was officially known was observed in December 1984 to have lost all of its coordination and was experiencing severe shaking six weeks later it died much to the confusion of local veterinarian Mr David B B like Williams at the same time would see several more cows showing the same symptoms almost like it was spreading amongst the farm's population B coined the new illness stent farm syndrome after the owner of the farm Peter Stent and sent a number of tissue samples to the central veterinary laboratory the first officially diagnosed case of BSE was from cow number 142 pathologist Carol Richardson examined the cow and saw similarities with the samples that B had sent in previously she diagnosed the illness as a bovine scrapie which was confirmed by the consultant pathology unit as a side note scrapie is a known condition even known as early as 1732 it is fatal and is a degenerative disease affecting the nervous systems of sheep and goats but it is not known to be transmissible to humans and as such infected meat can be consumed the name comes from the behavior of the infected individual scraping their bodies against rocks cow 142's autopsy results will be reviewed a number of times one such was in June 1987 when it was confirmed the illness was a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy or the less of a mouthful BSE a couple of months later the UK government would accept the new disease but although the cause of the strange symptoms was discovered an unknown number of cattle had been infected although the early signs were there from 1983 it is now thought to have occurred in cows as early as the 1970s very likely it was spread through the meat and bone meal that was fed to cattle and in the late 1980s the numbers of infected animals would soar as more and more unknowingly infected cattle were slaughtered and rendered however when the causal link was suggested in 1988 meat bone meal was banned for feeding to cattle but by now hundreds of thousands of cattle were potentially infected with mad cow disease the British Ministry of Agriculture accepted that it had a new disease but it was very slow to act only banning awful for human consumption in 1989 which was suggested by the Southwood report the Thatcher government sorry I said that wrong didn't I the Thatcher government were adamant that British beef was safe among the concerns over BSE saying the illness couldn't jump species but experiments at Oxford University had already shown the disease could infect other species when in 1988 mice were infected with BSE by brain to brain injection the Southwood report also advised that the government should slaughter and dispose of any cow that was suspected to have transmitted the disease the government complied but only offered a 50% compensation to farmers which seemed like a bit of a half-ass measure especially when BSE can take several years to manifest any symptoms after infection the lack of financial incentive led to many turning a blind eye to potentially infected animals with some farmers later being accused of selling cattle off the books however this was too little too late as the USA in 1989 banned British beef from its shores the government by 1990 was assuring the British public and the wider world market that British beef was safe to eat the conservative government said there was no evidence of catching the disease through the consumption of meat well until there was hello John here have you ever wondered who made the racket in the background to this video or the other scandal episodes or even the outro songs on pretty much every recent playing difficult episode well wonder no more as it was made by me John and you can now listen to the songs in full on my new YouTube channel made by John stream them on Spotify or even if you fancy by them to keep forever on Beatport and iTunes I enjoy making my personal mix of Acid House, Breakbeat and Ambient and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it Max the cat and the jump to humans Enter Siamese cat Max the feline had the most of its life being given a diet of British beef not so strange however what made Max unique was that he began exhibiting symptoms congruent with a feline form of BSc Max was confused losing weight had trouble keeping balance and the signature of the illness uncontrolled quivering the cat became the first known case outside of a laboratory of BSc jumping species scientists knew it was possible in the same year they had shown mice could develop the condition through eating infected food BSc had now officially jumped species Max and a number of other cats including a tiger became infected showing the risk of transmitting the disease through consumption of infected meat despite the ever growing storm clouds of thousands of cows developing BSc a 100% compensation scheme to farmers and tons of meat being destroyed the UK government doubled down with the line that British beef was still safe the Agriculture Minister John Gummer today enrolled his daughter Cordelia in his campaign to persuade people that eating beef is safe it was a little hot for her but later he munched it himself to prove to the world that he at least is confident there's nothing to worry about Secretary of State for the environment John Gummer appeared on TV virtually forcing his daughter to eat a beef burger nothing like dragging your children into politics at a young age I guess what happened to him he eventually got made a member of the House of Lords anyways no matter how much head in the sand stances the government made by 1992 an estimated 100,000 cattle had become infected with BSc this amounted to roughly 3 in every 1000 cows having the potential to be infected between 1992 and 1993 some 4.4 million cattle had been slaughtered and disposed of mainly by burning the corpses in the fields of the British countryside this proved to be financially decimating for the British farming sector and as such the government continued to claim the safety of British beef with the chief medical officer reaffirming the safe to eat party line even though the numbers of the infected reached the peak of the outbreak the human tragedy was yet to unfold in late 1994 a few people in Britain were showing symptoms of a rare illness Brutsfeldt-Yakob disease so rare is Cij that between 50 and 60 people get the disease per year in the UK well what's so strange you might think rare illnesses exist what is odd is that traditionally the condition rarely affects anyone under the age of 55 and the new victims were nearly 30 years younger during the late 1980s and early 1990s there were at least 4 cases of farm workers all over the age of 55 being taken ill with CJD which proved to be a very strange coincidence it was kind of looking like there was a vocational link to cattle and CJD a 19 year old man named Stephen Churchill would die in May 1995 apparently linked to this rare illness a younger 16 year old girl had been identified around the same time but Stephen was the first of the under 55 cases to succumb to the illness needless to say that unusual deaths in young people often warrant thorough autopsies James Ironside a pathologist at the National CJD Surveillance Unit saw the brains of the patients and showed unusual spongiform symptoms he named this new condition variant CJD or VCJD in total in 1995 4 people would die from VCJD but in September the government stated that there was insufficient evidence to link BSE and VCJD but eventually on the 20th of March 1996 the government would begrudgingly capitulate and Stephen Dorrell the secretary of state for health said there was actually a link between VCJD and infected beef 7 days later the EU would enact a ban on British beef but why did children get so much of the issues? well the facture government in the 1980s had removed the requirement for school dinners to have any nutritional value as such schools were using mechanically recovered meat which was not much better than meat bone meal in response to the EU ban on British beef the UK sought to legally challenge the export ban and introduced a scheme to slaughter and destroy all cattle over the age of 30 months this rift between the UK and EU during this period which heavily affected the UK farming economy has been argued to be one of the sparks that started off the Brexit movement of which a large number of farmers voted for in the EU referendum millions of cattle burned in the fields of the UK countryside as the UK government attempted to get a handle on the outbreak however British beef was still on the menu in British switches albeit not allowing to be sold on the bone but there was still rest to people in 1997 local council stopped serving beef in roughly 2000 schools across the country over the next 20 years 178 people would go on to contract and die of the disease but let's quickly pause here to discuss the CJD and how it affects the human body the CJD the contraction of the CJD has appeared to be a bit of a lottery of genetics as millions of people ate infected meat but there are under 200 known death clearly the odds are low although you'd never like to know your chances when you're taking the spin on the roulette wheel of death the CJD is caused by things called prions officially called protonaceous infectious particles they are misfolded proteins that have the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein in an uninfected person prions begin as a string of amino acids that then fold themselves into three dimensional shapes sometimes during protein folding issues can happen and the prion protein can't be used by the body these are usually recycled but can cause issues if large enough quantities build up after eating infected meat the malicious prions infect healthy brain proteins in the body they then build up on the brain and cause more misfolded prions in doing so this kills off brain cells naturally the dying of brain cells creates reduced cognitive and physical functions what is scary is that these dangerous prions can survive in a nerve tissue such as brain or spinal cord for a long time after death which if eaten spreads the disease potentially the CJD can lie dormant in your body for many years as such some countries have bans on British citizens donating blood if they live during the crisis but was there any accountability for the continued sale and denial of infected meat? the enquiry at the height of the disaster an enquiry was announced in December 1997 the new Labour government under the premiership of Tony Blair had been in power since May the same year in its executive summary published in October by Nick Brown the secretary for agriculture at the time the public was repeatedly reassured that it was safe to eat beef some statements failed to explain that the views expressed were subject to proper observance of the precautionary measures which had been introduced to protect human health against the possibility that VSE might be transmissible these statements conveyed the messages not merely that beef was safe but that VSE was not transmissible the enquiry also slated the government for its lack of consideration for the amount of infected material needed to be eradicated from the meat more serious was a failure to give rigorous consideration to the amount of infected material that was proving capable of transmitting the disease the false assumption was made that any cross-contamination of cattle feed in feed mills from pig or poultry feed containing ruminant protein would be onto a small scale matter as the 90s came to a close the numbers of infected cattle were reduced as the population of cows were essentially eradicated from the UK restrictions on beef were slowly raised meat on the bone and offal were still restricted well into the mid 2000s even for UK markets and the EU would lift its ban in 2006 after a 10-year embargo on British beef although France continued to impose a ban on British beef illegally long after plainly summary personally it seemed like the government at the time was during the reigns of two conservative prime ministers Batcha and John Major were more willing to play down and in some cases outright ignore the warning signs to the risk of millions of British citizens all of this was to try and prop up a significant portion of the UK economy incompetence, profits, over safety or a bit of both will be up to you to decide but regardless many hundreds were paid a price and maybe still will this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently nice corner of southern London UK help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing I'd like to thank my patrons and YouTube members for your support and also if you enjoyed any of the music in this video you can listen to it on my second channel made by John stream it on Spotify or even if you feel like buy it on iTunes as such all of the links are in the description below and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us out please our bodies have an instinctual drive to live right from conception without conscious thought your heart beats your diaphragm moves up and down to take in air into your lungs your immune system constantly checks for infections your digestive system breaks down food for energy and your brain takes information about its surroundings to assess dangers in any part of life the latter of this list is what you would likely call the survival instinct that nagging feeling about a situation the disgust of rotting food or even the fear of some animals one such tool we subconsciously use to protect ourselves is our perception of depth is it there from birth or developed over time from experience well we all know not to jump off a cliff even though we haven't experienced it ourselves we know it's not a great move for our life expectancy but how to answer the question of when does the depth perception instinct come into being well a scientific team would try and find out by trying to get babies to crawl off of a simulated cliff edge my name is John and welcome to the dark side of science our story begins our story like every one has a beginning even the ones that involve trying to coax babies to crawl off a simulated cliff today our story begins in a place called the behavior farm in the early 1950s and one of its assistants the LPHD graduate Eleanor Jack Gibson the farm was under the control of psychologist Howard Scott Liddell Liddell had set up the laboratory modelled on famous behaviourist Ivan Pavlov's Leningrad labs by the 1950s the farm was mainly creating experimental neuroses in the animals on the farm the subjects read on site were goats which allowed access to infants for various experiments Gibson had a burning desire to undertake her own experiments and made use of her time at the farm to study maternal infant interactions one instant on the farm would create the spark for Gibson's future experimental career part of her experiments involved immediately cleaning one of the pair of twin kid goats immediately after birth with a detergent before the mother had a chance to lick it this was to see if the maternal bond would be interrupted whilst cleaning the kid its twin appeared needing somewhere to place the clean infant she put it on the top of a camera stand interestingly it stayed neatly keeping its little feet on the stand this was interesting it was almost like the animal instinctively knew jumping off was a bad idea Gibson would ultimately quit at the behaviour farm in 1952 when upon returning from a weekend off finding her goat test subjects having been given away as Easter gifts well it is at this point that Gibson would meet her research partner Richard Walk Walk had arrived at Cornell University as a young professor the relationship was an odd one for the era with Walk outranking Gibson by being a professor but the female research assistant was considerably more experienced in science and was even 10 years older in age however Walk being a professor gave him use of lab space something Gibson hadn't been able to secure it would seem the pair would be a good match they would kick off this working relationship with a study involving rats in environmental differences based experiments where they would be reared in enhanced or impoverished situations where the results could be compared to normally raised control subjects kind of similar to Harry Harlow's experiments although a hell of a lot less evil one of their rat studies involved breeding a cohort of subjects in darkness to be compared with a control group that had been raised in normal light conditions to make use of the time consuming process Walk and Gibson looked to find another use for their light-deprived victims this would involve a test involving depth perception to test if they had depth perception Walk Gibson and a research assistant, Thomas Tye, built a simulated cliff this was a pane of glass held up by clamps and rods to simulate the depth different colour wallpaper backers were used with a shallow and deep side separated by a centreboard three inches high the experiment was the visual cliff alpha version so to speak well much to their surprise the dark reared rats actually acted just like their control counterparts preferring to go into the shallow side of the apparatus intriguing the results would push Walk and Gibson to develop the experiment further into a more permanent setup they looked to make the perceived distance of the drop adjustable and importantly stronger and robust for a wider range of animals the duo looked to test on other species of animals including goats, pigs, chickens, dogs, kittens and monkeys all of which avoided the deep side when attempted to be placed on the glass at the deep end most animals would try and escape or just refuse to put their feet down on the glass it looked apparent that depth perception was innate well not quite when dark reared kittens were placed on the apparatus they just wandered around not giving two sods about the deep or shallow side but the big question was what would a real human do well it was the late 1950s of course it was time to find some poo and sick machines to run the experiment onto the experiment prior to the visual cliff there was not much in the way of depth perception studies in children this was mainly due to the risks involved with simulating heights well at least before Walk and Gibson's method so the version of the cliff for the baby study was a sheet of plexiglass that covers a cloth with a checkerboard pattern on one side the cloth is placed immediately beneath the plexiglass and thus is the shallow end and the other side is about 4 feet or 1.2 meters lower creating the drop obviously there is no risk to the child there is an illusion of depth which is accentuated by the cloth pattern the babies will be placed on the central portion of the apparatus and be encouraged to either the shallow end or cross the void to the deep end by the baby's mother the key goal was to find if a baby has to develop depth perception or it is born with it in Walk and Gibson's 1960 paper they note in their introduction the question of nature versus nurture common sense might suggest that the child learns to recognise falling off places by experience that is by falling and hurting himself but is experience really the teacher or is the ability to perceive and avoid the brink part of the child's original endowment the experiment started off with a pilot beta test this involved an 18 month old boy his name is unknown to history but he crawled to his mother's core on the shallow side after reaching it he stood up and shuffled around when encouraged to cross the deep side he refused and when placed on the deep end he showed great stress and anxiety desperately grabbing at the wooden sides of the apparatus so Walk and Gibson recruited 36 infants ranging from the ages of 6 to 14 months initially they were placed on the centre board and observed for a number of minutes during this time the mother stood behind a screen the first two children didn't try to explore their surroundings and because of this lack of results but a third subject this method was abandoned but a remainder of the subjects the mother would call their child towards both the cliff and shallow sides successively interestingly when called to the deep side most of the infants refused and when seeing their mothers on the other side of the chasm showed distress in not being able to reach them some even patted the glass over the deep end and even though feeling a solid surface would refuse to cross some even moved away to the shallow side others still just peered into the deep side out of the 36 subjects only three had attempted to go onto the deep side 27 had moved but only onto the shallow side with the remainder of the test subjects refusing to move at all or just not following their mother's call and ignoring them this is quite common in infants as they love to ignore their parents the mother of the children who had not attempted to venture onto the deep side largely seemed disappointed as they had felt that they had failed the experiment but the children had shown that they were more dependent on their eyesight than the call of their mother the experiment showed at least in most of the test subjects that depth perception is pretty much there from when we begin to crawl that was the end of the original study which will be published in 1960 but although arguably answering the question of depth perception and infants it raised another about maternal trust between child and mother the three that did venture onto the deep side creates a new dilemma were they overriding their fear of the fall with their faith in their mother well, this would open the door to a whole range of other comparative psychological studies making the visual cliff a classic form of experiment one such study was inter-maternal signaling in 1985 by James F. Sauss et al in which the mother was placed across from the chasm and encouraged the infants using various different emotional states such as happiness, anger and sadness happiness unsurprisingly yielded the best results another side-quest experiment using the visual cliff on infants was with those who were pre-locomotive, aka pre-crawling to measure their distress levels when placed on the shallow or deep side and spoiler alert, in a 1970 experiment by Joseph J. Campos et al babies became rather distressed in the deep side hinting at depth perception and thus the fear of heights being innate that is from birth the experiment cemented Walken Gibson into the annals of experimental psychology but now it's time to see what you think was the study ethical children weren't harmed although possibly a bit distressed the question has to be raised at least for a second about the informed consent something the children couldn't give although nowhere near as bad it does have some feeling of the baby Albert study or the Bobo-Dull study this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed those videos are produced by me John in the currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I would like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support and also for the rest of you who tune in every week to watch my videos I have an Instagram which the link will be in the description as well as Twitter where you can check out random pictures and odds and sods if you're enjoying this outro song then please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it and watch the video in full and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us that please and thank you for watching this is an important message it is the 2nd of December 1959 and a photographer is preparing their camera today they aren't documenting a wedding or a baptism but a disaster the city of Réjuice has been battered by a wave of floodwater the culprit the dam that towered above it the name Mal-Persay my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult background our story starts and will ultimately end in the French Riviera and the need for a dam just north of the city of Réjuice in the early 1950s although a new project the need for a dam in the region had been frequently brought up over several decades before a number of previous projects had failed to get off the ground as early as 1865 you see the area had an issue with the Rayran river where it is mostly dry in the summer but conversely bursting at the banks in the autumn and winter this is where a dam would be beneficial as it could attempt to regulate the flow of water and even out the Jekyll and Hyde like behaviour of the river a dam would have a number of other benefits providing water for agriculture, domestic use as well as creating a lake for the use in the tourism sector before any concrete could be poured for the dam geological surveys had to be undertaken with each preceding project surveys had been completed but these were not particularly useful as each proposed dam was a completely different design from the other well in preparation for the 1950s project surveys of the valley at the potential building site took place in 1946 where a fault line was discovered by the science department in Marseille who were undertaking the initial site investigations they advised that further investigation was required by excavating sections of the river banks to check their internal composition and identify any unweathered rock they also suggested that other sites should probably also be considered another survey took place in November 1949 but a company in charge of the project decided to move the foundation site 200 metres downstream without any additional geological survey and a new placement the dam was going to be an arch dam these had a number of advantages most notably cost as it uses a thin dam curved structure which spreads the weight of the reservoir into presumably solid banks in comparison the 1800s design was going to be a gravity type which is very large and expensive so the new Marseille dam was penned by renowned French civil engineer André Coyne and the project will be funded and owned by department Va the dam was going to be 222 metres wide and was a doubly curved equal angle arch type with a variable radius it was also to be made out of concrete with a masonry base it was 6.78 metres wide at the base tapering up to a 1.5 metres thick at the top and 66 metres tall with an aimed reservoir capacity of 50 million cubic metres of water on the right bank looking upstream a 10 metre high concrete abutment was also planned due to the topography of the valley level control was rather simple at Marseille with a simple spillway at the centre of the dam which would allow water to well spill over the top there was also a draw off made from a metal pipe of 1.5 metres in diameter cutting across the foot of the arch and shut by valves if the level exceeded 99.5 metres then a fixed wheel gate would automatically open allowing water to flow down the draw off this system was also able to be manually controlled construction began in April 1952 and after two years was complete in October 1954 upon completion it was said to be the thinnest dam at its height in the world but although the structure was complete the filling of the lake behind the dam would be a long, long task taking several more years filling the reservoir at an even pace is vital overstressed too quickly and structural failure is guaranteed but filling too slowly can cause issues well but we will come back to that later on in the video this was the reason why Malpasse although built in 1954 wouldn't even be close to full capacity until 1959 as the water level increased cracks appeared and were discovered on the right hand side of the dam but were largely ignored by mid-November 1959 the reservoir was roughly 7 metres below the crest and the cracks had turned into clear streams of water running down the right hand side of the dam somehow reservoir water was escaping now if things were looking a little bit ropey imagine what a torrential downpour would add to the mix well, imagine no more the disaster so Malpasse dam wasn't looking too great towards the end of November 1959 the dam's right side was still leaking and now a downpour of rain had arrived and wasn't helping one of the dam's guardians, Andre Ferro requested permission to open the gate for the draw-off to reduce the reservoir level on the 2nd of December sensible idea however this would have encroached upon construction of the Marseille-Nise motorway about 1km downstream from the dam the reservoir would be allowed to fill up remember how it had taken years to fill well, the water depth would increase by the rain by 4 metres in just 24 hours Ferro was finally given the okay to open the gate at 6pm but by then it was probably too little too late over 3 hours of the gate being open only a few centimetres of depth was removed the dam was now groaning under the weight of the water the dam breached at 13 minutes past 9 in the evening releasing a torrent of water 40 metres high at a speed of 70km it destroyed everything in its wake including two small villages the motorway finally reaching 20 minutes later flooding the western half of the town by the time it hit the town the wall of water was still 3 metres tall and littered with concrete debris eventually the torrent reached the Mediterranean Sea complete destruction had hit the region all road and rail connections were severed hindering residents from escaping and rescue workers from reaching the disaster site 155 buildings were destroyed with a further 796 damaged cars were washed away and shops were decimated an estimated 423 people lost their lives in the tragedy with many more injured hundreds were made homeless with 79 orphaned sadly dam failures cause incomprehensible tragedy to an area but as the community began to clean up and try to heal the wounds the cause had to be found the aftermath well it would become quite clear that the interrupted and incomplete surveys of the dam site would come back to bite the project in the behind when looking at the dam face upstream you can see the likely start point of the failure that right abutment the one that was leaking it was discovered after a thorough geological survey that there in fact was a fault line downstream from the dam this stopped infiltration water from flowing away and instead collected below the foundations of the dam as the weight and pressure built up from the filling of the reservoir it unseated the dam's foundations this formed cracks which were then filled by the impounded water in the reservoir thus weakening the structure which led to the base being stripped from the valley and when the right hand side failed the rest would only have to follow pretty disastrous but the issues with the dam were not just geological but human although the dam was a good design but placed incorrectly people were the cause ultimately for the failure you see the regulators saw the dam differently to others because it was mainly due to be used for agriculture it attracted less scrutiny than that of a hydroelectric dam and thus fewer inspections were undertaken little was done to check out the design due to the designer being so successful in his career with over 70 structures under his belt pretty much all of which were problem free the long time it took to fill the reservoir was also an issue as in 1959 the dam was still on its first filling which really when testing out such a structure it should be filled and emptied a number of times building up to its final capacity instead they just decided to reach full capacity in the middle of a downpour they should have opened the gateway earlier to reduce the level in the reservoir building up of water behind the dam gradually by emptying and filling successive times gives time to find any issues and fix them as they arrive interestingly over a number of court cases the design of the dam was cleared more putting blame on the choice of location Andre Coyne, the dam's designer died a few months after the disaster emitting full responsibility but as we've seen the real cause was not just down to one man but a whole selection of issues the dam was never replaced but left as a reminder of the all too common issues of corner and cost cutting so I'm going to rate this disaster as people will hear about this and a six on my legacy scale do you agree? this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain default videos are produced by me John in a currently very windy and wet corner of southern London UK I have Twitter and Instagram so feel free to check them out if you want to see all the random photographs I post up if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel by John where you can watch the rest of the video and listen to the song in full I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you who tune in every week to see your dose of disaster and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music Man place out please it is two o'clock in the morning on the second of December 2013 and a truck has just driven into a petrol station in Tepoyaco in the municipality of Tiseyuca in Hidalgo state, Mexico the driver and his assistant are being watched quickly they are bundled out of the cab and the truck and its cargo are stolen the driver reports the theft to his employer who then reports it to the police this incident would trigger a country wide search the urgency in finding the truck is something out of the ordinary for just a regular truck jacking well as the two thieves make off with the truck into the night they are unaware of how much danger they are actually in and spoiler alert it's not from the police background our story starts at the medical institute Institute Mexicano del Segrio Social located in Tijuana Baja California state where the oncology department is making a change for over 50 years like all over the world radioactive sources have been used for the treatment of cancer and the cancer centre in Tijuana is no different they have been using common candidate for most lost radioactive source in history also known as cobalt 60 but unsurprisingly using this radioisotope adds a little bit of danger to the cancer treatment mix well not really if properly stored and maintained but we've seen in reality this isn't always the case they also have another downside which is decay you see a radioisotope loses its potency over time which means it needs to be replaced and this has a cost this problem was kind of solved with the change over to linear accelerators they produce a more reliable flexible and accurate beam of radiation without a need for cobalt 60 brilliant but what to do with all those older potentially deadly machines space confines and security concerns usually mean that they can't just be left somewhere on site for the many years to decay to a stable state instead they need to be properly disposed of this would be the fate of one such tether therapy machine the head which was where the cobalt 60 lived was packed up and placed on a flatbed truck it is at roughly a quarter of its radioactivity from 2002 when it was originally measured at 458 terebecuels it is in 2013 low at roughly 100 but it is by no means safe it is classed as a category one source being described as this source if not safely managed or securely protected would be likely to cause permanent injury to a person who handled it or who was otherwise in contact with it for more than a few minutes it would probably be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period in the range of a few minutes to an hour now the trucks journey was going to be a long one roughly 31 hours if driven non stop the destination is the radioactive waste storage centre located near the town of Santa Maria, Mexico Mexico State the heist in the early hours of the 2nd of December 2013 the two men in the truck pulled into the petrol station in Tepoyaco to get much needed rest two carjackers saw this as an opportunity to make some money they attacked the driver and his assistant to call the truck and its cargo calling this a heist gives the men a bit too much credit the truck was stolen to be cut up for parts and whatever the cargo was would be a little extra payday bonus on the same day as the theft the two carjackers sold the truck and its cargo to a local scrap merchant no questions were asked and after the crossing of some palms the big metal tele-therapy shielding was being evaluated for its scrap metal worth 5 workers at the time are on site and they begin dismantling the tele-therapy head now this might sound a bit deja vu well its because scrap dealers acquiring and cutting up radioactive material shielding is an all too common event and definitely too common for my liking soon enough these 5 workers began to exhibit the telltale signs of radiation sickness for whatever reason one of the men took parts of the source head as well as the cobalt and dumped them in a nearby field on the 3rd of December a local resident saw this and went to investigate he found a long cylindrical metal piece it was warm to the touch and very heavy the resident lifted it onto his shoulder and moved it approximately 15 meters from the dump site and hid it meanwhile official search efforts were well underway the search the driver and his assistant reported the theft around 8am on the 2nd of December this set off a chain reaction excuse the pun with the federal police and the committee on international disarmament terrorism and security who were also informed the next day source search activities began with 4 teams equipped with radiation monitoring equipment they were dispatched to search an area of roughly 5 kilometers around from where the truck was stolen on the 5th the search radius was expanded to 10 kilometers and sightings of the stolen truck were reported in Huay Pogstallar municipality while searching the area federal police officers were approached by a local resident who claimed to have a mysterious piece of metal in his backyard this turned out to be the empty tele-therapy head shielding the police detected slightly elevated radiation levels around the resident's house but frustratingly no source just under a kilometer to the east radiation monitoring equipment detected proper elevated levels in an uninhabited field the national nuclear safety and safeguards commission dispatched a team to the site of the high radiation levels they advised the police to establish a 1 kilometer exclusion zone around the source it was now time to try and recover that cobalt 60 even though they knew the source must be in the field they couldn't actually see it this is because it had been hidden earlier by a local resident but dosimeters gave a rough idea of where it was two perimeters were established where the radiation levels were at 100 microcverts an hour and 500 millisieverts an hour but although a good headway had been made night enveloped the area hindering recovery they would have to wait until the next day on the 5th of December teams from the police nuclear safety commission Laguna Verde nuclear power plant and the navy searched the area carefully marking off sections that did not have high radiation levels this was in order to narrow down the source without risking the health of the search parties towards the end of the day and with a pretty well surveyed area an action plan was conceived to recover the source on the site the approximate location was found it looked like the source was hidden under some straw unsurprisingly this would cause more delay to recovery as the source had to be clear completely clear you don't want to try picking up a source unless you know it's all there just look at the headache that Goiana caused with its open source container at least by now they had a reasonable idea of how big of a transport container they would need to get to the source the straw and crops needed to be removed and this would require a robot the resident who had told them about the scrap metal in his garden turned out to be the same guy who had hidden the source on the 7th of December he told the police the exact location and finally they had confirmed where that source actually was it would take however another two days of the robot clearing the crops and finally on the 9th of December the source container was visible and thankfully not damaged now how to recover the source well that robot which was doing the crop clearing would turn out to be even more useful on the 10th of December using the robots onboard camera operators were able to finally recover the source after two attempts it was placed inside a newly fabricated container and once the lid was placed over it radiation levels returned to below IAEA recommended safe recordings after the best part of the week the source was back on a truck being transported to a secure facility but what of those who had been all too close to the source well the scrapyard workers weren't hard to find the five men were arrested and taken to hospital in Pachua for treatment the two carjackers were arrested sometime later all seven men were charged on the 1st of February 2014 with organised crime of vehicle theft dismantling of a stolen motor vehicle reception of a stolen motor vehicle theft of a tele-therapy unit head and cobalt 60 source and abandonment of radioactive substances now the whole incident highlights the risks of radioactive material transportation and storage Mexico isn't unique as there have been several cases of orphaned sources throughout the world due to theft funnily if the carjackers had targeted almost any other vehicle they would likely have gotten away with their crime the event did result in Mexican authorities learning how to improve security and search operations right so this week's subject I'm going to rate it an O balls and a three on my legacy scale due to the legacy being relatively localised if you want to find out more as always check out the IAA report in the description as it acted as the framework and primary source for this video this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licence plain difficult videos are produced by me John and they're currently not wet but windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support and also the rest of you viewers for tuning in every week I have Twitter and Instagram so check them out if you want to see random photographs and hints on future videos and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please it's December 2013 and a French company executive is being sentenced to four years in prison the event marks the end of a criminal investigation into probably one of cosmetic surgery's most famous cases of scandal and fraud the executive is John Claude Ma and he was the main driving force behind a truly horrifying case of profit over safety the scandal puts several thousand people at risk of serious injury and heightened cancer as well as betraying the trust and defrauding their customers from all over the world my name is John and welcome to another episode of Scandal today I'm looking at the repulsive PIP implant affair forward okay so before we start I should say I won't be talking about the reasons why some people get implants or the wider plastic surgery industry as it's a personal choice some cosmetic surgeries restore a person's body after life-saving surgeries like a mastectomy as such the end user so to speak of the implants that represents a multitude of reasons for going under the knife although I have never had any kind of cosmetic surgery myself I can understand the distress and suffering the victims must have been subjected to during the scandal oh and pronunciation warning there are a few French words that I'll be butchering throughout the course of this video well that's enough of me gibbering let's start our story at probably the most suitable point background meet Jean-Claude Ma born in France in probably the worst years to be born there 1939 much of his early life is unknown but snippets of his adult life career can be pieced together according to French daily Le Monde Ma in the 1960s and 1970s worked for US pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb or BMS career then went to the meat trade some say that he was a butcher but this claim has been disputed officially he has said himself that he worked in the dried sausage and wine industry it was during this time he became associated with surgeon Henry Arion a man famed for introducing breast implants into France in 1965 Arion's implants were the world's first inflatable prosthesis basically bags that were filled with saline solution now I should say that different news agencies have reported Ma working in the meat industry before working for BMS and others have reported Ma working in meat after BMS but the important takeaway is regardless of chronology Ma's career involved a substantial industry change so just remember he knew about sausages being a medical rep and knowing Henry Arion basically it boils down to sales and product and after meeting Arion the product was implants laboratories Arion founded by Henry were one of the major players in the implant industry this was in the 1980s and Ma must have seen this as a prime business opportunity but his mentor would tragically die in a plane crash in 1991 but this didn't apparently stop him in the same year he founded PIP or poly implant prosthesis upon the company's founding Ma hired 120 employees and set about travelling the world to some of the biggest markets for breast implants one of which was the UK and this doesn't surprise me one bit anyhoo PIP's business plan worked pretty well hundreds of thousands of implants were shipped around the world and an estimated 100,000 were produced each year making the company the third largest silicone implant manufacturer in the world the product was different to the saline filled implants that Henry Arion had pioneered PIP would use solid silicone implants which are seen as advantageous over saline ones as they apparently look and feel more natural interestingly PIP would later on in the 90s also make saline implants as well well the reason for this I'll go into in a little bit all of their products were manufactured at Le La Saini Seumir in south-eastern France and I know I butchered that one however problems were on the horizon for the company when one of its biggest markets would disappear from PIP's grip FDA banned silicone implants it's 1992 and the US Food and Drugs Administration launched a voluntary moratorium on the sale of silicone-based implant products that is not good news for PIP who were at the time predominantly selling silicone products you see American manufacturers of silicone implants had been racking up an ever increasing number of lawsuits throughout the 1980s in regards to their implants rupturing essentially silicone was banned in one of PIP's biggest markets well Ma sought to find alternatives this led him to start using hydrogen implants in 1994 followed by those saline implants in 1996 so far so good but things would come crashing down in 2000 when an inspector from the FDA was sent to the PIP plant in France to carry out an inspection this was on the 15th of May and shortly after the inspector returned home to the United States a warning letter saying the implants were adulterated and citing at least 11 deviations from good manufacturing practices was sent to PIP so needless to say this would close the US market door to PIP quickly the company also withdrew its hydrogel implants presumably because they could also not prove the safety of those ones either the loss of the US market severely hit PIP's finances and the resourceful Ma found a way to make their product immensely more profitable just by altering a few of their products ingredients just by a little bit you see the silicone used in implants has to be of medical grade which is expensive very expensive and is usually externally sourced Ma thought why not use the much cheaper industrial grade material a manufacturer in house it was nearly 90% cheaper after all this reduced materials cost would allow the company to weather the storm of losing the US I assume no one outside PIP's management knew of the potential damage that can be caused by industrial silicone so let's look at what silicone is used for and you can use it for pretty much any job that requires a water resistant and durable sealant it's used in cookware like this set I have it can also be used in rubber keypads or a lubricant or even molds basically it's used everywhere but vitally this is all the industrial grade silicone and you don't want this stuff inside your body needless to say PIP didn't do any testing of a new formula of the silicone for the surgeons using the implants little could be differentiated between the two silicone types only a small superficial change could be seen but only if the two are sat side by side so it wouldn't take long for the first issues with PIP implants to start rearing their ugly head the scandal discovered within just two years of the silicone change reports of premature rupture started appearing in the markets that PIP had a stake in in 2003 lawsuits began piling up at PIP's door but the company continued to grow the business as they were able to keep these incidents out of public knowledge the cut price tag of PIP's implants created a greater demand for example in the UK in the mid-2000s the cost per unit was in the region of £100 the going rate at the time for other brands was closer to £700 the age old adage remains true if it's too good to be true then it probably likely is by 2006 plastic surgeons across the world had seen a starting high number of PIP implants rupturing within three years for context the expected life of them should have been at least 10 years which personally even that doesn't seem long enough around the same time the company was forced to pay 1.4 million euro to British victims but this would just be the tip of the expensive iceberg by 2009 the number of failed implant cases was in the thousands and as such in France alone 2000 women had filed lawsuits against the company the French agency there's products launched an investigation in March 2010 around the same time PIP was put into liquidation by now it was at a loss of roughly 9 million euro the investigation quickly unraveled Mars deception and revoked the company's CE mark banning the sale and export of the PIP implants they found that the implants contained bicellome, syloprene and rhodosil chemicals are used as fuel additives or in the production of rubber the criminal case criminal proceedings for Mars and PIP were just around the corner Mars was arrested in June 2010 in Costa Rica but not for what you might think it was for dangerous driving and after being handed a court date for November the same year he fled the country back to France landing himself a spot on the interpol list but he was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire it was discovered during interviews with mine November 2010 that from 1993 the company was facing a silicone shortage Mars had ordered staff to hide the truth and was quoted in saying we did it for 13 years about a problem but what was this they were almost right from the start to the company going into the business of defrauding their customers with their products containing 75% homemade silicone mixed with 25% medical grade silicone but non-safe materials bought off the books and via proxies to avoid suspicion needless to say with these revelations French authorities were recommended the case be put to the police for criminal proceedings in December 2011 a woman died in France of anaplastic large cell lymphoma planted with the PIP breast implant the death was apparently linked to PIP implants shortly after on the 23rd of December 2011 the French government advised the removal of all PIP implants in French women as a preventative measure this would cost roughly 60 million euro however strange in the UK the medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency did not give out the same advice they asked to seek inspection by a medical professional and seek help if the implants are suspected of rupture personally this wouldn't feel very confidence inspiring by 2012 more women were linked to having at least 8 cases of breast tumors but the number would quickly rise to 20 there was more than enough now to charge Jean-Claude Marne and on the 26th of January 2012 at 7 o'clock in the morning he was arrested in the home of a friend under the charge of fraud unsurprisingly this would result in a trial the 74 year old put up the defence of I know I was doing illegal stuff but it wasn't dangerous honest a proven method to guarantee a conviction and that's what happened and after a month long trial in April 2013 Marne was sentenced to 4 years in prison with a few other PIP executives seeing prison sentences but of lesser time he was also slapped with a 75,000 euro fine in addition to being permanently banned from working in medical services or running a company it seems pretty light to me as an estimated 300,000 people are affected by the dodgy implants this issue won't go away anytime soon either with many countries taking the line of the UK with no replacement instead just regular check up now there is another part to this scandal which surprisingly has already been covered in one of my older videos about a dam failure TUV Technicia Ubavash and Varen or for us English speakers Technical and Inspection Association is a company that certifies and inspects pretty much anything you can think of one such thing they certified was a Brazilian company Vale and the same Vale that was responsible for two dam failures Brumman Dinho and the Mariana Dam disaster the former was actually inspected and given a thumbs up by TUV 10 months before it collapsed killing many people anyway TUV had certified the French implant manufacturing process and in 2013 TUV Rhineland was found liable by a French court and made to pay 1600 women whose breast implants had ruptured compensation although TUV has still denied the ingredients used at PIP this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attributes and share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I have YouTube members and patrons and I'd like to thank you for your financial support and also I'd like to thank the rest of you for tuning in every week for your dose of disaster and death I have Instagram and Twitter please feel free to go to my second YouTube channel made by John to watch the video and listen to the song in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please right before we start just a quick plug I have some new t-shirts out on my teespring store it's been a couple of years since I've done some new designs so if you fancy check them out it's a cold December afternoon in East Sussex emergency workers are exhausted they've just witnessed destruction very few people will see in their lifetime an industrial site has been decimated making it look like a wall zone but it's not ammunition nor fertilizer that's caused this but something that brings joy and excitement to any festival or party fireworks it is 2006 and a fireworks factory and storage site is the centre of this week's video my name is John and today we will be looking at the Mali Farm Disaster background our story starts rather differently for this channel with me searching on companies house basically for all you non-brits it's the government organisation in charge of maintaining the register of all registered companies in the UK don't worry this will have some relevance to our story it is August 1997 and a new company has been vomited into existence Sussex fireworks and displays limited it is owned by husband and wife Martin and Julie Winter they own a farm and they are planning to use it as part of the manufacturer, storage and sale of fireworks their paperwork doesn't really end with just the incorporation documents as this type of operation requires both trading standards and the health and safety executive to licence the production and sale of what are basically small colourful explosions now little information is known for the company operations before 2001 when it changed its name to festival fireworks limited followed by a few months later Martin and Julie incorporating a new company Sussex fireworks displays limited this was to split the operations of manufacturer and sale into two distinct legal entities which makes sense as it limits potential losses of one part of the operation Marley Farm is a small industrial estate located on the road B2192 in between Ringma and Halland East Sussex which is around here on a map not too far from the Piltdown man's site the surrounding area is mainly agricultural cultural with a few housing areas nearby the winters along with their son and daughter lived on the site in a detached house and rather nicely even having their own pool also a site is a steel beam fabrication company and although the land was leased from the winters the company had no real other affiliation with the family in 2005 the laws regarding explosives and by extension fireworks were changed this in theory would bring all operations of a site under one license from the HSC but there was a little bit of a grey area that was the two companies the winters had registered one for the sale and the other for the manufacturing of the fireworks because of this the HSC were responsible for licensing the production and trading standards remained in charge of the sale issuing a license to be able to store up to 350kg of explosive material in total around 21 tons of explosives were allowed to be on site the HSC issued a license in 2002 and was allowed to be carried over with the new legislation in 2005 but the HSC would undertake semi-regular inspections of the site one of which would be in October 2006 and they found quite a few issues with the site the differences between submitted building plans and actual buildings on site which resulted in reduced separation distances between the structures poorly stored, mixed class fireworks open and damaged boxes and on top of that no-full inventory of stock on site was kept the winters were ordered to take action on the raised issues by the 5th of January 2007 but spoiler alert they wouldn't end up needing to do that the disaster it's the 3rd of December 2006 and Martin and his son Nathan Winter are loading up an ISO storage container with fireworks and birdscares the metal container was due to be shipped to the Middle East they had likely forgotten in the rush that the company had actually been booked for a Christmas light switch on events in Eastbourne the client who had booked the company understandably getting a bit worried that no one had arrived in the morning and the rest of the fireworks at 1pm for reference the event was due to start at 4.30pm anyways the company advised the organisers that they were just about to leave and they should be with them soon which is not particularly accurate as their vehicle wasn't fully loaded and the journey would be at least half an hour long in good traffic at roughly 16 miles now for the start of the disaster narrative Nathan Winter's statements to the police for reference but take them with a pinch of salt but we'll come along to that later on so Nathan had retrieved some fireworks from another farm site earlier in a transit van but this wasn't everything he needed they needed to be made water resistant as just a little bit of dampness at the display site can properly bugger up the reliability of said fireworks going off the solution is simple bin bags wrap them up and they are pretty well protected from the English rain he did the wood proofing in the van outside building D Nathan next needed igniters luckily for him there were some leftovers from a previous display that had been left in a lorry on site stored inside paintings which bizarrely were filled with nails he then took the igniters and placed them on a box inside the building was many more already fused fireworks during this time he picked up the loose fuses planning on putting them in a box when all of a sudden they started igniting this was roughly between 130 and 140pm Nathan dropped the igniters which set off the fireworks on the veranda spreading the flames to the van which also set off fireworks within witnesses would begin to hear explosions around 145pm and a few minutes later the first 999 calls came in reporting of explosions and a fire at Marley farm it is roughly 2pm on Sunday the 3rd of December 2006 the firefighters are attending a fireworks fire on the Marley farm industrial estate in East Sussex two trucks also known as appliances have been dispatched as part of a predetermined emergency plan by the East Sussex fire and rescue service they discover a hectic scene unfolding buildings are light vehicles burning and fireworks being shot out in almost every direction the on-scene commander requested more fire trucks by now a number of police had also arrived on the scene not long after a second fire is discovered at the builders beam site next door and a team are sent to try and battle the flames quickly this team are overwhelmed and were ordered to retreat incredibly they managed to leave with a couple of gas tanks that they discovered the firefighters are then informed that the shipping container on site was full of fireworks and was under threat from the growing inferno the commander focused on two main areas stopping the fire near some LPG tanks and stopping the fire near the shipping container they were drawn from the winter swimming pool yet again more information about the container was received this time about the size of the fireworks inside quickly the decision was made to withdraw the evacuation whistle was sounded most of the crews withdrew to the site entrance but not all at 2.42pm the container exploded spewing out debris and flames amongst the farm nearly all the buildings on site were severely damaged and tragically 2 firefighters would not survive another 9 people were injured including police, firefighters and members of the public several more secondary fires and explosions erupted across the site causing ongoing danger from projectiles smoke and debris immediately after the explosion a search and rescue operation was launched with help from the south east coast ambulance service and Sussex police the injured were recovered but one of the victims remained amongst the rubble watch commander, wicker wouldn't be recovered until the fire was finally under control on Tuesday 5th December his body was carried out to a guard of his colleagues the police and HSC would spend many more days combing through the wreckage site gathering evidence the shipping container was not on the licence and thus was in need of investigation the aftermath the east Sussex and fire and rescue service would release a very detailed report on the disaster it was pretty easy to find out where the explosion came from but what made the container explode well in their final report they stated the continued rise in temperature inside the ISO container due to the adjacent fire would eventually lead to ignition of the contents that occurred through two mechanisms either other combustible material within the ISO container auto ignited and this fire then set off the contents or the contents themselves could have reached their ignition temperature and activated previous research including a number of tests carried out on the sensitivity of pyrotechnics to heat has shown that ignition occurs in the range of 220 and 360 degrees celsius it was also noted that a large number of injuries sustained by those on site was likely due to the lack of perceived danger of fireworks the report would also have 66 recommendations to the fire and rescue service but ultimately the responsibility must fall on the site's owners more specifically the ones who filled up the container, Martin and Nathan Winter so that would lead to a court case of two counts of manslaughter Nathan's series of events leading up to the initial fire was rather confused for his defense he would claim that the loose igniters activated as he was lifting them he then claimed he dropped them on a box of fireworks thus setting them off however an expert called in would discount this series of events stating that it was highly unlikely for the fireworks to start unless the igniter was actually installed you know the odd storage solution for the igniters in cans filled with nails, well those nails would wear away well I think I quickly need to explain how igniters work first Electric igniters have two insulated wires which at one end have a bridge wire coated with a small amount of pyrotechnic material the pyrotechnic material was sensitive to heat and friction the heat is supplied by a small electrical current which causes it to ignite but you don't actually want the friction part to work to protect the wire from this it is covered in a lacquer this can be damaged by sharp objects like nails and the friction of inserting the igniter into the fireworks is what could have caused the unintended explosion but although negligently stored dodgy igniters probably aren't enough for a manslaughter conviction the real crime was the unlicensed storage container full of explosives Nathan and Martin Winter were at Lewis Crown Court in December 2009 found guilty on all counts these were upheld on appeal in 2010 Martin got 7 years in prison and Nathan got 5 Alpha Fireworks, the new name for Festival Fireworks Limited was charged with two counts of breaching the manufacturer and storage of explosives regulations the families of firefighters Jeff Wicker and Brian Wembridge received compensation from the Fire Brigades Union of roughly £510,000 this was rather frustrating for the families as it took nearly 10 years for them to see any type of financial compensation although obviously this wouldn't bring their loved ones back it does feel like another slap in the face well I'm going to rate this disaster as outright negligent and a 4 on my legacy scale let me know if you agree in the comments below this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons that you should share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my patrons and YouTube members for your financial support I'd also like to plug my Twitter and my Instagram which I post up random photographs and if you're enjoying this outro song then you can listen to it and watch the video in full on my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please plain difficult videos are financially supported by the generosity of my Patreon and YouTube members members get early add free access to videos usually on Monday or Tuesday before it's released on the main channel you can also get other perks depending on the pledge including your name at the end of the video right well thanks for listening to me talk back to the normal scheduled dose of walking emergency crews are picking over the remains of what is looking like one of Japan's worst rail disasters a 7 car commuter train has derailed on a tight corner resulting in two of the front carriages being launched into an apartment building the train had been travelling on a Fukushima line on a semi express rapid passenger service now the train was involved clearly by looking at the wreckage the train had left the tracks with a great force but how and why the disaster would unravel the inherent pressure prevalent but not unique to Japanese railways the disaster acts as a warning for all industries and the power that fear of failure can actually create a far worse situation my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we're going to look at the derailment I must admit as a bit of a train fan Japanese railways have always been fascinating to me sadly I haven't been able to travel to the country yet to see it first hand but the efficiency of the use of the limited track space and smaller track gauge really gets my geeky side going I mean just look at their timetabling well there may be some signalling and train protection geeking out in this video just a warning before we get started background okay so we start with a brief history of the company that operated the fatal train journey in 2005 all the way back to its birth in 1987 this was when the national railway operator Japanese national rail was split up during privatisation several new companies were formed to operate their respective area of operations one of which was JR west which unsurprisingly would operate in the west of the Japanese island of Honshu JR west was tasked with operating the complex web of lines and interconnected services around the city of Osaka Japan's third most populous metropolitan area they also operated trains around Hiroshima but that's irrelevant for this particular video anyways like in all busy urban rail networks you have certain pinch points where multiple lines join one another one such place is Amagasaki just to the west of central Osaka it had been in operation since 1879 mainly as a local stop only but this would change in 1997 when the station became a busy intersection the station is where three lines intersect the JR Kobe Line Tokaido Main Line the JR Tarakazuka Line and the JR Tozai Line officially it is the terminus of the latter two but all services actually carry on for example a train on the Tozai Line would instead of terminating at Amagasaki transfer onto the Tarakazuka Line and carry on westwards or if travelling on the Tarakazuka Line eastbound the train would transfer onto the Tozai Line to travel out towards the Gakkontoshi Line on the east this is what many services do every day but if I show you on a map a little bit of an issue here with the topography of the area particularly to the west eastbound service in order to reach Amagasaki station trains need to negotiate a bit of a curve followed by another curve in order to be facing in the up eastbound direction I should also say Japan has a similar line direction nomenclature as the UK being up in the direction of the dating point and down the way from it usually the dating point is the nearest biggest city anyways I think before we get into the disaster train which was a west to east service from the Tarakazuka Line to the Tozai Line we need to talk about the signalling in the area and more importantly the train protection system or lack thereof in use at the time of the disaster the rail geek stuff this is my favourite part of these videos Japanese signalling has a few similarities which is signalling but also has some similarities with European and US signalling for reference UK signalling is known as root signalling where just the root is indicated to the driver with speed being indicated by a fixed speed boards the other method is speed signalling where the signals themselves tell the driver what speed to proceed at this makes Japan a bit of a hybrid system but I won't be delving too much into this just a brief overview as a foundation for the protection systems as they prove to be a very important component or lack of in the disaster later well as you may or may not know a large portion of Japanese railways use a smaller gauge than the standard 4ft 8.5 inches used across the world it uses a 3ft 6 inch gauge this inherently is less stable than standard gauge and even the Japanese thought this when they built the Shinkansen network to standard gauge specs in the 1960s so Japanese signalling uses multiple aspects which tell the driver not only how far ahead they can proceed but also at what speed they use the usual suspects in signalling red, yellow and green I'll only cover three and four aspect signalling here but there is a lot more depth to than what I'll talk about here but in three aspects it is perceived for green, caution on a single yellow and stop red four aspect has the additional double yellow called speed restriction which is very similar to the UK preliminary caution they also have another four aspect style which is green for proceed yellow over green for reduce speed yellow for caution and red for stop in addition to this there are also actually speed indicator boards for things like point work and tight curves for the running line the signals are known as block signals they control the block section and they are usually controlled by the movements of trains at stations there are home signals which are the final signal before the station these allow the train to enter station limits and finally for the purpose of this video starting signals these permit the train to depart the station in reality they can be many starting and home signals to protect trains from the ramifications of operating incidents a system called ATS is employed the system automatic train stop is designed to stop a train there are many variants in use all over the JR network but on the west there were mainly two versions ATS SW and this system was capable of stopping a train if it passed a signal with danger this worked by using a transponder on the train and a coil on the track it had been surpassed in the 1990s by the better ATSP which offered protection to trains but over speeding in certain areas with the addition of loops on the track on the approach to tight corners but neither were installed on the curve at the end of the Tarakazuka Line near Amagasaki which neatly brings us onto the disaster the disaster it is the morning of the 25th of April 2005 and Roryu Jiru Takami has started his shift he shunts his train a 207 series formed of two units one 3 car and one 4 car out of the depot arriving at Hanaten Station at 6.51am there he is met by his conductor for the day the conductor operates from the rear cab of the 7 car train they will be working the train westwards towards Koyobashi and then onto Amagasaki working as a stopping local service the train then continued its journey along the curve on the Fukushima Line heading towards the destination city of Tarakazuka just before reaching Tarakazuka the train was suddenly stopped by an emergency brake application at roughly 8.53am the ATSP system had intervened due to the driver passing a signal showing a red stop aspect the train was now late into Tarakazuka something frowned upon on the Japanese railway quickly the conductor and driver changed places Takami, the driver, is now in the up direction cab at 9.03am the train departs on its limited stop rapid commuter service numbered 5 4 1 8 m the journey will take them to Doshi-shame along the Fukichiyama Line to Amagasaki and then onto the JR Tosai Line and finally the Gakintoshi Line shortly after departing the train overruns one of its station stops at Itami by 4 car lengths the train was brought to a stand by the driver applying the emergency brake the train was passed its correct stopping mark by roughly 72m the train was partially out of the station requiring it to be reversed back to the correct stopping location as such the service was delayed by roughly 90 seconds which doesn't sound like much but the whole journey to Amagasaki only had about 28 seconds of slack in the timetable now this incident would require the conductor to report it to the company worried the driver contacted the conductor via the cap to cap radio bearing in mind this was whilst the train was moving Takami asked the conductor to not report the incident during his conversation a passenger requested help from the conductor resulting in him putting down the handset after the station stop at Itami roughly 700 passengers were on board the train loading was typical for a morning rush hour commuter service worried of the implications of running late and now potentially the punishment of an overrun Takami took more power speeding up the train he managed to reduce the delay from 90 to 60 seconds due to the conductor having to report the overrun he contacted the JR West dispatcher the conversation between the conductor and JR West would be heard over the radio in the driver's cab hearing this Takami must have realised the situation and that he was now looking at two serious reprimands the conductor attempting to do the driver a solid downplayed the overrun from 72 meters to just 8 but it was too late the train was heading for the tight right hand turn the curve had a speed limit of 70 kmph or 43 miles an hour the train was actually going at 116 kmph roughly 72 miles an hour the driver applied the service brake but it wasn't enough as the track turned to the right the first carriage derailed the next front three cars derailed completely the first car rammed into a parking lot of an apartment building the second car hit the wall of the same building becoming almost completely crumpled by the fourth to the third and fourth cars coming off the track behind it the fifth car pushed into the rear of the third and fourth the final two cars of the train stayed upright and still railed with so many busy carriages crushed into one another the number of casualties were high driver Takami being at the front lost his life along with 105 others local police estimated that the front carriage was where 43 of the victims had been followed by 45 in the second and the remaining of the victims being from the rest of the train totaled 562 and they would be sent all around the area to different medical centres the sheer size of the car is almost unbelievable to imagine the clean up repair and investigation of the line between Amagasaki and Tarakazuka stations would take a while with services resuming on the 19th of June 2005 but with reduced speed limits of 95 kilometers an hour 59 miles an hour on the straight section and 60 kilometers an hour or 37 miles an hour on the curve but why was the driver so apparently anxious about running late so much so to cause the demise of not only himself but over 100 others well we will find out after this short YouTube ad break investigation so why was he speeding why didn't he use the emergency brake and why was he not aware of the route ahead well seemingly on the face of it this disaster has a few similarities with the Moorgate Crash a number of incidents leading up to the crash improper train handling and reckless over speeding resulting in a bloody death toll and also like Moorgate the key witness was amongst the victims but the differences end there as we will likely never know the cause of the Moorgate Crash be it suicide or my personal theory of loss of situational awareness caused by micro sleep but with the Amagasaki disaster Takami's actions seems like he was scared of ramifications of running late and in Japan it sounds a lot worse than meeting with your manager without a cup of tea followed by an action plan and time of an instructor like you get on UK railways the thing Takami feared was Nikin Koyuku in English they shift education was he scared of it well he had been through his punishment slash retraining program before the day shift education usually ran between nine o'clock in the morning and quarter to six in the evening at the company offices it consisted mainly of report writing but would be undertaken in a room with other employees in an effort to try and shame the driver many tasks would be requested on top of the reports which included long hand copying of work rules writing lines on a board apologising to work colleagues weeding tracks cutting grass and tending to flower beds as an additional punishment drivers would have their pay cut during the day shift education they are also required to ask permission to use the toilet and have to follow any instructions given from the educator in charge before the disaster Takami had done three counts of day shift education totaling 18 days one of which was 10 months before from an overrun of 100 meters he was clearly struggling with the brutal timetable leading him to make mistakes thus leading him to more time on the day shift education the mounting pressure led him down the path of loss of concentration and situational awareness in a job that can be very unforgiving if the mind wanders knowing the punishment he would have received resulted in an attempt of trying to put right the earlier delay it's common on the railway where drivers get caught up in chasing the timetable but it is a very risky game to play additionally why did he not use the emergency break well this ties back into JR West's policies at a time where any use of emergency break would need to be explained and justified later thus presumably Takami's mind would make a bad situation worse with his punishment investigators found that a train travelling the curve at any speed greater than 106 km an hour or 66 miles an hour would derail the disaster was a combination of speed and lack of awareness of the corner but that's not the whole picture aside from the human factors of Takami trying to claw back the delay and getting distracted the question of protection systems overall they are meant to be able to step in when the skin and bone combo that is a human being messes up as I mentioned before JR West used two types of ATS and on the line in question the older ATS SW was in operation although nothing was installed on this particular curve even if it was the system ATS SW would have not been sufficient to protect the curve now what is crazy about this disaster was that the train hit a building off of the railway it's not hard to see why when looking at it on a map it's almost like the building was a target at the end of a range especially as the straight section of track leading up to it had a speed of 120 km an hour or 75 miles an hour Japanese building regulations don't restrict the construction of buildings near the railway as long as it wouldn't obstruct any signals or impede the railway property thus they are allowed to be built on the running line in the wake of the disaster changes at JR West had to be made a number of resignations followed from the company's top bosses in July 2009 West Japan Company Co President Masao Yamazaki was charged with negligence but found not guilty in January 2012 even though the company were critiqued on the poor risk assessment of the curve the building the train hit was partially demolished in 2017 leaving one corner standing as a memorial which opened in 2019 now I'm going to raid this disaster as a dumpster fire as an accident like this was just waiting to happen due to the pressure placed on JR West's drivers and I'm going to give it a 6 on the legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to see your weekly dose of disaster if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John to watch the video and listen to the song in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please this video is proudly supported by my Patreon and YouTube members sign up to gain early access to videos from just one dollar, one pound or one euro it is the evening of the 9th of March 1976 and tourists are queuing up to ride a cable car down from Mount Cermy most of the travellers boarding the cabins look forward to a five to six minute long journey a descent with spectacular views of the north eastern Italian Dolomites because of the large number of people waiting for cabins operators cram as many into each vehicle one such cabin has 44 people aboard more than the recommended 40 but the operator thinks well some are children so that couldn't count as a whole person right the cabin sets off down the mountain what all aboard don't know is that in just a few minutes only one would still be alive as they have become unwitting participants in the world's worst cable car disaster but it wouldn't actually be the only disaster to befall the cable car but today we're looking at the first Cavalese cable car disaster a little background goes a long way a settlement existed on the site of Cavalese ever since the bronze ages the town that became known as Cavalese started in the 12th century the town went from strength to strength as it developed mills sawmills and blacksmiths for copper manufacturing along the Gambis Brook like many towns with an impressive mountain range on their doorstep tourism became a vital part of the local economy Cavalese was no different and during the 1900s especially the mid-century after World War II the area saw droves of skiers, mountain climbers and general public go to mount Cermis. The Donomites Alps have become a world famous destination for skiers in order to improve the town's connection to the ski resorts and offer expedited travel up the mountain a cable car was constructed in 1964 the line ran for roughly three miles and had three stops Cavalese a middle stop at Doste Laressi and at the top Mount Cermis the system used two cables to guide and safely hold each carriage which are known as cabins these are known as the static track cable and the traction or hall cable the static cable is just as it says it doesn't move and the carriage of the cabin which is the bit the wheels run on the track cable. The hauling cable is gripped on to and thus moves the cabin up and down the mountain as one cabin goes up the other one goes down and basically they shuttle from each end of their respective lines as long as the system is in operation the two cables that are used should never really touch as well something stationary rubbed by something moving causes friction which can cause damage to the cables. As such cable cars like this have safety systems that stop the haulage cable if this is detected. The system at Cavalese had just that but it could be overridden it's not advisable but can be used in certain emergency situations the cable car was programmed to slow down slightly when traveling over the pylons to reduce wear on the cabins carriage and the cables the cabins were rated to carry a weight of 40 people and had a journey time of roughly 6 and a half minutes. Sometimes however this system must have felt like throughput was not enough as queues often developed during peak periods and one such was the evening on the 9th of March 1976 for disaster it is the evening of the 9th of March 1976 and cableway operator Schweiser is working his shift it is a busy evening and the queues are starting to mount up the cableway officials had found a sneaky way to improve the 6 and a half minute journey time. They found that if they altered the program that slows down the cabin when it navigates across the pylon they could get some of that time reduced by speeding up the cabin by doing this they managed to shave a minute off the journey time operators were also encouraged to squeeze as many people into each cabin and this would exceed the 40 person weight limit because of the increased speed and weight emergency shutoffs became commonplace as the two cables touched under the greater strain. Operators had become a little bit blasé to overriding the safety system but Carlo wouldn't really know much about this he was a seasonal worker who had not been licensed or properly trained to operate the system Carlo would on one particular cabin squeeze 44 people in. His justification would be that there were more children than the usual as such not being as heavy but it wasn't like he was getting out a scale to make everyone stand on it. This was around 5.16pm the cabin was now full and was sent down its way towards the middle station after this the cabin must negotiate the middle pylon this evening it doesn't slow down due to the program change and bumps over at a speed of 10m per second due to the speed the cables crossover triggering the cable safety system grinding the cabin to a halt. Carlo's training sprung into action oh wait he actually wasn't trained he was stumped and didn't know how to get the system up and running again so he got on the phone for some help and this came from Aldo Guillen Mona who told him to bypass the safety system. You see this situation was common since the increase in speed the safety stop was overridden frequently and that's what would happen this evening the cable car was restarted and the cabin continued to move the engine pulling the hall cable powered up but the two cables were still crossed over the excess weight exerted greater pressure on the static cable as the traction cable ground across it essentially it was like a saw cutting away at the track cable in the opposite direction in the second cabin another operator Giorgio Di Matteo would see the cabin moving but shooting sparked from the cables he attempted to call this in but the phone in his cabin couldn't connect 90 seconds later the track cable snaps plunging the cabin down 69m or 200ft but due to the safety system being overridden the engine winding the cable continued to run dragging the cabin along the ground between 100 and 200m during the drag the 3 ton carriage slammed into the roof of the cabin crushing it in all but one of the 44 board lost their lives including 15 children and an 18 year old cable car attendant some survived the fall only to be suffocated by the bodies of their fellow travellers Carlo in the control room had to duck as the cable snapped back and crashed into the engine smashing the windows Alessandra Piovesana survived the crash she had been protected from the fall by the bodies of the victims and luckily had been in the front portion of the cabin which had been the least impacted the operator in the other direction Giorgio Di Matteo got to earth safely by the use of an emergency ladder after being stranded for a little while between the middle stop and the pylon with the worst cable car disaster in their hands investigators sought out to find out why and how the Cavaliers system failed so catastrophically the world's eyes were now on Italy as the news spread and was reported by some of the largest news organizations globally the investigation investigators sought out advice from the cables manufacturer Akieri Ferreria Lombardi after careful inspection they found grooves on the snapped line and signs of intense heat caused by friction it was estimated that the heat was 1300 degrees celsius this pretty much unequivocally pointed blame at the cable crossover this along with Di Matteo's witness statement of seeing sparks when the cabin was moving led investigators to say that it was the only possible and plausible hypothesis the cable car owners claimed that the cable had been fully tested in October with the full weight of the cabin although it may be the case that it was tested the test didn't take into account the cable crossover and overloading of passengers this then pointed the blame away from manufacturing issues and more towards operational issues clearly Carlo was not properly trained for his job and it's easy to solely blame him but it goes higher than just the actions of one person on the day after all if you don't properly tell someone how to do their job they will use their judgement which may overlook key safety points like don't overload Carlo was also instructed over the phone to override the safety system lift officials would deny this phone call ever happened essentially trying to push Carlo under the bus Carlo was found guilty at trial of manslaughter and sentenced to 3 years serving only 9 months Aldo, Guillain, Mona the one who ordered the override was also sentenced to 3 years on the same charges of manslaughter the cable car was rebuilt only to be the scene for yet another disaster but maybe I'll cover that on another day so I'm going to rate this disaster as negligent due to the terrible operation of the cable car that evening and a 6 on the legacy scale but an 8 on the cable car only legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently dark and cold corner of southern London UK I have youtube members and patrons who financially support the channel and I'd also like to thank the rest of you for tuning in every week for your daily for your weekly dose of disasters if you're enjoying this outro song then please check out my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music Man, play us out please an alarm has been set off by a radiation monitor in Los Alamos operators are frantically trying to find out how and where the radiation spike has come from but it's not from what you might think rather than something on the site at the world famous nuclear research laboratory getting out the monitor has been triggered by a truck taking a wrong turn and driving in right now what no one knows is that they've uncovered a radiological incident that will cover two countries and expose over 4,000 people unknowingly contaminated material made its way into multiple building sites in both the US and Mexico showing how close we all are from unknowingly being exposed to radiation our story today has a few similar plot points cobalt 60 and a scrapyard but it ramps up the outcome to 11 my name is John welcome to Plain and Difficult and today we're looking at the jaw dropping 1984 Ciudad Juarez radiation incident forward lost source events aren't unique hell we've even had one this year in 2023 in Australia they aren't unique but they are usually discovered quickly in the grand scheme of things this is because usually people in the vicinity of the source become ill with unexplainable sickness or burns if they have unknowingly touched it but what makes the Ciudad Juarez so unique is that it illustrates what can happen when a source makes it into the production of other material sure a similar event happened in Ukraine where a source was mixed into concrete but Juarez had the further reaching ramifications usually with these sorts of stories there is some level of criminality usually the source being stolen but today our stories criminality starts with a radiation therapy unit being illegally purchased by a private medical company the machine was a picker C3000 it was purchased in 1977 by the central medicine private hospital in Ciudad Juarez Mexico the machine had been illegally imported into the country without notifying the regulatory authority it's important that they are informed as they can track where these potentially deadly machines are within the country but they weren't told on top of this the machine with some 6000 cobalt-60 pellets were shipped incorrectly with the source head still mounted the head's pellets had a total radioactivity of 30 tB aka a ton of bad days but there is a problem the hospital has with their picker C3000 no one knows how to use it usually when these things are bought the legit way training for staff is offered so what do you do with a tele-therapy machine you don't know how to use I know it's a question we've all pondered at least once in our lifetimes take it out to dinner put it on reception no well sadly they just put it into storage in an unguarded warehouse but surprisingly for one of these stories it wasn't stolen instead it sat there unused for a number of years whilst the hospital tried and failed to find anyone who knew how to work it time to sell the scrap after nearly six years in storage the hospital's maintenance manager instructed hospital employee Vicente Sotello Aladin to sell the machine off the scrap on the 6th of December 1983 I'm guessing Sotello was unaware of the potentially lethal task he had been given his next few actions would have been insane Sotello dismantled the machine splitting off its valuable metals in doing so removing the source head with its thousands of cobalt 60 pellets he loaded up his truck and at this point he decided to drill into the source cylinder spilling some of the pellets onto the truck bed just so you know these pellets are around 1mm in diameter and length so are pretty tiny surely there's no way he could have known what they were oh and this little spillage is just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is this disaster the truck and its radiotherapy machine cargo make its way to the Yonkey Phoenix scrapyard in Ciudad Carres the parts were sold and the scrap merchant wasn't informed of the deadly nature of the material how could have they been as the guy selling it clearly didn't either usually this is where the stories come to an end a few people get sick and the source is discovered but not today so tello after selling the material to the junkyard set off to return home don't forget now some of the pellets had fallen out and were still in the truck bed in a cruel turn of fate his truck broke down on route home but now a mobile and unknowingly contaminated truck would sit in a side road for 40 days we'll come back to this a little bit later on in the video so you know what scrap merchants do right well they sell scrap for melting into new metal products and that's exactly what happened to the cobalt 60 pellets that became mixed up with the scrap metal and was sold to three foundries a seroste chihuahua foundry where it was pressed into steel for rebar falcon products company foundry who made table pedestal castings and a third foundry in torian mexico that cast valve bodies and electric motor parts using contaminated steel the rebar and table bases containing the cobalt 60 by january 1984 had already been shipped throughout mexico and across the border to the united states unknowingly the contaminated material passed through cities, countryside and towns but it would be an accidental wrong turn that would cause the discovery of the radioactive material the discovery so the intro section of this video i mentioned los animos but what i didn't mention was just how much of a case of potluck it was a truck carrying rebar made by asia was travelling past los animos on the 16th of january 1984 the driver turned his large flatbed truck carrying two bundles of rebar into the entrance of the mason physics facility in los animos the truck driver realising that this was not where he was meant to be turned his vehicle around and drove for the exit this involved driving over a radiation detector underneath a manhole cover this detected a heightened radiation level the truck was automatically photographed and was identified as belonging to the smith pipe and steel company of albuquerque for there the shipment was able to be traced back to mexico the aseros de chihuahua foundry on january the 17th the state of new exico informed the nuclear regulatory commission who then informed mexico's national commission on nuclear safety and safeguards it was also discovered that another shipment was at the border in el paso texas and on the 18th after investigation was also found to be contaminated with radiation this was five truckloads hundreds of tons had already reached the u.s. with a potential international radiation event unfolding all shipments of steel from mexico to the usa was ceased mexico authorities traced the metal back to the phoenix yard and temporarily shut it down for investigation on the 20th of january and recovered the first cobalt 60 pellet investigation at the junkyard indicated that cobalt 60 must have been there since at least the 6th of december 1983 since the contaminated bill of landing was dated to the 6th of december the mexico authorities ordered aseros de chihuahua to suspend the distribution of manufactured rebar until it could be confirmed to be clear of any radioisotopes analysis of the contaminated metal showed it was pure cobalt 60 remember vicente soltello aladin and his broken down truck 26th of january 1984 mexico authorities detected an abandoned truck emitting radiation levels of up to a thousand ronkins per hour probably not a surprise it was soltello's soltello was tracked down and confirmed ownership as well as clarifying that he had worked at the speciality medical centre which was then contacted to ask what was the scrap metal they had sold off in december but although the origin was now known the scale of the recovery and clean up was only just unfolding the truck for one was parked in the middle of a built up neighbourhood potentially exposing countless people this would require the truck to be craned out of the city thousands of tons of rebar was contaminated and 33 thousand table bases had also been made with radioactive steel collaboration between the USA and Mexico allowed an international search to be undertaken this included sharing of sales information of steel products and the NRC assisting with radiological surveys of Juarez in Mexico. Mexican health officials reported that around 100 persons have received blood tests of which 3 or 4 showed evidence of between 100 and 450 REM whole body doses for context the whole body dose of 500 REM at once can be fatal in both the USA and Mexico the contaminated metal had to be traced, recovered and disposed of but even as late as june material was still missing roughly 2360 tons of unused rebar was recovered Mexican authorities visited over 17,000 buildings suspected to have been made with contaminated rebar scarily they determined that 814 buildings would need to be demolished and disposed of due to the high levels of radiation 90% of the rebar shipped to the USA was also recovered this had come from five states aftermath well this story is a bit of an odd one it's not really cut and dry finished as 100% of the material was never recovered as no one could have accounted for all of those grains of 660 as such the total human cost is impossible to tell of the scrapyard workers, neighbors and foundry workers that were tested some had chromosome damage and others had abnormal sperm or diminished sperm counts countless more must have been exposed from the contaminated metal or that abandoned truck but it's impossible to know for sure Vicente Sotelo the truck owner was made for him to sign a confession that he stole the equipment but this didn't hold up he wasn't the one who illegally imported the tele-therapy machine in the first place after all but how did he fare with the radiation after all he broke open the tele-therapy unit well unsurprisingly he experienced acute radiation syndrome including burns, vomiting and diarrhea but amazingly he survived no one was known to have died directly from the event probably due to the exposure being for most over a long period of time scarily though the event as published by the New York Times in 1984 released radiation 100 times more intense than the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania was even more worrying was that he was only actually discovered because of a chance wrong turn of a delivery truck imagine what would have happened if it went undetected tens of thousands of people could have been in danger so ratings time it's gotta be a dumpster fire but a free on the legacy scale as if a disaster has been relatively forgotten maybe because of no immediate death toll but regardless I won't be able to look at Rebar the same way again this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed playing different videos are produced by me John in the currently cold but sunny corner of London UK I have patreon members and youtube members so thank you for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have instagram and twitter so check them out if you want to see more from me and if you're enjoying this outro video then please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can watch and listen to it in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please what would you think if I said taking a painkiller would actually kill you I don't mean like an overdose but just one capsule equals death it would make you think twice about taking one right well imagine not knowing this that taking over the counter medicine would be a roulette wheel of death this would be the case if you so happened to get a headache in September 1982 in Chicago and you decided to take a Tylenol it is January 2023 and news outlets throughout the United States are reigniting interest in a 40 year old unsolved case this new spark of interest has been caused by a request for DNA testing of evidence from a crisis that gripped Chicago and the wider United States in 1982 although hopeful the new round of news reports and articles represent just another chapter in a senseless and chilling crime spree the event changed the way medication is packaged across the world he created fear and worked his way into urban legends that even here in the UK cause a moment of pause for thought unknowingly the terror caused 40 years ago is the reason why I was told as a child to always check everything I buy is sealed showing how much this event illuminated just how vulnerable the things we consume are from tampering today I will be looking at the Tylenol tampering crisis a chilling bizarre and cruel case of 7 acts of cold blooded murder an innocent looking bottle you must excuse my ignorance as I've never had a Tylenol it's not sold here in the UK and the thought of unsealed medication is a real head scratcher to me but at least the latter can be chalked down to me being a product of my time a time post for Tylenol murders I remember last year or possibly the year before feeling disgusted at the trend of ice cream licking in shops remember when people would open up ice cream tubs and lick the top pure nightmare fuel for a germaphobe like me although disgusting as long as the liquor didn't have any oral born diseases it was relatively harmless but it shows that tampering with consumable products is alive and well but back in 1982 today's case of tampering wasn't for likes on tiktok but an act of cold blooded murder with a little bit of extortion thrown in Tylenol is probably very familiar for those in North America but it's main ingredient paracetamol is always readily available over the counter across the globe Tylenol was introduced in 1955 by McNeil Laboratories over the years the brand has released various medications with different ingredients effective in pain relief one such was Tylenol extra strength this product has 500 milligram capsules with the active ingredient of minifen also known as paracetamol in 1959 Johnson & Johnson bought McNeil making the company a subsidiary roughly one year later the drug was made available over the counter and prescription free and from there it took over as one of the most popular pain relief medications available without a prescription by 1982 Tylenol had a 35% market share it is their first choice for colds flues, headaches, toothaches and migraines and the Tylenol extra bottled capsules are a popular choice capsules are especially popular they are made from gelatine and because of this they are slippery and easy to swallow but capsules are also easy to open and close and anti tampering protection on their packaging was minimal the bottles that held the capsules came in a paper box with an unglued lid the red cap on top of the bottle was easily flipped open with only a little piece of cotton left to cover the contents confidence in the brand is high the product works but the public perception during a deadly period of a few days in 1982 would be shaken to its core a deadly few days it is early in the morning of the 29th of September 1982 and in Elk Grove Village a suburb of Chicago Mary Kellerman, a 12 year old girl is suffering from a runny nose and a sore throat nothing particularly out of the ordinary people get cold symptoms all the time usually if the symptoms are a bit too much one takes a pain killer Mary goes to her parents and explains her symptoms to them they offer her one capsule of Tylenol extra strength by 7am in the morning she is dead in a Chicago area hospital Adam Janus a 27 year old postal worker also died of a suspected heart attack upon hearing the news of Janus's death his sister-in-law and brother rushed to the family home grief often brings a headache both took capsules of Tylenol from the same bottle that Adam had earlier in the day within hours her brother Stanley aged 25 was also dead his wife Teresa would pass away just 2 days later following days 3 more unexplained deaths occurred 35 year old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois 35 year old Paula Prince of Chicago and 27 year old Mary Biner of Winfield, Illinois now unexplained deaths of apparently healthy individuals usually sparked concern amongst the authorities especially in the case of the Janus family where 3 died within days of one another they had all done one thing in common however taking a Tylenol in early October 1982 investigators made the link between the victims and Tylenol was there an issue with the factory once the link was discovered tests were undertaken on the remaining capsules in the victims bottles and a worrying ingredient was found cyanide stranger still the capsules had come from different batches from 2 different factories one in Pennsylvania and another in Texas this suggested the unthinkable that the cyanide had made its way into the capsules after leading the factory the victims had another similarity the Tylenol they all had consumed wearing capsules and not tablets it was quickly becoming apparent that the contamination was deliberate and done after delivery to shops interestingly the bottles involved in the deaths of the Janus family members and Mary Kellerman had come from the same batch named MC 2880 Johnson and Johnson initially recalled this lot nationwide but as more of the victims pills were tested it was apparent that lots 910MD and MB 2738 were also involved and this expanded the recall this would become one of the largest pharmaceutical recalls in history tests from pharmacies across the united states localized the cyanide to the Chicago area the recall was wider in the Chicago area itself with all extra strength capsules pulled from the shelves initially it was thought that only the victims bottles had cyanide this totaled 5 but tests pulled from bottles found several more also contaminated many of the tested bottles were dropped off by the public at police stations in total 8 bottles were found to have been tampered with bizarrely around the same time on the 5th of October a man was poisoned with strictening which had been added to a Tylenol bottle this was in California luckily the man had survived but confidence in Tylenol capsules had collapsed trying to reassure the public Johnson and Johnson distributed false alers as well as halting Tylenol capsule production advertising and broadening the recall nationwide costing the company roughly $100 million Johnson and Johnson also issued a nationwide offer to replace customers capsules with their pill variants and on top of that the company offered a $100,000 reward for the information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murders the police were starting to form a theory that after arriving on the shelves of local grocers and drug stores in the Chicago area random bottles of Tylenol were removed from the shelves then the capsules were adulterated with 65mg of potassium cyanide and then returned to the shelves to be purchased by any unknowing victim the reference the amount of cyanide was 10,000 times over the average amount to kill a person but although the police had an idea of the method of the poisoning they had no real leads until Johnson and Johnson received a letter the letter on the 1st of October 1982 a letter was posted to Johnson and Johnson demanding $1 million be sent to an account at the Continental Illinois Bank the letter was traced to James W. Lewis via a positive match of fingerprints and a postage mark from Lakeside Travel his wife's previous employer the police now had a suspect but it was taken until the 13th of December 1982 to apprehend Lewis in New York and thus Lewis would be forever intertwined with the Tylenol case this wasn't Lewis's first running with the law, just a few years earlier he had been charged with murder in 1978 in Kansas City but the case was thrown out of court due to a technicality strangely in that case he had also written a letter Lewis claimed innocence stating the reason for the letter was to shame his wife's former employer Lewis was the only suspect to have described how a culprit could have added cyanide to the bottles in a method he called the drill board method Lewis even said someone could drill holes into a plier of contraption put the bottom capsule into a hole put cyanide on top of the board scrape it across with a bread knife clean up the excess put the tops of the capsules in load them into the Tylenol bottles and put them on to store shelves but there was no concrete evidence showing his part in the poisoning and instead of being charged with murder he was charged with extortion and held on a 5 million dollar bomb at the Metropolitan Correctional Center until the 16th of October 1983 although no watertight evidence Lewis had a striking resemblance to this person of interest from a CCTV still the image showed victim Paula Prince buying a bottle of tainted Tylenol his defense at trial claimed he was innocent of extortion because the money was to be paid into a bank account of a defunct company his wife had formerly worked for in order to try and frame his wife's old boss needless to say this bizarre defense and another charge of credit card fraud netted him a 20 year prison sentence of which he would serve 13 years but Lewis would always stay as suspect number one for the next 40 odd years although someone was now behind bars no one had been charged with the murders and the case would continue to go on unsolved to other suspects were also well suspected during the Tylenol case these were Roger Arnold age 48 he was arrested in mid October 1982 after a Lincoln Park bar owner told officers two customers said Arnold had purchased a large quantity of cyanide after searching his home a number of books on explosives and poisons, laboratory vials beakers, test tubes and a number of weapons were found but interestingly no cyanide his link was that Arnold's wife was in Central DuPage Hospital at the time of the poisonings across the road was a grocery shop Frank's Foods where one of the victims had bought their bottle of tainted Tylenol Arnold had also worked with one of the victims' fathers at a warehouse bizarrely Arnold would go to prison for murder but not the ones you might think after his questioning Arnold hunted down the bar owner who dobbed him in and shot him dead the only problem was he killed the wrong man and thus the case went pretty cold Lewis was in jail Arnold was also in jail but Lewis was released in 1995 and would remain a top suspect although Constantly is attesting his innocence during a 2007 to 2008 undercover sting operation run by the FBI Lewis stated it took him three days to write the extortion letter this combined with the postal date being forensically proven under the letter's ink of the 1st of October meant that the letter was written before the public knew of the Tylenol case Lewis, although at the time of his apprehension in New York was living there he and his wife had been living in the Chicago area until early September around 20 to 24 days before the crisis began Strangely in 2009 Lewis was interviewed by the press where he again denied all accusations against him and were exposed to the publicity there's also a weird case that happened in 1978 with Raymond West who ended up dead in his attic and you were the prime suspect as the guy who did that who killed him who murdered him he for two weeks he was under the locking key so there was no homicide she said there was no homicide there was no homicide but the guy was dismembered and stuffed in a plastic bag in his attic how does somebody dismember themselves and stuff themselves in a plastic bag you got it, come on around the same time in 2009 FBI agents searched Lewis' apartment who was now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts but again no arrests were made in 2010 Lewis and his wife had their DNA taken one of the other suspects Roger Arnold's DNA was also taken but due to Arnold being dead for two years his body was exhumed and a sample was taken from a femur bone sadly none of the DNA samples created any movement in the case they even took DNA in 2011 from the unibomber, Ted Tezinski but again, alas, no luck as of the end of January 2023 more DNA tests have been undertaken but no news so far aftermath even though the killer hasn't been identified the crisis changed the pharmaceutical industry permanently Johnson and Johnson within two months had Tylenol back on the shelves but with an improved triple seal their market share had plummeted from 35% to just 8% but amazingly, this was turned around in just under a year the event cost a company over $100 million in the recall alone and an undisclosed 1991 settlement with the victims' families the crisis spawned unsurprisingly, copycat murders most notably in 1986 where three people died of cyanide poisoning new federal laws, post-crisis now made product tampering a federal crime which, even attempting to tamper with a product can carry a 10-year sentence so, for my ratings today is only going to be a legacy rating and I'm going to give this one a 9 all videos on the channel are created and actually we can share it like licensed playing a full video is produced by me, John in a currently wet and windy suburban corner of southern London, UK I have Patreon members and YouTube members as well so thank you for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch your dose of disaster I've got Patreon I've got Instagram and Twitter, so check them out if you fancy and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to check it out on my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please it is 9.30 in the morning on the 11th of April 1986 and the relative peace and quiet of Pinecrest Miami-Dade is broken with gunfire preceding this was an attempted FBI forced stop of two suspected serial violent criminals what would ensue in the erupting gunfire would become the most bloody day in FBI history the equipment to hand for the FBI proved ineffective in stopping the criminals and sadly two agents would be fatally wounded the shootout would cause law enforcement to reevaluate the weapons they use and their firearms training today I'm looking at the Miami-Dade shootout of 1986 welcome to true crime with John background now you don't have the FBI after you usually for no reason and today's subject's reason is a spree of violent crimes but before the crimes we must discuss the meeting of two men enter Michael E. Platt and William Russell Mattix the two men had met in 1973 while serving in the US Army at Fort Campbell Kentucky Platt enlisted into the Army on the 27th of June 1972 as an infantryman soon after he applied for the Army Airborne Rangers and required him to attend the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell upon completion of the course Platt was assigned the role of a military policeman William Mattix was a more experienced soldier having previously served with the Marines between 1969 and 1972 upon his honourable discharge and having nowhere else to go he went on to enlist in the US Army here he was posted to Fort Campbell as a military police and this would be where he would meet his future partner in crime Platt married his wife Regina Lien in October 1975 who he met whilst at Fort Campbell shortly after the marriage he was transferred to Camp Kitty Hawk now Camp Boniface in South Korea Mattix would be honourably discharged in 1976 followed by Platt in 1979 Platt and his wife after his discharge eventually settled in Monterey, California and had a son the Platt family would move again to Regina's home state of Florida where Michael Lee Platt worked for his father-in-law's company Mattix met his wife Patricia Buchanick post discharge whilst at the Walter Reed Army Hospital receiving treatment for a stutter the couple settled in Columbus, Ohio where Patricia worked at the Riverside Methodist Hospital as a lab assistant whilst Mattix went to school and aviation mechanics training Now I know this is a lot of preamble but both men, although living in different parts of the country, would be drawn back together after a horrific murder mysterious deaths It is the afternoon of the 30th of December 1983 and Joyce McFadden and Patricia Mattix are working in the laboratory at the Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio They were known as salient broke into the lab bound the two women and cut their throats Mattix was the prime suspect but no evidence linked him to the slayings he was able to cash in the $350,000 life insurance policy and encouraged by Platt moved down to Florida By now, Platt had just quit a landscaping company he created with his brother and now employment free sought to form a new tree cutting company with Mattix which was called Yankee Tree Cutting But it wouldn't be just Mattix's wife that met a grisly end On the 21st of December 1984 Platt's wife of nine years, Regina was found dead from a single gunshot blast to the mouth Again, like his friend Platt was the prime suspect but lack of evidence led the coroner to rule her death as self-inflicted Stranger still, Platt remarried just one month later in January 1985 followed by Mattix remarrying in May 1985 as well and oh boy, 1985 would be a rollercoaster year for pretty much anyone the two came into contact with the crime spree bizarrely both men before 1985 had no criminal record apart from the cases of wife death they weren't on the police's radar at least before what was to come they did have an odd running with the law in early 1985 over a broken vending machine the two had bought one via mail order and got into a dispute with the seller death threats and the like were made but no criminal charges came from it Mattix and Platt aged 34 and 32 respectively undertook the first part of their spree this would involve stealing a getaway car on the 5th of October 1985 they found a car perfect for the job parked up at a rock pit in the Everglades it was a gold coloured Chevrolet Monte Carlo but there was a problem Emilio Braille its owner Braille was shot dead Mattix and Platt hid his body and drove off with his car Braille's remains wouldn't be found until March 1986 on the 9th of October Platt and Mattix undertook their first robbery this was an attack on a loomis armored car both men were wearing what was described as paramilitary gear and carried either AR-15s or M-16 type weapons the duo got away with $2,800 although they failed to get the total of $400,000 on board due to the armored car's driver getting away a day later the duo struck again this time a Wells Fargo truck one of the guards was shot in the leg a small gunfight ensued and both men got away empty handed the injured guard later died in hospital on the 17th of October the two men struck again another loomis armored car shots from the guard erupted straight away a couple of weeks would go by before another robbery would take place on the 8th of November two bank robberies took place on South Dixie Highway netting Mattix and Platt the best part of $50,000 the next glut of robberies hit in 1986 beginning with the 10th of January attack on a Brinks armored car at Barnett Bank in Miami one guard was shot in the back first by shotgun then twice more with an AR type weapon but amazingly he survived the two made off with $54,000 and were seen dumping Emilio Braille's Chevrolet and switching to a white Ford needing a new getaway car they shot and robbed Jose Colasso on the 12th of March as he was shooting targets at a rock pit in the Florida Evergrades they drove off in his black Chevrolet Monte Carlo this is definitely feeling a bit deja vu at least to make a new cartoon I only need to do this again in a case of amazing luck Colasso survived reporting the crime after walking for 3 miles with a gunshot wound their final robbery involved hitting up the same bank as a January heist and this happened on the 19th of March 1986 this robbery got them just over $8,000 the suspects fled in Colasso's vehicle this string of robberies and murder unsurprisingly garnered the interest from the FBI they didn't know who the assailants were but they knew they had to stop them and this would come on the 11th of April 1986 the shootout a team of 14 FBI agents in 11 cars sought to capture the offenders and stop the month's long spree that had left death in its wake clearly the two men were a menace to the public Colasso's survival was instrumental to identifying the potential vehicle the robbers would be using as such the FBI team led by special agent Gordon McNeil were conducting a rolling stakeout to find the black 1979 Monte Carlo at 9.30 am two agents, Grogan and Dove spotted what they thought to be the suspect's car they followed and two other FBI vehicles joined with a 3 to 1 car advantage with more on route a traffic stop was planned Mattix and Platt were forced off the road and a number of collisions occurred between the cars resulting in a 1979 Chevrolet impacting head on with a tree on 12201 south west 82nd avenue their car was wedged in front and pinned between a parked car and FBI officer Maneuze's vehicle the force of the collision Maneuze's weapon off the passenger seat the eight agents armory to hand were two Remington 870 shotguns three Smith & Wesson model 459 9mm semi-automatic pistols and the rest of the six were armed with Smith & Wesson revolvers now don't get me wrong, I would not like to be shot at with these but it would soon become apparent that they had brought spoons to a knife fight Mattix and Platt had a Smith & Wesson model 3012 gauge pump shotgun Aruga Mini 14 Remington semi-automatic rifle with folding stock a Smith & Wesson model 586 357 magnum revolver and a Dan Wesson 357 magnum revolver Maneuze unarmed was hit with a shotgun blast from Mattix and exchanging gunfire between the agents and Mattix and Platt ensued the first agent to land a hit was Grogan as Mattix leaned out of the Monte Carlo to fire a shotgun shell at Grogan & Dove the two agents were behind the assailants vehicle agent Maneuze ran down the road and was shot in the arm by Platt with his Aruga rifle another shotgun blast hit Grogan & Dove's car McNeil who was now there returned fire with six shots from his revolver hitting Mattix in the head and neck twice Mattix was knocked out by this a shot back from Platt hit McNeil in the hand Platt climbed out of the wrecked Chevrolet only to be hit by one of Dove's 9mm rounds in the arm the bullet penetrated his chest and lung out of the car Platt now made his way across the parked car he had been wedged between catching another two bullets now behind the parked car Platt returned fire hitting McNeil in the neck in the gunfire Dove's pistol became inoperable and both Grogan and Dove now needing behind the car were attempting to get the weapon operational again during this time Platt managed to flank the men and shot both of them dead he entered Dove's and Grogan's car and attempted to start it miraculously at the same point Mattix had regained consciousness and joined his accomplice in an attempt to get away Miles drew his 357 magnum revolver moving along the street next to the car firing six rounds at the suspects two in the face for Mattix and one in the chest for Platt the gunfight was over Mattix's only one had escaped injury four were dead Grogan and Dove and the two assailants in only five minutes 145 shots between the two groups were fired aftermath both of the culprit's wives were shocked to find out what their husbands had been up to they apparently hadn't seen any money and without them at least admitting to know a motive was hard to find okay of course they wanted the money but why in 1985 after many years in the forces and in civilian life in the culprit's autopsies it was found Platt's wound to his chest had caused a collapsed lung allowing 1.3 litres of blood to fill his chest this meant even if he had got away he likely would have died soon after a toxicology report on both men came back clear meaning they were running on just adrenaline which is pretty scary the FBI placed partial blame on the weapons issued to the agents for the shootout's deadly result they lacked the stopping power of the two long guns with the eight agents only one was deployed the rest of the gunfight was slug out with service revolvers and a handful of 9mm pistols the shootout would change the guns FBI agents would be supplied with to harder hitting weapons some of the wider team did have MP5 submachine guns and M16 rifles but they hadn't reached the shootout in time the event would push for wider adoption of larger guns for all agents involved in apprehending violent criminals only two of the agents had ballistic vests which were rated for pistol caliber rounds hardly a match for Platt's Remington but definitely better than nothing in memorial to the two slain agents the village of Pinecrest, Florida named the road that the gunfight took place on agent Benjamin Grogan Avenue and agent Jerry Dove Avenue this is a plain difficult video all videos on the channel are creative commas actuation share or like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week for your dose of plain difficult videos if you're enjoying this outro song you can check it out on my second channel made by John and if you fancy looking up on my videos I have Twitter and Instagram all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please just a quick thing before we start if you want to see all of the B-roll footage from this video you can over on my second channel and the link will be in the description this big beauty is a cantaloupe and it cost me a whopping two quid I don't think I've ever actually cut one up before don't be too surprised I'm not much of a melon fan something about the texture and the wateriness of them just doesn't make me want to eat them I'm kind of the same with cucumbers as well anyway why am I cutting one up? Mrs Plainly isn't a fan of them either and our daughter prefers mango well this rather unassuming fruit would become the centre of one of the largest food contamination cases in recent US history and depending on who you ask whether the worst or second worst who would have thought this unassuming fruit could be so deadly and just a quick warning before slicing this I went a little bit mad with the B-roll footage welcome to Plainly of Cool today we are looking at the United States 2011 Listeria outbreak it is the 28th of August 2011 and the Colorado Department for Health and Environment has noticed a small spike in Listeriosis the first patient had been taken to hospital on the 15th of August Listeriosis is not uncommon with between 800 and 1600 cases reported per year throughout the United States but this little spike which by the 2nd of September was at 7 known cases hinted just slightly as a potential outbreak the Colorado Department for Health and Environment reported this to the centre for disease control now the next bit will quickly run over the days leading up to the CDC's announcement of the outbreak this runs roughly day by day until the 12th of September 2011 and serves to show what happens behind the scenes before the public are made aware the strains of Listeria the patients have been infected with are defined on the 6th of September in doing so allowing the CDC to link any other infections to identify an outbreak you see it is vital to find out if a person is part of an outbreak or just a single occurrence because an untracked outbreak can be pretty bad news on the same day 2 more persons were identified one from Nebraska and another from Texas hinting at the outbreak becoming a multi-state affair 7 of the patients were interviewed and asked what they had eaten this is easier said than done as Listeria bacteria can take up to 2 months to cause symptoms each victim was given a standard CDC questionnaire from this cantaloupes were identified and 3 of the questionnaires even gave a brand Rocky Ford Cantaloupe a day later on the 7th of September the CDC began a multi-state investigation and armed with this vital information they began to zero in on the outbreak cause on the 8th of September the CDC issued a supplemental questionnaire created by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to learn more about the cantaloupes by the ill persons at the same time cantaloupes had been gathered by Colorado officials at retail outlets across the state that the ill persons had shopped at for testing on the 9th of September the FDA also collected cantaloupes from the same shops for Listeria testing and the state of Colorado issued warnings to at-risk demographics to the risks of eating contaminated fruit just a day later on the 10th of September the FDA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had zeroed in on a potential source of the cantaloupes gents and farms on the same day gents and farms distributor issued a recall of all cantaloupes on the 11th of September preliminary traceback investigations and cantaloupe samples collected by the CDP-HE were contaminated with Listeria hinting that cantaloupes produced and packed at gents and farms marketed as Rocky Fort for the source of the outbreak on the 12th of September the outbreak was officially announced to the public by the CDC stating that 15 people in four states had been infected and this number like most outbreaks would only be the tip of the deadly iceberg the anachronym city of the CDC the FDA and CDP-HE had identified the source impressively quickly however the crop that had been identified as the epicenter was roughly of 300,000 cantaloupes and it doesn't need me to tell you that this is a lot of potential sickness bombs on the 14th of September the FDA announced that gents and farms had issued a voluntary recall of all of their produce but before we continue let's look at what Listeria is and how it can make you very ill and potentially kill you Listeria or more precisely for today's video Listeria monocytogenes is a species of pathogenic bacteria that causes the infection Listeriosis it is named after Quaker surgeon and absolute mad lad Joseph Lister his name is also what has been lent to the mouthwash Listerine any who's Listeria monocytogenes can grow on uncooked meats, uncooked vegetables fruits, pasteurized or unpasteurized milk foods made from milk and some processed foods if contaminated food is consumed it can result in a condition called Listeriosis this happens during digestion when the bacteria penetrates the intestinal tract to cause systemic infections Listeriosis preys on people with weakened immune systems the elderly or pregnant women a person with Listeriosis will usually show a fever muscle aches preceded by diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms symptoms can onset as late as two months post exposure and the disease has a mortality rate of around 25% it is usually treated in the form of antibiotics most particularly ampicillin death toll rises on the 16th of September a sample of cantaloupe collected by the CDPHE from two retail locations stores supplied by gents and farms shows an outbreak strain of Listeria and just a few days later the same strain was shown on samples taken from the farm directly a report was released by the CDC on the 21st of September bringing a number of deaths to 13 and a number of confirmed cases to 72 the next day the FDA assisted by Colorado state and local officials begins environmental assessments at gents and farms by the end of September the cases number had risen to 84 the number of deaths had grown to 15 and the number of states involved was 19 the numbers of infected would continue to increase remember that it can take up to two months from infection to onset of illness the CDC would continue updating the public all the way until August 2012 a full year after the initial cases this is because linking deaths and sickness to the outbreak takes time where blood samples need to be taken and the L monocytogenes be cultured from it the final numbers of infected were 147 cases with 33 deaths fatalities occurred in the following states Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana Maryland, Missouri, Montana Nebraska, New Mexico, New York Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming among the persons who died ages ranged between under one to over 96 years sadly on top of this one woman who was pregnant at the time of illness had a miscarriage but how did L monocytogenes make its way into the food chain in the first place well, spoiler alert it would be gents and farms fault the investigation now the FDA knew gents and farms was the cause for more extensive patient sample and on-site testing but that's not the end of the story you see cantaloupes aren't the most common source of an outbreak usually it's unpasteurized milk and certain cheeses the FDA found four separate Listeria monocytogenes strains in the cantaloupe crop which they thought was rather unusual during their investigation on gents and farms they found Listeria on rusty machinery it was later discovered that much of the equipment had been bought recently second hand from a potato farm standing water inside the packing plant was also found to contain Listeria and had been tracked about the facility by staff on their shoes infected water was also found on the conveyor belts that had transported the cantaloupes but although the bacteria was found on site the FDA weren't certain as to how it had reached it Listeria is known to be found in soil but samples taken from the farm came back clear which again was pretty strange Eric and Ryan Jensen, the brothers who owned gents and farms in Colorado were interviewed by the FDA but Jensons were in charge of maintaining equipment that would wash cantaloupes with antibacterial solutions to sufficiently combat contamination however it was found that the Jensons did not outfit their conveyor systems with a chlorine spray instead opting to wash the cantaloupes with city water for a longer period of time this was the first year that they had used the second hand ex-potato farm equipment and the FDA had clearly seen that it not been properly maintained or cleaned it was also found that the machinery was difficult to clean as well with many places being hard to reach it was found that Jensons farms also did not pre-call the cantaloupe before putting it into cold storage by not removing the field heat it created condensation creating an ideal condition full of growth of listeria Jensons farms filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and shortly after criminal charges came anocking the charges were for the apparent negligence in equipment maintenance both brothers played guilty they were sentenced to 5 years probation 6 months home detention and $150,000 each in restitution fees to the victims now the disaster is going to rate as a bad day at the office mainly because the Jensons weren't intentionally negligent however still quite a few people died and I'm going to give this disaster a 6 on my legacy scale this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain default videos are produced by me in a currently just a bit grey and boring corner of southern London UK thanks to my patreons and youtube members for your financial support and a recipe for tuning in every week for your dose of random videos I have instagram so check that out if you want to see random pictures I also have twitter and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to check out my second channel made by john and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please everyone wonder what happens here you can find out on my instagram which is plainly.john or my second youtube channel which is made by john now without further ado let's get on to this week's video it is just before lunch on wednesday the 10th of october 2012 an crane is lifting a concrete beam in a car park building site in miami florida just as the beam reaches the sixth floor the northeast portion of the garage the events became yet another chapter in building blunders involving concrete in the state my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult and today we're looking at the miami dade car park collapse background well in case you're thinking this is a re upload it's not there are far too many for comfort building collapses in the state of florida concrete and florida seem to go together like radio isotopes and scrap merchants we're back once again to the sunny state of florida and what feels like groundhog day a concrete building collapse but not only just a collapse it is a collapse to do with a collie which rings deja vu for the florida international university incident and not only that but this event is not the only concrete structure collapse at this college in particular our story starts just over a year before the collapse in july 2011 with the signing of the contract for a new multi-story car park at miami dade college the board of trustees had awarded a guaranteed maximum price design build contract to ajax building corporation the project had a price of $25 million it was planned to be a six-story precast concrete structure with precast columns, beams double T's and wall panels the contract with Ajax building corporation would have two parts the first being the design and architectural services in which the company would undertake all the relevant building and site surveys the second part would be the demolition of an already standing warehouse and the actual construction of the new multi-story parking garage for the second part of the project Ajax contracted mar contracting incorporated of miami florida to design, fabricate and install all the concrete sections nothing unusual but mar then went on to contract out the work to a couple of other companies corse lab structured miami incorporated for the design and fabrication of the concrete but they too also subcontracted some of the work in this case for design resulting engineering group corse lab would still do the fabrication however for installation mar subbed out the work for erection to solo erectors and for the final grout and wash florida lee mark corporation of Doral would be used I'm not going to lie this is a little bit confusing to say the least well regardless of the rather complex contracting arrangements let's look at the design of this shiny new car park okay well I know multi-story parking lots are hardly the most exciting of buildings but they are very important nonetheless the garage was to make use of precast beams footed on on-site cast bases with integral corbels for supporting the floors the footings would be 5 foot deep and attached to the columns via bolts the floors would consist of double tees running north south supported by either a single tee or a spandrel precast member running east to west the inverted and double tees were welded together along with the spandrel beams and the inverted tees were then welded to the columns these columns were in two sizes 24 and 42 inches wide the larger being in the middle of the building below the second story the columns did have reinforcement but only made of mild steel each levels column was cast as two separate pieces which during construction would be bolted together however this left a two inch gap which then had to be filled with a high strength grout the lateral load resistance system employed at the car park was precast shear walls part of the load calculations involved predicted wind conditions for the area but the construction although not glamorous and on the face of it a simple project I know it really wasn't the car park construction was not without its shall we say incidents on the 8th of October 2012 as one of the shear panels was being lifted by one of the onsite cranes the boom arm struck the top of column B2 the cause lab engineer inspected the column from the ground and not seeing any obvious damage allowed construction to continue although no apparent damage to the column could be seen the boom arm had a pretty substantial dent in it now I know you can't really inspect it properly from the ground but regardless no x-ray of the column or even up close viewing was undertaken well it was to no one's surprise that when the next day on the 9th of October that this column was now 3 quarter of an inch out of plumb in layman's terms was now cockeyed but what to do well use a few shims and wedges to coax it back in line again and this is what would happen on the morning of the 10th of October when some double and inverted T's were installed but again this column was not properly inspected by now though disaster was just a few hours away the disaster it is the 10th of October 2012 and work is underway on the 6th level of the Miami-Dade car park at roughly 25 past 11 in the morning the on-site crane was preparing to lift a pre-car spandrel up to the 6th floor it reached the top but just before it could be lowered to its final resting place at 11.30 am the structure of the car park suddenly and dramatically collapsed columns from A2 to C5 had collapsed all the double T's between the 6th floor and the 2nd floor pancake on top of one another an entire quarter of the total building had collapsed weighing in at roughly 3,000 tons and sadly anything or anyone inside was pulverized two employees of solar erectors incorporated one employee of E&E concrete pumping services incorporated and one employee of Striker Electric incorporated were inside one would be rescued only to succumb to their injuries in hospital a day later after several days of combing the wreckage sites the focus shift from rescue to recovery to eventually investigation the investigation investigators would start dissecting the disaster site just one day after the collapse these were two structural engineers from OSHA's directorate of construction they would be looking at potential causes on the site for two weeks in addition to this another engineer attended to interview all the major stakeholders in the project the investigation would delve into every aspect of the project including construction documents specifications shop drawings and contractual papers as well as photos and videos all of which were taken at the incident site and at the storage yard where the fallen major structural members for examination when they started looking at the supporting columns they found some worrying signs of poor workmanship several splices where the two precast sections of each column were connected together were lacking sufficient ground some of the columns even had no ground at their base most notable was column B3 and A3 this should have been picked up on the daily inspections even more worryingly inspections of the higher sections of the structure were done from the ground sometimes as far as 40 feet away which clearly is not good enough 18 columns were missing any kind of reported grout inspection and when questioned the main inspector was unaware of the need to check which is rather concerning so it was quickly found out about the lack of grouting on the splices and the column bases was likely to cause a collapse OSHA found in their report that some sections were not supported on the day of the collapse and when combined with the lack of grouted joints on at least two columns this severely reduced the structure's reliability they said in their report as loads on the column gradually increased on the day of the collapse the bearing of the column over the shin plates exceeded its capacity resulting in failure this triggered a cascade of collapse of columns inverted T beams and double T's on all five floors weighing approximately 3,300 tons over an area of approximately 16,000 square feet OSHA found five of the companies working on site $38,000 each for their incompetence and a further $32,000 was charged to four of the companies an undisclosed amount was paid as a settlement to the families of four workers who became victims but this wasn't the last disaster linked to this car park on the 15th of April 2016 a beam fell off a construction crane causing a concrete plate to come crashing down on the third floor of the structure injuring three workers so it's now time for my rating it's got to be negligent purely on the fact that the correct inspections were never undertaken however the car park project as a whole has to be considered a dumpster fire and on my legacy scale I'm going to give it a number four this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John and they're currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I have Patreon and YouTube members so thank you very much for your financial support there's a recipe for tuning in every week I've got Twitter and Instagram and also a second channel which is where you can listen to this outro song in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music Man play us out please it is the closing minutes of an April in 1970 evening in California and two men are being pulled over in their red Pontiac along the Old Road and Henry Mayo Drive in Valencia, California the traffic stop is in connection with an earlier road rage incident what would be considered a misdemeanor offence but this pull over would result in one of the bloodiest days in California law enforcement history and in just five minutes four people would be dead today I'm covering the new hall incident and welcome to plainly difficult two men our story starts with two men renting an apartment in Long Beach, California nothing out of the ordinary friends share apartments to keep down the cost of living but these two men had met somewhere slightly different than most prison these two new flatmates were Jack Wright Twinning and Bobby Augusta Davis both had been in and out of prison for most of their lives after their original meeting in prison the duo met up in Houston, Texas and set out for California the year was 1969 and both men had failed to re-enter society with jobs and as such they sought out to continue their life of crime a half an hour drive away from their apartment in Long Beach was Santa Anita Park the two men whilst there had noticed an armored money car these seemingly tough targets filled with thousands of dollars were to these two at least attempting juicy target but how to successfully defeat such a vehicle well the two men had seen something on their journey to California a construction site that had been using explosives to clear land Twinning and Davis thought that if they had explosives then they would be able to blow the doors off the armored car and get that sweet sweet cash inside you know as I write this this kind of makes me think that they had actually got the idea from the Italian job anyways the two set out on the 5th of April 1970 to procure some explosives Davis dropped off Twinning to make his way to the construction site and Davis would meet him later on the car the two had was a red 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix and oh boy this vehicle was loaded up with some guns the two men had a Smith & Wesson Model 39 9mm semiautomatic pistol a 6 inch culked python 357 magnum revolver two snub-nosed CULT Detective Special 38 caliber revolvers a Model 1903 Springfield bolt action a Sawanoff 12 gauge shotgun a Remington Model 5 72.22 caliber pump action rifle and a 44 magnum ruger Model 44 semiautomatic carbine now later on in the evening Davis would set off the chain of events that would result in a lot of deaths and his own incarceration when driving along interstate 5 Davis decided to do an illegal U-turn this involved him crossing across the highway medium pretty dodgy but the manoeuvre also nearly caused a crash with another car driven by Ivory Jack Tidewell with his wife Viola Bernice White as a passenger some horn honking and arguing between the two drivers ensued which resulted in both cars coming to a stop on the highway an argument broke out between the two drivers Davis pulled out a gun and threatened Tidewell thinking on his feet the innocent motorist convinced Davis that the police were in the area and the armed assailant fled in his car Tidewell and his wife then immediately drove to near his phone box to report the incident in doing so giving the description of the crazy driver and his car this incident happened at roughly 11 20 in the evening and the call was put out to all California highway patrol vehicles in the area to pull over a red Pontiac to discuss the dangerous driving and gun wieldiness of its driver at some point over the next 20 minutes or so Davis had collected twinning and the two continued their drive which would enroll passing a CHP patrol car manned by officers Frago and Roger Gore they lit up the lights and followed the red Pontiac it pulled off the freeway at the exit for Henry Mayo Drive after which it pulled into a car park next to a J's coffee shop adjacent to a standard gas station twinning and Davis at this point decided that they were not going to submit to the police and try their luck shooting their way out the two officers followed in a 1969 Dodge Parola patrol car two more officers in another patrol car were not far away and were ready to jump in if back up was needed clearly officers Frago and Roger Gore were not prepared for what was about to unfold as they pulled in behind that red Pontiac the shootout the police car pulled up to the rear of the Pontiac and the officers used their car as a cover the officers used the spotlight on their car to light up the suspects illuminating Davis and twinning the order to leave the vehicle with their hands up was shouted three times Davis the driver complied he got out of the Pontiac and after another order to raise his arms from Gore put both arms in the air the next order was to spread his legs and put his hands on the car's rear fender Davis also did this with one suspect seemingly compliant and Frago with his shotgun raised in the air with the stock of his hip approached twinning he was still in the passenger seat and their passenger door was still closed as Frago went to open the door twinning flung open the car door with a revolver in his hand Frago shouted hold it and load the shotgun but twinning had the drop and fatally shot Officer Frago as soon as Officer Frago hit the floor twinning jumped out of the passenger seat and started shooting at Gore across the rear of the Pontiac Gore turned and shot back missing twinning hitting the Pontiac and a Mustang parked near the coffee shop Davis used this distraction to pull a two inch revolver from his belt in an instant he fired two shots almost point blank at Gore killing him instantly two officers were now dead Officer James Pence and George Allen pulled up in their dodge patrol car alongside Gore and Frago's vehicle as soon as the car stopped both officers were met with gunfire from both assailants the revolvers both Davis and twinning had were now out of ammo and retreated back to their car to retrieve some more of the guns that they had Davis grabbed out a sawn off 12 gauge shotgun twinning pulled out a 1911 pistol twinning fired one shot from this but it jammed he discarded it and grabbed another from the car Pence and Allen radioed into CHP that shots had been fired and officers were down Allen emerged and moved to the right hand side of the two patrol cars and emptied his Remington model 870 shotgun at the Pontiac he then retreated back behind and in between the patrol cars he pulled his service revolver and emptied it into the suspect's car out of this volley only a superficial wound was received by twinning Davis returned fire with his shotgun fatally killing Allen he then made his way back to the Pontiac picked up Frago shotgun and after trying to operate it accidentally discharged it into the air this was then discarded and Davis took the downed officers service revolver now every story needs a mad lad and this would come from a passerby Gary Dean Ness H31 and a former US Marine he saw the gunfight between the CHP and the suspects after Allen was downed running away Ness thought I'll have some of that and charged him behind the patrol cars in an attempt to drag Allen's body to safety Ness upon not being able to drag Allen picked up the CHP shotgun and tried to return fire at Davis but Ness was unaware the shotgun was empty next Ness under fire from Davis took Allen's revolver and fired a single shot lodging a fragment into Davis's chest the revolver now too was empty meanwhile officer Pence's revolver was also empty he knelt down to reload behind his patrol car twinning flanked him by running out from behind the left side of the Pontiac firing four shots at the officer hitting Pence in the chest and in both legs sending him to the ground Pence on the ground was still frantically trying to reload his revolver at the time officers were not issued with quick reloaders and as such he had to load one round at a time in the absolute pain and confusion of the situation Pence didn't notice twinning approaching at point blank he said I've got you now and fired two shots into the back of Pence's head seeing this Ness retreated and sought cover in a ditch a third police car approached the scene and Ness ran up to the vehicle the car was carrying sergeant Harry Ingold and officers Roger Palmer Ed Holmes and Richard Robinson more firing erupted and twinning and Davis fled into the night taking with them several guns and dispersed into two different directions meanwhile the police scoured the area for the two and began to piece together the shootout the empty Pontiac was approached and searched but both men had slipped away into the night but our story isn't over yet Davis stumbled about in the night and at roughly 3.25am came across a camper parked up with 40 old Daniel James Schwartz inside a gunfight ensued between Schwartz and Davis with Schwartz firing his Lee Enfield rifle both men ran out of bullets and Davis overpowered Schwartz hitting him with his pistol with the owner subdued Davis fled in the camper sometime later Schwartz managed to report the theft to the police a couple of hours later he was pulled over and Davis now out of ammunition surrendered to the police he was claiming he was a hitchhiker that had only stolen the camper and was in fact just an innocent bystander to the police slaying earlier on in the evening stating he was just a passenger not the driver of the Pontiac but this was obviously all rubbish but we'll come back to him in a little bit now twinning was still on the loose the hostage twinning fled the scene across US-99 and covered roughly 3 miles eventually reaching Lyons Avenue he broke into the house of Glen S. Hoag and in the chaos twinning took Glen hostage but his wife and son thankfully escaped alerting the police in doing so this was around 4.30am police quickly surrounded the house and a standoff ensued a police negotiator would chat to the suspect over the telephone and during the conversations he would brag about the death of Frego by saying his mistake was carrying his gun at port he got careless so I wasted him the police issued an ultimatum at 9am twinning released his hostage and tear gas was thrown into the house as the police entered a single shotgun blast rang out the suspect had taken the easy way out aftermath so back to Davis as the use of a chocolate teapot and it was quickly found out that he was one of the two men who committed the massacre he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of the forcing HP officers but luckily or not Davis' sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole this was after the US Supreme Court ruling on Thurman vs Georgia where the death penalty was deemed unconstitutional he would last until the 16th of August 2009 when he would also take the easy way out the shootout would be dissected as to how four police were killed in just 5 minutes well there was one startling similarity all men had under 2 years service and all were between the ages of 23 and 24 none had ballistic vests but although not standard issue 3 of the men would have likely survived their wounds if they had been issued them speed of reloading was also an issue as well as their pistols being different from which they had been trained on as a result the CHP standardised their weaponry and training the event would help push forward better training procedures in police stops especially when dealing with armed individuals and as such I'm going to give this tragedy a legacy rating of a 7 this is a plaintiff court production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share a license plaintiff for videos are produced by me John in the currently actually sunny corner southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch your weekly dose of me talking I have a second channel called made by John I also have an Instagram and Twitter if you want to see other random pictures I put out and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please it is the evening of the 13th of July 1977 and a thunderstorm is forming over New York City lightning can be seen flashing near the Hudson river it strikes the Buchanan south substation and two circuit breakers are tripped as consolidated Edison scrambled to fix the issue the lightning strike would be the first in a number of unlikely strikes that would ultimately result in 1.5 billion in today's dollars worth of damage over 3,700 people arrested for rioting and looting and a cultural landmark that would shape, destitute city and even some of the music we listen to of course today I'm looking at the 1977 New York City blackout my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult New York New Broke so the 1970s weren't a particularly great time financially for the city of New York by 1975 the city was close to defaulting on its debts and was in a financial crisis crime was on the rise and the middle classes had fled to the suburbs hitting the city's tax income the deficit was at at least 600 million but it was a bit of an open secret that was just a tip of a much bigger financial iceberg others have covered this period greater in detail so I won't dive any deeper apart from New York was short on cash and this lack of funds spilled out into the streets the city was in decay and the average person on the street knew it subways dilapidated police overworked the streets dirty and all of this played into a general lack of pride in the city I mean who could blame them if the authorities didn't care then why should we and this would create fertile ground a disaster that would unfold a storm in the city it is the evening of the 13th of July 1977 and the Indian Point nuclear power station is supplying households via power lines and substations throughout New York State and the city one of these substations is at Buchanan south Westchester County it is tasked with converting the high voltage some 144,000 volts of electricity from the power station down to a more usable commercial voltage the substation mostly sends electricity off to New York City this relatively normal but humid and warm July evening gave way to lightning it lit up the sky lightning bolts reached out to the ground and one of its targets was the Buchanan south substation at roughly 9.17 in the evening the strike blew out two circuit breakers these didn't reclose as they were meant to obviously this is not good but not terrible lightning can't strike twice right well in today's story also no but probably worse for New York the lightning struck something else a power line this was two 345 kilovolt transmission lines one reclosed but the other didn't this resulted in two other lines becoming overloaded the load was rather high due to people using air con in the july heat a fast start generator was attempted to be brought online but remote starting failed if that wasn't bad enough another lightning strike hit the sprain brook substation in yonkers this also took out two more lines of which only one once again restarted this yet again increased the load on other infrastructure it was ever becoming apparent that connedison needed to load shed initially a 5% power reduction followed by an 8% reduction at 9.19pm took place another substation trips due to the thermal overload but by 24 minutes past 9 this was not working and the system was still very much overloaded the city's own power plants couldn't pick up the slack and with supplemental power lines also overwhelmed it was just a matter of time ravens wood number 3 also known as big alice capable of supplying 990 megawatts shut down taking with it the lights of new york city and this was around half nine in the evening desperately connedison operators tried to restore power but this wouldn't be for quite a while darkness legadia and kennedy airports had to be shut down streetlights were out tunnels were shut the subway ground to a halt an alarm security system stopped working at shea stadium the Mets were playing the cups and losing the game in the sixth inning this too was plunged into darkness many trying to return home from the city were now stranded with very few trains running the only lights were from cars and the odd buildings that had backup generators however the darkness was ripe for being exploited for crime most shop owners had closed up and gone home consequently leaving their juicy stock unprotected gangs made their way out onto the streets attacking passers by and many regular people took the opportunity to loot and smash up their local shops throughout the night many would take to lighting kerosene burners candles small bonfires cars shops and houses in all over 1,000 cases of arson would be logged looting range from local convenience stores to over 40 brand new cars being stolen from a car dealership other cars were jacked in the traffic to be used as battering rams for more protected shop runs as the night dragged on emergency services quickly became overwhelmed crown heights and bushwick were hit really hard with tens of stores smashed up in just a few blocks but vandalism muggings and arson hit across the city at approximately 31 neighborhoods two blocks of broadway in brooklyn were ablaze and during the carnage 550 police officers were injured in the mayhem and well over 37 100 were arrested looting ran all the way into the morning and the day of the 14th of july in all the blackout would last 25 hours and a total of 300 million of 1977 dollars nearly 1.5 billion today worth of damage was inflicted on the city on top of that there was one murder with the shooting of dominic kisscone in carol gardens of which the crime is still unsolved till this very day the first area to get power back was queens at 7am on the 14th but why was the 1977 blackout so crime filled especially when compared with the blackout a decade earlier which was held up as example of communities coming together well it was probably the economic situation in the city in the late 1970s that bred disdain amongst its inhabitants who saw the blackout as an opportunity to get some stuff they couldn't afford even if it was at the expense of the very communities in which they lived the spark so to speak that caused the fire the original substation at Buchanan which failed to reclose its circuit breakers was due to an incorrectly fastened locknut that was missed likely due to cutbacks on maintenance throughout a decade of financial issues of course there's more to it as even the overloaded lines were a sign of improper planning for such an event con Edison would investigate the cause and implement improved practices and infrastructure strengthening may a beam would blame con Edison calling the event gross negligence but beam would take on someone to heat himself and leave office the same year interestingly in 2019 on the 42nd anniversary of the blackout con Edison treated west Manhattan's inhabitants to a re-enactment to 73,000 people how nice of them the blackout would inspire a number of musicians both directly and indirectly hometown hero David Bowie's song blackout has been linked to the event although Bowie himself never really gave a definitive answer he would say I can't in all honestly say that it was the NY one though it is entirely likely that the image locked itself inside my head so buying this CD for b-roll might have been a bit of a waste so the disaster scale I'm going to give it a bad day at the office or possibly dumpster fire due to the amount of arson and the legacy scale is going to be a number 8 we said Plain Difficult Production all videos on the next channel are creative commons attribution, share or light licence Plain Difficult Videos are produced by me John and are currently quite pleasant corner of southern London UK I have Patrons and YouTube members so I'd like to thank you for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week for your dose of me talking I have Instagram and Twitter and if you're enjoying this outro song then please feel free to head on over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music Man play us out Polly it is the 14th of December 1994 and the Iowa Morning Darkness is about to be interrupted at approximately 6 minutes past 6 in the morning the Terra International Incorporated Virtualizer Facility is consumed by an explosion today's video will look at how this turned into this my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult a brief history of Terra at Port Neil our story starts in 1965 here in Port Neil Woodbury County in the US state of Iowa a new fertilizer plant is under construction it's planned to supply farms within a 200 mile radius with their ammonia and other nitrogen crop chemicals shipping of the products was mainly undertaken by road with only about a third by rail understandable due to the local nature of the business the plant had two major areas area one consisted of an ammonia plant tank farm and utilities with area two being home to a nitric acid plant urea plant and ammonium nitrate plant so the whole goal of the site was to create ammonium nitrate urea to make this the plant needed all of the other parts of the site to produce their respective ingredients once enough nitrate ammonia and urea are produced ammonium nitrate can be made so let's look at the process used on the Terra Industries site so the whole goal of the site was to create ammonium nitrate urea ammonium nitrate for this was produced not surprisingly at the ammonium nitrate plant in area two the process took 55 and 56% nitric acid and ammonia and reacted it inside a thing called a neutralizer the nitric acid came from the plant in area one and the ammonia came from the urea plants on site but could be assisted by any of the four tanks varying from 30,000 us gallons to 5 million us gallons it was introduced at the bottom of the neutralizer the flow of ammonia was determined by the site's production capacity nitric acid was dispersed a bit above the ammonia the reaction is very exothermic which allows water to be evaporated out of the neutralizer creating the required 83% ammonium nitrate temperature is monitored via probe in the upper part of the unit the temperature maintained in the neutralizer was around 267 degrees fahrenheit or roughly 130 degrees centigrade the neutralizer was constructed of stainless steel the juicy ammonium nitrate overflowed off the neutralizer into a rundown tank this acted as a surge vessel for the neutralizer before the ammonium nitrate is pumped to the storage tank farm the rundown tank was insulated with 2 inches of calcium silicate water vapor was vented to atmosphere via a scrubber where any ammonium nitrate solution was returned to the neutralizer in 1992 the site received an upgrade in the form of a new computer control distribution control system this would increase production from 800 tons per day to over 1000 tons per day it was also able to monitor and record data it can also alert operators to process variable deviations and even automatically control output and this leads us to 1994 and a disastrous series of events the disaster it is the 27th of November 1994 and the ammonium nitrate plant has encountered a problem a pH probe on the neutralizer's downline was found to be defective no replacement is available and the decision is made to continue working with the defective probe just a week later on the 5th of December a leak was discovered a surface condenser in the nitric acid plant had been leaking and this required the shutdown of this part of the site although apparently getting fixed a couple of days later the plant would be shut down once again meanwhile at roughly 10pm on the 11th of December at the ammonium nitrate plant the outside operator found the neutralizer to be operating in highly acidic conditions the discovery was found during a grab sample and the pH was minus 1.5 the fumes were so strong that their operator's face became burnt another operator was called in and managed to monitor the neutralizer's acid levels reduced eventually reaching normal levels at around 1am on the 12th of December just an hour later a leak was discovered on the condense site line from the neutralizer to the scrubber the north pump was shut down and the south pump was started only for that one to also leak the gaskets for the north pump were replaced and it was returned to work but an unknown amount of ammonium nitrate had leaked the nitric acid plant would for another time switch off acid supply with an emergency shutdown again on the 12th of December the less than regular supply of acid over the first week of December had caused production issues and by early afternoon on the 12th the ammonium nitrate plant would be forced to start shutting down production shut down started at around 2pm with the neutralizer being switched off at 3pm the nitric acid line was purged with air and the product pumps were shut down and blocked off the air pushed the nitric acid into the neutralizer this was roughly 220 US gallons in total the purging of the lines took until 8.30pm after this 200 PSIG steam was applied to the nitric acid line this was to stop freezing in the December night but what the operators didn't know was that the neutralizer was in a highly acidic and contaminated condition caused by the leaks over the previous days but little did the operators know that injecting the high pressure steam into the neutralizer would result in a potentially runaway thermal reaction the ammonium nitrate was now sensitized and was a ticking time bomb the scrubber was still working and with the recirculating pumps on was blowing down ammonium nitrate back into the neutralizer but the early hours of the morning of the 13th of December the plant was shut down and upon vision inspection by one of the operators apparently no issues could be seen start up was planned for later on in the morning and as such at 6am the nitric acid air compressor was being started up but just 6 minutes later two explosions erupted from the neutralizer the explosion destroyed the neutralizer replacing it with a crater four would lose their lives in the disaster almost instantly with another 18 being seriously injured debris was littered over a 500 yard radius with a blast being heard nearly 30 miles away some of the debris had damaged the on-site nitric acid tanks spinning liquid onto the ground no building on site escaped damage and windows on nearby houses were broken the explosion damaged ammonia gas storage tanks on site causing a release of the chemical into the air as the gas spread some 3000 residents would be required to temporarily evacuate contaminants floated around the plant for 6 days causing horrendous local health scares to add a cherry to the feces pie a power station across the Missouri river also took damage reducing power to the local community the total cost of the disaster would be estimated at $300 million but as the human and societal cost became apparent the cause needed to be investigated enter the EPA the investigation so almost immediately after one of the country's biggest fertilizer plants self-immolated the EPA got stuck into investigation they looked over the disaster site and interviewed any witnesses they could find as they constructed the timeline the cause became ever so apparent no surprises it involved incompetence and improper plant operation they found the training of operators to be lackluster to say the least there was little in the way of safe operating procedures and to make things worse communications between the various plants on site was pretty much useless the human factors created the environment full of disaster but how did the explosion start? well the neutralizer was allowed to reach a dangerously acidic level which was caused by the purging of the acid line after the acid plant couldn't supply the ammonium nitrate plant this isn't the end of the world so long as it's properly monitored and has it's pH level adjusted accordingly but this wasn't done steam was applied to the neutralizer to keep it from freezing this in combination with the compressed air used to purge the nitric acid created low density zones i.e. bubbles these zones load the amount of energy required to initiate thermal decomposition of the ammonium nitrate this occurred for 15 hours before the explosion creating localized areas of heating which couldn't be diffused through the rest of the ammonium nitrate the ammonium nitrate had also been contaminated with chlorides during various leaks this also reduced the energy needed for activation all of this destabilized the ammonium nitrate in the neutralizer and the slow roll of pumps during the planned start up added more super heated steam and basically became the ignition point the EPA concluded that the main cause was sheer lack of safe operating procedures any procedures that were actually used were rather worryingly never written down so obviously this was a recipe for disaster so i'm going to rate this disaster as a bad day at the office and a 6 on the legacy scale do you agree? let me know in the comments below this is a plainly difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons at tuition share like licensed plainly difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently quite nice sunny corner of southern london uk i have instagram and twitter so check them out if you fancy looking at some random pictures and i'd also like to make a very warm thank you to my patreons and youtube members as well as the rest of you who tune in every week to see my videos if you're enjoying this outro song then please go over to my second channel made by john where you can listen to and watch the video in full all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music man plays out please maglev the supposed transport of the future it is an impressive concept high speeds along frictionless track the only concern is wind resistance i'll be honest i love the concept but i do think of it as a bit of a gadget bar you may be wondering why is john giving me his opinion on a semi-futuristic mode of public transport well because no one else will listen to me at home they get a bit bored when i wax lyrical about trains can i talk to you about railways well it leads me neatly onto today's subject which shows that future trains are just as susceptible to bulls ups as their more traditional counterparts the usual suspects will come out to play regulations ignorance and complacency today we're looking at the trans rapid latin train collision maglev oh maglev so i'm not going to go too deep of a dive into the world of magnetic levitation i always read this as magical levitation and i know my brain is broken maglevs have been the brain residue of many an engineer and inventor dating back to the early years of the last century with this first patent filed in 1902 maglevs have a lot of the usual madcap train replacement tropes expensive complex tracks usually raised in the air and completely incompatible with conventional trains just like my personal favourite crazy train invention the bennie rail plane many nations dip their toes into the world of maglev some better than others but for today's video let's look at just one country that worked with maglevs germany so maglevs run along a guide way rather than a physically rolling on a track like trains and monorails do but unlike other guideway type transport systems like a guided bus no part of the train actually makes contact with the guideway now now now before you shout at the screen i know some systems do have little support wheels that pop out of the train when travelling at low speed but you know let's just ignore that for today anyway so how does the train not make contact with the guideway well by floating through the power of magnets you see how two magnets of the same pole push each other away well this can be harnessed to create frictionless travel this is where electromagnetic suspension comes into the whole equation it creates magnetic levitation by the power of electromagnets and by constantly altering the strength of the magnet field produced by using a feedback loop ok i know i've butchered that explanation but john's tldr is magnets make future floaty train go brrr so with no friction between train and guideway how does it drag itself along well that comes in with linear induction motors basically imagine electric motor with a rotor and a stator but rolled out flat instead of creating torque it produces a linear force this reduces moving parts to practically zero as such increases efficiency and reliability as well as speed which is maglev's biggest benefit they really can go so that was my brief summary of maglev let's focus in on germany in particular and our disaster area emsland test facility so as i mentioned earlier one of the countries that went in on maglev was germany roughly around the same sort of time as the intercity express project the main player in the german maglev scene was trans rapid they began with an inside mock-up model in 1969 called trans rapid number one so over the following decade the concept was developed into a fully working passenger carrying prototype by the end of the 1970s in 1979 trans rapid 5 ran during the munich transport exhibition it carried over its few weeks roughly 50,000 people this generated enough interest to warrant a full blown test track the site was selected in latem emsland and the construction was began in 1980 the track was completed by 1984 and it was a pretty impressive project in total the track length was 31.5 kilometers or 19 miles and featured two turning curves and a straight bit of lion roughly 12 kilometers or 7.5 miles long for achieving high speed operation there was a depot which had a switch to allow trains in and another two switches at each curve and just one station the system looked remarkably like a monorail with its concrete beam and was elevated along the land below to be used for farming over the years since opening operational speeds gradually increased as the system was refined from trans rapid number 6 all the way to number 8 in 1999 and boasted speeds up to 420 kilometers an hour or 260 miles an hour although the track and trains were solely used for testing members of the public are allowed to ride the trains for a small fee trans rapid 8 was a free car unit the rear of which was always kitted out with monitoring equipment putting passengers in the front two cars it proved vital for building data about operating a maglev train the system didn't really receive a widespread roll out apart from the Shanghai maglev which is kind of cool the line at the test track was a single vehicle only operation which meant signaling wasn't too much of a big deal instead relying on radio communications for train movement authorities but the maglevs weren't the only vehicles permitted on the line there was also a non levitating vehicle used for track clearance and maintenance this ran on tyres and was powered by a diesel engine every day an engineering vehicle drives the test track to clear it of debris and on the 22nd of September 2006 this was no different the collision it is the early morning of the 22nd of September 2006 and a 60 metric ton 10 meter or 33 feet long maintenance vehicle makes its way out of the depot building on to the test track two workers are aboard and they go about their usual business checking the track for the morning's test runs the vehicle has one driver's cab at one end with his engine at the other meanwhile the 31 passengers for the first test train of the day are congregating in the visitor centre they're mostly employees of suppliers of the test site some 7 test site employees 9 employees of a local elderly care centre and a couple invited as guests of an employee at 9am the train is ready for boarding the staff are in the rear of the train manning the monitoring equipment and one makes their way to the front he will be the morning's driver at roughly 9.30 the maintenance train pulls up to the column before the switch to allow it back into the depot the driver's cab is at the north end and both workers sit inside awaiting radio clearance that the route is set for the depot building but nothing can be heard the line dispatcher doesn't reply to the maintenance vehicle's requests the Maglev train is scheduled to leave the small station at 9.40am at 9.43am the train slowly rolls forward but then abruptly stops this momentary build of excitement is just for a break test the driver radio's line dispatch for permission to begin the test run 9 minutes later power is fed to the track and clearance is given the time is 9.52am in the passenger cabin there is a screen that displays the train's current speed it speeds up to 140mph 150mph then 160kmh the train in just a few seconds is close to the speed limit of the day's first run meanwhile the maintenance vehicle is still on the line just 57 seconds after departing the train's emergency brakes come on but the impact is unavoidable Trans Rapid 8 slams into the engineering vehicle due to the system's design the train hugs the track and its wedge shape front pushes the tired vehicle up essentially ripping it some 60t into the top part of the maglev's passenger compartment the front of the train is completely ripped apart leaving just the bogies and upper frame in place the maintenance vehicle is pushed back 300m or 985ft the sound of the collision can be heard from the control room and by now dispatchers knew their mistake after checking each other for any injuries the crew aboard the rear carriage of the maglev called in the collision to the control room emergency workers are sent to the crash site including the in-house fire department the wreckage was bad and as rescue workers began to attend the scene they probably didn't realise that this would be the first fatal accident involving a maglev train the two aboard the engineering train are shaken but relatively unharmed they hear banging from below them the floor is removed of their driver cab and three survivors miraculously still alive are within the wreckage their help to safety escape shoots are deployed at the rear of the maglev and some survivors managed to escape over 200 emergency workers would attend the scene cutting up parts of the maglev trying to recover survivors and bodies a crane is used to remove the engineering vehicle and large pieces of debris when a body is found it is laid out on the trackway photograph for identification and then taken away in total 23 would be dead 8 would survive the crash by the afternoon all dead and alive were recovered the wreck train would remain on the track until November aftermath so how did such an easily avoidable disaster unfold well it would soon become apparent that human error was the cause a day after the disaster the two dispatchers on duty that morning were placed under arrest and held in protective custody they are interviewed and it became clear that they had forgotten about the maintenance vehicle they would be charged and the trials postponed due to deterioration of mental health the guilt must have weighed pretty heavy on them two supervisors were also charged and fined in 2008 this was because there was a safety system in place to prevent a collision but they discouraged dispatchers from using it potentially just to save some time you see they could set up an electronic block which would stop a maglev train from entering an occupied section what's bizarre is that the authority of the dispatcher was taken as all that was needed to depart even though the engineering vehicle probably could have been seen by the maglev before the journey began investigators found that the engineering vehicle and the maglev were on two completely different radio systems meaning they couldn't communicate with one another or hear the communications of each other and the dispatcher the dispatchers were eventually tried and sentenced to 12 and 18 months suspended sentences respectively the dispatcher would become the end of the test site's license to carry the public and Transrapid 9 was showcased in 2008 but not to a paying public the project would limp along until 2011 when it was shut down with all working on site losing their jobs the only transrapid system in commercial use would be the Shang High Line but it has been slated as an overpriced vanity gadget barn and this too has had its issues the concept is cool but the future of transport sadly won't look like this so I'm going to rate this disaster as a bad day at the office and a 5 on my legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are created with commons attribution and shareolite licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently surprisingly sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you who tune in every week to listen to me talk for 10 to 15 minutes or so I have Instagram and Twitter if you want to see behind the scenes stuff as well as a second channel made by John where I just do other random bits of artwork and random videos and stuff and all that's left to say is thank you very much for watching and Mr Music plays out please it is the morning of the 7th of November 2000 and a JCB digger has just smashed its way into the millennium dome Greenwich Peninsula London this is no accident the driver is wearing body armour and a gas mask and he has brought some friends with him what's unfolding is a diamond heist the millennium dome although as some consider a white elephant is the home to some pretty valuable diamonds for an exhibition the men set about attacking the thick protective glass with a nail gun and sledgehammers are being watched my name is John and today we're looking at the Brazen Millennium Dome Heist and I went on a bit of a B-roll rampage so there is a link in the description for all the extra footage I filmed London's White Elephant so it's towards the end of the 1990s and the fear and excitement of the millennium is quickly approaching planes might fall out of the sky and nuclear missiles might go off all pretty scary well here in Blighty in hometown south London the Tory and then later new labour government set about building the ninth largest building by usable space in the world the concept was scraped out of the brains of the members of the major government as a sort of world's fair the project was in gorge from 1997 when this guy got into the helm of British politics Tony Blair had got in on the 2nd of May 1997 and construction on what would become known as the Millennium Dome began in June the same year the project was intended to wow the world in celebrating the turn of the millennium the dome opened rather aptly on the 31st of December 1999 and would be open for just one year I remember as a young John and family plainly bundled into my dad's voxel cavalier chugging along the A2 to see the dome in the canvas flesh actually was the dome canvas I don't know it just kinda looks a bit like a tent any hoos in order to wow the world the dome would be crammed for the exciting exhibits one of which would be some sparkly diamonds bees were supplied by De Beers and featured a flawless 203.04 carats gem with an estimated worth of 200 million pounds in millennium money it was thought to be the most flawless in the world and was rather aptly named the Millennium Star needed to say this piece would attract some criminal attention De Beers had thought of this and had set up protection that not only stopped the robbers but allowed the public to view the precious stones closely they were placed behind bomb proof glass reportedly able to resist a 60 ton battering ram the dome itself was also fenced off as the year 2000 moved on hundreds of thousands attended the exhibition gawping at the precious stones I should say that they were part of an exhibit called the Money Zone but it was just one area out of several within the dome which each had its different theme for example religion, the body and work etc as a side note the dome experience even had its own Blackadder short film although not as good as Blackadder goes forth it's still pretty much well worth a watch but it wouldn't be all fun and learning the dome would be under the sights of a criminal element a tip off to a big heist it is the summer of the year 2000 and the police's flying squad yes that is actually part of the metropolitan police have received a tip off about a big raid on the horizon but they don't know where the tip off does involve some names and links back to an attempted robbery in February 2000 this took place in southwest London in an area called Nine Elms the robbers had targeted an armoured money van they blocked off the vans escape routes along the Nine Elms lane and a plan to bash open the vans doors by using a battering ram welded to the front of a lorry the plan however was foiled and the robbers escaped via the Thames on an inflatable boat a similar heist was attempted in Ellesford just near Chatham around here on a Kentish map in July it too was thwarted when a random police car arrived after the lorry had broken the armoured cars doors the men shot at the police and escaped once again on an inflatable boat clearly the gang were capable of at least attempting a pretty sophisticated heist and they definitely weren't afraid to use force this brings us back to the summer and the flying squad's predicament of how to find what their next hit would be well forensic analysis of the abandoned lorries allowed Kent police to trace the vehicles to two disused farms in Kent these farms were put under 24 hour surveillance another tip came in from an informer hinting that the gang were looking for a big big payday by hitting the dome the surveillance an apprehension of the gang would be called Operation Magician with this knowledge they placed surveillance at the dome on top of the already established security on the 1st of September surveillance identified three of the suspected gang members at the dome they were taking notes on the tide at the Greenwich Peninsula using video camcorders to film security entrances and to look at the CCTV cameras if it wasn't 100% certain the dome was a target before now they knew it was surveillance increased again during which more gang members were observed filming the river gang members were being spotted at the dome in an ever increasing frequency on top of this down in Kent a gang member was observed procuring a speedboat the heist seemed by at least the end of September was pretty close the valuable diamonds were replaced with fakes which means if you went there towards the end of September and saw the diamonds you weren't actually looking at the real thing a false wall was constructed inside the exhibition room which behind had a small army of police officers ready to pounce at a moment's notice as October rolled in the police had identified some potentially ideal days for the heist to go ahead and lo and behold on these days the gang attempted twice but each time abandoned their attack the first due to the speedboat having mechanical issues and the second was aborted due to low tide the next time they attempted the heist the gang were going to see it through and the police thought it would come the day after their second failed attempt the 7th of November the year 2000 the heist it is the early hours of the 7th of November and over 200 police have been deployed around the millennium dome and surrounding areas of which half were armed they were laying in wait for the criminal gang to make an attempt on the diamonds the police were placed along the Thames and at various points about the peninsula all staff in the money zone were replaced with police disguised as guards cleaners and even tour guides at roughly 9 30 in the morning the heist began a JCB digger was spotted battering its way through the perimeter fence of the dome complex and heading straight for the main building there were four men inside the JCB armed with nail guns, smoke bombs ballistic vests and gas masks the JCB smashed its way through the side of the dome and crashed into the money zone the gang set off their smoke bombs and started firing the nail gun at the thick protective glass the glass now weakened was attacked with sledge hammers the gang as far as they knew were within inches of the prize but we know the diamonds were fake and the police were there waiting to make their move in a matter of seconds after smashing through the glass the order was sent out to the police and the four gang members found themselves looking down the barrels of multiple police firearm the man in the speedboat and the other man in the van and another across the river monitoring police frequencies were also apprehended almost immediately the heist was over the men were arrested and amazingly not a single single shot was fired the arrested gang members were sent to different police stations throughout south London to be held for questioning and later on in the day Kent police collared six more suspects the trial for the gang it was found that they had invested significantly in the heist somewhere in the region of 20,000 pounds in purchasing the required equipment and hiring a lookup in Plumstead to store it the sentences varied for the seven main suspects from five years to 18 although those who got the higher end of the sentences got then reduced later on down to 15 years one of the defendants had died between a rest and trial of cancer the JCB was sold off at auction for spare parts after the manufacturer took ownership from the insurance company police lead John Shatford came under a little bit of criticism for letting the heist go into the smashing stage said in response our chief concern throughout was public safety we decided it was better to let the robbers get into the vault where they were effectively imprisoned so what of the dome well it would actually open later on in the day albeit with the money zone understandably closed the dome closed fully as planned in December 2000 but no one else knew what to do with it afterwards items from the exhibition were auctioned off in 2001 and after the site being sold off would eventually turn into the London O2 arena in 2007 so I'm going to give this event a four on the legacy scale possibly a little bit more if you live in London and possibly a little bit less if you don't this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel creative commons attribution share like licensed plain difficult videos produced by me John and currently surprisingly sunny corner of south London UK I'd like to thank my patron members and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you who tune in every week to listen to me talk and watch my dodgily drawn cartoons I have Instagram and Twitter as well as a second channel so feel free to check them out if you have some spare time and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please plain difficult videos are financially supported by the generosity of my patron and YouTube members members get early add free access to videos usually the Monday or Tuesday before it's released on the main channel you can also get other perks depending on the pledge including your name at the end of the video right well thanks for listening to me talk back to the normal scheduled dose of well me talking so for the past few months I've been building up to this subject in my previous videos showing the long list of concrete construction failures in the state of Florida I believe for all I've covered so far failed before actually was complete but today's video is an outlier as it had been completed and occupied for quite a long time the Champlain Towers failure also marks the dramatic increase in the number of victims and financial costs it is also the most recent entry in Florida's building blunders my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we're looking at the Surfside Condominium Collapse a place to escape the cold Surfside in the early 1970s was a retreat for Canadian holiday goers it was considerably cheaper than Miami and offered a no-friels quiet place to get away one of these Canadians was Nathan Reba the lawyer come real estate developer from Ontario set about pushing a proposal to Surfside for some new luxury apartments this was in August 1979 but there was a slight snag at the city their sewage system wasn't up to snuff this had placed a moratorium on new residential developments but a mere hurdle Reba must have thought as his development offered $200,000 to the city that required water upgrade this was roughly half the total builder city needed to cough up the developers wind and dined officials in an effort to speed permits through in November 1979 the initial proposal for an overall development at Surfside was approved by the city the original buildings were to be named Champlin North and Champlin South and the southern tower was placed at 8777 Collins Avenue Surfside Florida with the north a block away there was also an Art Deco building already standing in between them this was the site originally of a hotel which had been bought up by Canadian investors for $475,000 in 1970 and was the site of an earlier failed attempt which would be taken up in the late 70s by Reba the project ran into issues in May 1980 when their lead contractor resigned a new one was brought in but there was a lot more trouble ahead building by mid 1980 was well under way but one of its site cranes collapsed and by the end of the summer it was discovered that over $10,000 worth of timber had been stolen at the end of the summer season a new contractor was hired Arnold Nickman original towers were to be 12 stories high but in August the developers applied to increase this with the addition of a penthouse level architect William Friedman didn't object nor did structural engineer Sergio Breitemann interestingly both men had slightly dodgy pasts with Friedman having his license suspended in the late 1960s for a dangerous sign structure that had collapsed Breitemann had also got into hot water in the mid 1970s for signing off a car park without steel reinforcements in November the penthouse was apparently approved but in just the same month the permit was revoked the town manager who revoked the license got into hot water himself being accused of being a peeping Tom he resigned and the penthouses were finally allowed once more the original issue was that Champlin Towers would exceed height restrictions they had been brought in to try and stop Surfside turning into a mini Miami with its towering seaside buildings the town kind of had its hand forced by allowing the extra height as the developers had already started building them meaning if they were stopped and pulled down the city would have had to deal with a hefty lawsuit the South Tower was completed in 1981 followed by the North a few months later in 1982 Reba would see several lawsuits brought against him for failing to pay for works completed and even part of the construction consortium that owned the towers also ended up in court with him Reba did get a pretty good payday however with the sale of the apartments some 22.5 million dollars making him one of the largest developers in Florida so what was the design of the Champlin Towers most notably the south one the design as we know during its turbulent construction the South Tower underwent several changes and this is reflected in the changes to the building's plans between 1979 and 1980 some were rather worrying where support beams were removed in the building's final iteration the tower was when looking down into it in the shape of an L and had 12 stories with penthouses on top it had a total of 136 apartments varying in size from 1 to 4 bedrooms the eastern side of the building had lovely views of the Atlantic Ocean the building was constructed of steel reinforced concrete it made use of a standard column and two-way slab design slabs were between 9.5 and 8 inches thick the slab were reinforced with Reba and at the point that the column connected with the horizontal floor with Reba went through the columns Reba cage the columns in the building ranged in size but for the purpose of this video I'll only talk about three types named A, C and N Type A columns were largely around the south east side of the building and were 24 inches square Type C were predominantly located at the north perimeter and central areas and were 16 inches square Type N were 8 by 16 inches and were placed on the south eastern perimeter underneath the pool deck and on the western perimeter oh yeah did I mention the complex had a pool deck this area was on the first floor and housed the heated pool planters creating a nice outside area without the need to venture onto the beach however the planters, the very heavy planters, were not actually originally specked out in the plans this caused extra stress over the smallest columns which rather worryingly was where some of the beams had been removed in the plans the waterproofing for the pool deck was placed on a flat surface instead of with a slope this would prove troublesome as the building was managed not allowing water to properly run off the buildings columns were supported by piles that had been driven into the ground this acted as an anchor holding the building in place above the pilings was the lowest accessible section of the building the carpark it had the rough footprint of the building above and was accessed via a ramp issues so not only did the project see issues with the city the problems arose with the plans right from the start the columns in some places were too narrow on the plans which meant the contractor would have to make a choice use the narrow columns and over crowd the rebar increasing the risk of corrosion or remove some rebar which weakened the structure of course there was the option of refusing to build it but we all know that wouldn't have happened clearly parts of the building were not up to code however this didn't stop construction no the building was actually completed in 1981 but that wasn't the end of the issues almost right from the start after the first residents started moving in cracks started appearing in the carpark level concrete seawater was known to seep through the foundations at high tide causing the carpark to be constantly damp and in particularly bad days could be up to two feet deep pumps were employed to combat this but it was a persistent problem on site but it wasn't just the carpark that had standing water and seepage the roof also had constant complaints of leaks over the years the building fell into disrepair and to hinder any repairs the condo association was mired in arguments stalemates and cost cutting you see the condo board was a volunteer organisation usually made up of people who were owners and residents themselves as such this often means they aren't the most professional property managers because of this professionals are brought in and are paid from a reserve fund that the board collects in the UK this is what a sinking fund is do you call that the same thing in the US as well anyway the board by the time the apartments were approaching their 40th year was very low on money this meant that when repairs were required the board had to go directly to the residents for the money rather than being spread out over months and years of ownership you might get hit with a massive bill as such residents and the board's relationship broke down board meetings would erupt into arguments and votes would be locked all while the tower deteriorated many of the exterior railings of the tower were rusting away constant lakes in the carpark and cracking columns were a concern to many eventually the board managed to get an assessment done on the building's deteriorating condition and no surprise is it wasn't good news Morabito consultants issued a report on the building in 2018 noting major construction errors on the pool deck cracking and spalling in the carpark facades cracking soffits rotting windows seals failing improper flashing on doors and windows causing leaks and serious cracks on the columns revealing rebar were all major points they even said that parts of the building pool deck were beyond their useful life so none of that was good and the bill for repairs wouldn't be any better this would result again in arguments and frustration with the condo board and in 2019 six of the seven board members resigned a new round of board members took over in 2020 and managed to secure a $15 million loan for the repairs which nearly two years after the report had grown in need and cost in a presentation from the board members to residents the point was bluntly put across but how would this multi-million dollar loan be paid off? well the residents would have to bear the cost in what's called a special assessment this put condo owners on the hook for between $80 and $200,000 depending on the apartment size paid up front or monthly for 15 years but although falling apart due to extensive repairs due the Champlain Tower's location and views still made it an attractive investment opportunity for prospective buyers several properties sold over the next year including one of the penthouses for close to $3 million in April 2021 the special assessment bills were sent out to residents but for the residents it wasn't just a financial disaster on the horizon it is the early hours of the 24th of June 2021 and passes by near the Champlain Tower's south hear noises from the building but it sounds like a car crash a tourist films through the gate to the garage where rubble and water can be seen pouring onto the ground residents aside the building are awoken by cracking as one person would describe as construction like sound this is around 1.14 in the morning and the noises were increasing a roughly 1.21 in the morning the ground floor deck gave way followed by the central portion of the northern side of the building shortly after the eastern section also plunged into the darkness the dramatic collapse happened in just 12 seconds the western section of the building surprisingly remained precariously in place within minutes the first responders arrived on the scene and in one of the gruesome modern wonders the disaster's aftermath was recorded with body cameras the air in the immediate aftermath was thick with dust obscuring street lighting in the night sky over 80 emergency response units would race to the scene immediately and begin frantically trying to recover any survivors within hours hundreds of police officers and firefighters from agencies across Miami-Dade were in attendance survivors were carried from the standing portion of the building and severely damaged sections in stretches and even on the first responders backs a cherry picker was employed in an effort to reach people trapped on the higher sections of the remaining structure evacuations took place in the hotel next door luckily due to the building being flanked by the beach on the east side no one else was at risk within the immediate vicinity as the hours dragged on more specialist rescue units began scouring the wreckage but it wasn't looking good rescue dogs sniffed over the rubble 35 people were rescued in the first few hours an onsite triage was set up and various levels of wounded were treated on site and sent off to hospitals across the Miami-Dade area a state of emergency declaration was signed by the Miami-Dade County Mayor at 4.33pm by the evening the missing list was increasing in length a fire had broken out within the depths of the rubble and was spreading horizontally by the 26th of June 127 people had been accounted for five were confirmed dead and 156 missing Champlain Towers North was voluntarily evacuated due to it being built around the same time with the same developer this also happened alongside the evacuation of Champlain East which was built in the 1990s the still standing portion of Champlain South was announced to be demolished on the 4th of July and this would be using explosives it was planned for the structure to fall into its footprint and into Collins Avenue to try to not disturb the recovery efforts on the east part of the site for the best part of a month rescue workers would continue scouring the site for survivors however it was more a case of body recovery on some days just one body and on others as many as 15 would be retrieved by the 17th of July 97 bodies had been pulled from the rubble with all but two being identified on the 23rd of July the Miami-Dade fire department stopped the rescue efforts and left the area by now all 98 were identified vital evidence in the form of important structural debris was removed and stored off site for investigation some of the damaged cars and personal property from the tower was transported to a field 10 miles away surprisingly in 2022 the site was sold off for redevelopment for $120 million to Dubai based developer Damak but what was the cause of the collapse? the investigation now this might actually be the first subject I've covered on this channel that the investigation hasn't actually been complete it has fallen on the feet of the NIST but although there isn't an official verdict yet we can go into the most likely causes as investigators and the media dug into the past of the building unsurprisingly the buildings to mulchess history came to light the 2018 report was made public information but although it highlighted many serious issues not all could have caused the initial spark that caused the collapse luckily there was some footage of the building pre-disaster the collapse beginning at the base of the building this was because as you can see the upper floors stayed intact as they fell meaning their supports had gone closer to the bottom of the building this coupled with the footage of rubble in the car park pre-collapse showed that the initiator was likely around here the second part of the collapse as seen on the video shows us that the middle section removed the support for the eastern section the western section didn't collapse this also gives us a hint but it was built slightly differently with stronger columns of their type A variety at 24 inches square the shear walls on each side of the central section were different with the western wall being thicker than its eastern counterpart post-collapse photos also hinted at a cause of the overpopulated concrete with rebar most notably in the narrower columns this meant that the concrete didn't fill the gaps in between the rebar allowing air pockets to form potentially creating areas that said rebar could corrode they also found on the concrete floor slabs that some had delaminated from their rebar that is the rebar had pulled away from within the concrete floor slabs but we already knew the building wasn't very well built but it did last 40 years well this is where poor maintenance comes into play with not addressing the gradually appearing issues over the four decades the built-in floors would only make themselves worse for example not painting the concrete at regular intervals to protect it from the corrosive seaside air anything neglected will eventually fail the building during its lifetime had rather a lot of construction projects undertaken around it the aforementioned Champlain Towers East was thrown up in the 1990s also next door there was the 2016-87 park which began construction and in 2019 a beach replenishment project was undertaken which would involve large heavy trucks of sand being brought along the 88th street which was along the building's northern perimeter exactly near where the claps had begun it was also found that during the 90s Champlain Towers South was experienced subsidence of just under 1mm per year although leading up to the disaster this had seemed to have stopped there had been reports of the pool deck having issues with in the 1990s the concrete underneath the pool needing repair from the carpark side this involved removing the damaged concrete and rust proofing the rebar been sealing it in with mortar spooling had to be repaired in 1997 again around the underside of the pool deck and waterproofing was also looked at personally I think the issue was inadequate concrete and rebar specifications which allowed to weaken beyond the point of holding itself up due to woeful maintenance in an area which loves to rust things away i.e by the sea but hey what do I know I'm just an idiot on the internet the official cause we will still have to await from the NIST so now I need to look at the aftermath a lawsuit was filed against Champlain Towers out condominium association on the 24th of June 2021 initially for 5 million dollars and this would be joined over the months by many more residents it would result on June 23rd 2022 with a 1.02 billion dollar settlement for victims of the collapse it was estimated that the collapse also caused around 1 billion dollars in property damage making it one very expensive disaster the disaster has put the focus on condo boards and how strict rules would help associations keep on top of maintenance and holding enough funds in for repairs so I'm going to call this disaster an absolute dumpster fire and unfortunately due to the event being so recent I'm not going to give it a legacy scale just yet this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are created commons that we should share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently surprisingly sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreon members and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos I have Instagram Twitter and a second YouTube channel so check them out if you want to see behind the scenes stuff and random photographs I always have to say thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please it is 2008 and state Chinese television is showing a new method to treat internet and computer game addiction the show is called fighting the internet demon who turned our geniuses into beasts it features a man nicknamed Tesla Trooper Yang and he's apparently found a way to treat those young internet riddled minds this form of treatment wasn't new in 2008 however and Yang's work would represent just another chapter in this medical procedures history which was well over 150 years old by the mid noughties there were many psychological medical interventions used freely in the early part of the 20th century that elicit nightmares I mean who would undergo insulin shock therapy for entertainment value but there are a few that stick in the mind excuse the pun as a cultural memory of the brutal experiences of the mentally ill at the turn of the last century one that jumps to mind is the lobotomy although largely abandoned today except for a few individual cases I've already covered this but the other treatment that was around at the same time and even used in conjunction with the ice pick was that of today's subject electroconvulsive therapy I remember from one of my visits to the museum of the mind at Bethlehem hospital the ECT machine on display it had a rather ominous worded button treat this was to administer an electric shock to the patient or victim whichever way you like to think about it I feel this word explains rather well that people who used it did generally think it would help in most cases but rather than used in specific cases ECT was given out indiscriminately even as a form of punishment today we're going to dive into the world of ECT therapy welcome to the dark side of science early beginnings our story of ECT goes back surprisingly far as far back as the first chemical batteries no less and two men in Italy Alessandro Volta Luigi Galvini Volta in the late 1790s was working on an invention called the Volta pile and this was a very early battery Galvini around the same time was working on using electricity to animate the limbs of dead frogs he found if the limbs were struck by lightning they moved he was building upon Benjamin Franklin's use of lightning Franklin had also used electricity on people for a curative treatment he also found that they would move frog's legs if he simply touched a brass hook attached to the animal to a steel plate Galvini had thought the animation was proof of animal electricity a power which made all living things move Volta upon reading a book published in 1791 by Galvini on his animal electricity thought instead of the power being within the animal it was actually from the two metal objects touching this led him to create the Volta pile a year after Galvini's death he named the chemical action that creates electricity Galvanism but what does this all have to do with ECT well after Galvini's death in 1798 his work will be taken up by his nephew Giovanni Aldini Aldini would take his uncle's work animating dead frogs and up his game to animating dead people freshly dead bodies for scientific experiments were not the easiest thing to come by but for one way at the end of a hangman's noose Aldini was able to procure the freshly dead body of convicted murderer George Forster in London his execution took place on the 18th of January 1803 at Newgate as soon as the man was hanged the body was cut down and taken to Aldini in a nearby house Aldini applied an electrical current to the deceased his face and his jaw began to move and an eye opened next he put current through the dead body and its arm raised with a clenched fist Onlookers thought Forster was coming back to life but he was not and someone had noted that if he had his sentence of hanged by the neck till death would still stand a contemporary report of the event from the Newgate calendar stated the professor, we understand had made the use of galvanism also in several cases of insanity and with complete success it was the opinion of the first medical men that this discovery, if rightly managed and duly processed would not fail to be of great and perhaps as yet unforeseen utility the first line of that statement is what's valuable here for us, you see Aldini wasn't just electrifying the dead but also the living, over a lot of the 18th and 19th centuries doctors and scientists experimented with inducing seizures for the treatment of the insane and galvanism was just another method Aldini wasn't also the only one to try this out British physician James Linde also experimented with electricity again reporting positive results throughout the 19th century galvanism was used in asylums and developed into electroph therapy but it was at the time mainly a case of shock and see what happens as a means of subduing patients electroconvulsive therapy so I'm going to skip some years forward for us to meet Hungarian Neuropsychiatrists Ladislas J. Maduna he in 1934 had introduced a thing called convulsive therapy he believed that schizophrenia could be alleviated by epileptic seizures but how to cause such seizures well, Maduna started using chemical compounds for this effect mainly camphor and metrozol by the end of the decade metrozol induced convulsive therapy was widespread throughout the mental health industry spread upon schizophrenia metrozol, although caused seizures was difficult to administer in some cases requiring doctors to chase patients around wards in order to force administer the drugs as such someone thought to combine convulsive therapy with the widely employed shocking of asylum patients with electricity and this is where Hugo Solletti joins our story. In April 1938 he undertook his first electro shock experiment on a human Solletti's inspiration had come from seeing an abattoir using a 125 volt electric shock to knock out a pick before slaughter Solletti and his assistant Lucio Bini, devised that if the electric shock was applied straight to the head, reliable convulsions could be induced. The first victim was in April 1938 this was a man affected by delusions detained by the police he was taken to the clinic for mental and nervous diseases in Rome the police probably thought that this was the best place for the mentally ill patient but Solletti and Bini saw this as a perfect opportunity his head was shaved and he was taken to a lab in which a bed was placed next to an ECT machine in their previous experiments with dogs around half had died from cardiac arrest. Both men knew this time round could be the same and their treatment would quickly become an execution 80 volts was passed across the patient's temple then shortly after 90 volts after a few minutes of rest they sent a shock of 110 volts the patient convulsed and turned blue he was becoming oxygen starved but at 48 seconds the seizure stopped and he returned to normal breathing after several treatments over the coming months the patient appeared to recover and returned to a normal state of mind and was even later reunited with his family Solletti and Bini developed their treatment and undertook a clinical trial they found in a variety of cases that between 10 and 20 treatments were enough to see an improvement they also found that patients post treatment had amnesia of the therapy meaning that unlike metrozol the patient wasn't scared of the induced seizures the treatment proved to be more controllable, cheaper and easier to administer than the chemical equivalent the Italians treatment spread across the UK and US Australia and even Germany by 1940 and post World War II the treatment spread even further quickly it was found that ECT was beneficial for other mental health conditions most notable in depression So how does it work? the original machine built by Bini and Solletti had electrodes that were placed on each side of the patient's head around 120 volts of direct current was applied with the help of a sine wave although the waveform would later be modified and the shock would last between 1 and 6 seconds now the dose level has to exceed the seizure threshold of the patient but this is only known through trial and error some physicians started off with a standard dose and adjust where others made an educated guess about the patient's age, gender and weight it is thought, although not actually clinically confirmed that the electrical current creates neural elasticity allowing the brain to rewire itself hopefully improving the patient's symptoms in its original form ECT had issues with the side effects of memory disturbance beyond the beneficial short-term anesia and confusion as such Bini and Solletti experimented with their method and changed it up to use a unilateral electro placement in that only one side of the head would be wired up meaning the current would only pass through a portion of the brain and not the whole thing another change was a step away from using sine waves to a short pulse wave the original form was known as unmodified ECT and would be more prevalent throughout the 1940s and 1950s but memory loss and confusion weren't the only side effects practitioners also noted a rare issue fractures and dislocations of the patient's longer bones this was due to the seizures being pretty full on as such a modified treatment was devised with the use of muscle relaxants and short-term anesthesia this came into use in the early 1950s but the treatment was already becoming known as a controversial procedure in mental asylums it was often administered without informed consent and used as punishment for unruly behaviour often the threat alone was all that was required to keep order on the wards and like lobotomies it was administered to patients who would be more hurt rather than helped ECT was also used on homosexual people in an effort to shock the gay out of them footage of ECT permeated to the wider public affecting the way it was seen as more of a cruel act than a curing treatment this in conjunction with its use on children and the lack of informed consent tainted the treatment in the realm of public opinion falling out of favour by the time in the 1960s had rolled in a lot of the hero treatments of the 1930s began to drop out of use this was part due to improvements in psychology and in medications that bypassed the need for physical intervention although when used on the correct patient and in modified form ECT had a greater efficacy than the old brain poking but it still fell out of use it didn't go away you see it did work and into the 1980s a more controlled form was used on particular individuals who needed the treatment under strict medical supervision but that wasn't the case everywhere and here is the man you've probably been waiting the whole video for me to talk about Tesla Trooper Yang this is Yang and he is a psychologist based in the 4th hospital of Linyi Linyi mental hospital which hilariously has 34 one star reviews on google no surprise when you hear what Yang has been getting up to you don't get the name like electric shock madman Yang for nothing and spoiler the shock was ECT Yang thought the unmodified ECT would be perfect for treating internet addicted teenagers electric shocks and no anesthesia Yang had gone old school he began his studies into internet addiction in 1999 and by 2006 he was using ECT regularly to treat his addicted victims this will culminate in the 2008 TV show that I mentioned at the beginning of this video Yang had created a rather lucrative business charging roughly $800 a month to the parents of the internet addicted individuals this epitomized the negative public image towards ECT but it was just medicalised torture in Yang's case it probably was torture one of his more concerning quotes when talking about his therapy was that ECT is only painful for those with internet addiction jeez of course he didn't get informed consent from his underage patients China would actually ban the use of ECT for internet addiction in 2009 after which Yang started using lower voltage pulse electronic acupuncture because that's a thing now there's a lot more to Yang's story so let me know in the comments if you'd like a full video on this guy so in conclusion ECT is a bit of a mixed bag it does work for some it's been abused a lot during its 90 or so years of use in its current form the introduction of more controllable waveforms and pulse types has made the treatment ever more effective it's nowhere near as horrific as the lobotomy which even that still has its uses in modern day medicine so it's rating time I'm going to give this one 6 thunderbolts out of 10 this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution play difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have Instagram and Twitter so check them out if you want to see behind the scenes images and all sorts of random stuff all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please it is the evening of the 4th of December 1957 and a thick fog has descended upon southeast London UK commuter trains out of some of London's busiest terminals are severely delayed the trains are busy tonight with many hopping on the first they can get on one of these trains is an electric multiple unit bound for Hayes Bromley Kent the train departs Charing Cross 30 minutes late and heads down the line to Waterloo East Ben London Bridge, New Cross St John's owing to the late departure and fog the Hayes train much like others have missed their slot in a carefully arranged timetable after slowing passing the St John's signal box the train is brought to a stand at a signal just before the next signal box the signaler needs to know where the train is going as it's running out of sync this is not unusual however this rather run of the mill filled up will be the scene for the third worst rail disaster in British history in which two trains would collide and 90 would die welcome to Plainly Difficult my name is John and today we will dive into the Lewisham St John's rail crash I'm back at the scene of a disaster in the flesh I've travelled through here hundreds of times over the years but it's only been recently that I've discovered it was the location of the crash I posted some photos and footage up on my Instagram last month when I was down here getting some film and a good few of you guessed correctly where I was oh and whilst I'm here as always the b-roll footage is up on my second channel the link is in the description as well as the pinned comment our disaster today is a big one involving two trains and a bridge collapse I'll keep the background light on this one and I won't dive too deep into British railway I've covered this before in the Harrow and Wilston and Clapham crashes background St John's has always been a bit of a nowhere stop there's not much to do around here and as such it's not really a destination station more just a suburban stop that commuter trains call at it marks roughly half way between New Cross and its interchange in the 1950s at least with the London Underground East London Line and its south-eastern railways and its interchange at Lewisham trains bypass St John's on the through lines on their way to either London Bridge or down on the south-eastern mainline but although not a massively busy station the area is busy with junctions and can become a bit of a pinch point for trains heading south-east out towards Kent the St John's signal box is responsible for signaling trains towards Lewisham and the North Kent Line each major junction in this period of British railways signaling is controlled by its own signal box as such when a train is bound for Hayes from London avoiding Lewisham it negotiates the down-through across St John's junction and onto the down-through south-eastern mainline from here the train has to negotiate the park's bridge junction taking the diverging routes down onto the Mid Kent Line St John's is also interesting in that running over the junction is a bridge which takes trains towards Peckham from Lewisham but for this video at least it's irrelevant the south-eastern mainline through lines also accommodate fast services towards the Kent Coast the 1950s were a rather interesting time nowadays if you sit at St John's you'll only see electric multiple units but in 1957 the electric, diesel and steam powered formations the same could be said for the signaling at the time both automatic colour lights as well as absolute block signaling practices were in operation but around St John's it was colour light signaling and I'll briefly explain what each signal means as it's pretty vital in our story right day one basic signaling for you there's four types of signal danger which is red caution which is one yellow caution which is double yellow and green which is clear yellow, double yellow and green are all proceed aspects but they tell the driver the condition of the signals ahead green means that the next two signals are showing proceed double yellow means that the next signal is proceed and yellow means that the next signal is showing red stop or danger remember this for later the disaster right back to that foggy evening in December 1957 at roughly 8 minutes past 6pm an express train consisting of a battle of Britain class number 34066 named Spitfire was hauling 11 coaches carrying around 700 passengers at around this time it departed Cannon Street heading for Ramsgate the train between London Bridge and New Cross was receiving all clear signals it was travelling slower than usual mainly due to the fog taking 10 minutes to reach there from Cannon Street by this time the Hayes train was only brought to a stand at the signal just before Parkesbridge Junction this was because the signal protecting the junction ahead was holding a Hastings bound diesel electric train the signal at Parkesbridge junction had got confused over which train was due to go to Hayes this was because of issues with the describer system and the thick fog not allowing the signaler to see the actual train in the flesh with two trains now backed up at Parkesbridge Junction signals the Hayes train was protected in the rear by signal Lima 18 this was around 18 minutes past 6 in the evening and the Ramsgate train was approaching St John's the train was travelling around 35 miles an hour it went past the double yellow and single yellow with driver true making no reduction in speed it was quickly approaching Lima 18 at danger the fireman aboard the steam locomotive was the first to see the signal making it danger there was roughly 138 yards between the signal and the rear of the Hayes train nowhere near enough to stop the train in time at 1820 the Ramsgate train hit the rear of the Hayes train the Hayes train was formed to two four car units and a two car unit at the rear the impact pushed the rear two cars forward into the 8th carriage completely destroying it the tender and leading coach at Ramsgate train were thrown off the track this dislodged a pier of the bridge just beyond St John's signal box causing it to fall and crush two coaches a third train approaching the bridge heading towards Lewisham luckily stopped just short of the now disappeared main span 89 were killed instantly with another dying in hospital of their injuries around 60% of the fatalities were aboard the Ramsgate train's two front carriages which were now crushed under the bridge two households adjacent to the line called the London Ambulance and Met Police Services emergency lines roughly at around 22 minutes past 6pm the fog hindered emergency services hiding the true scale of the disaster all services that required movement towards Lewisham were cancelled causing havoc for pretty much anyone needing to get home in southeast London traction current was isolated all evening and into the early morning to help rescue efforts the last injured survivor was removed four hours after the collision it would take just over a week for the line to be cleared the bridge removed and replaced with a temporary structure the aftermath now why did the accident happen the Ramsgate train was found to have working breaks, it had been tested before the journey however the guard when interviewed after the accident stated that he didn't feel any break application prior to the impact the fireman and driver although shaken up were actually alive and were interviewed in firemen, hairs interview he stated that my driver didn't ask me to see the signals between New Cross and St John's starter nor did he cross the foot plate to view the signals we were running normally I estimate speed at St John's at about 40mph this is telling because you see on UK trains drivers are placed on the left side of the cab but the signals around the accident area were actually on the right hand side of the running line meaning you would have to look across the front of the engine severely reducing the distance that you can see which when coupled to the reduced visibility of the fog meant seeing and reacting to the signals was severely hindered sadly the answer to the disaster was plain and simple driver through the Ramsgate train just didn't react to the signals which could have been helped by asking the fireman who usually occupied the right hand side of the cab to observe the right hand sighted signals in the 1958 report into the crash it was state in its conclusion I am therefore convinced that driver true did not see signals Lima 16 Lima 17 or Lima 18 and accordingly he did not make a break application until after his fireman had called out that Lima 18 was at red criminal proceedings would be launched upon driver truth for manslaughter but the jury could not reach a verdict and he was acquitted at a second trial but the real issue although caused by the driver was the lack of train protection systems I mean a very similar disaster unfolded at the start of the decade at Harron Willsden in 1952 AWS or automatic warning system was gradually being rolled out at the time mainly for semaphore controlled areas but Lewisham showed it was really required everywhere the system would be rolled out across the british rail network and even still forms the backbone of british train protection systems and warning systems today albeit augmented with train protection and warning system so this disaster I am going to rate it as a bad day at the office and a number 6 on the legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share a light license plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently very windy corner of southern london uk I'd like to thank my patrons and youtube members for your financial support and also the rest of you who tune in every week to see your dose of me talking I have an instagram so go and check that out for random pictures and odds and sods of things I get up to when not working on videos and I've also got twitter if you're enjoying this outro song then please check it out on my second channel made by john and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it is the 18th of february 2003 and the city of daegu south korea is in mourning the late morning rush hour has become the scene of a terrible disaster the usually bustling daegu metro is quiet trains have stopped and the normally busy jongangno station is closed to the public and has enveloped another that pulled up alongside it emergency services scramble to try and enter the station but the smoke and toxic fumes are too much most onlookers know something terrible has unfolded but to what extent at this point no one knows as the coming days unfold and a wider picture of the disaster is uncovered it becomes apparent that it is one of the country's worst peacetime tragedies but it was no accident unlike other well known subway fires it was a deliberate act compounded by inadequate fire suppression systems and incompetence that brought sorrow to daegu today I'm looking at the tragic daegu subway fire welcome to plainly difficult the daegu subway today's video will start with a brief history of the city's metro system it's important as it was a contributing factor for the disaster but also because I do like to nerd out on these things so the city of daegu is the third largest in South Korea in terms of population with roughly 2.5 million residents because of this it's probably unsurprising that it was considered for a metro system daegu by the 1980s had a heavily overcrowded downtown area the city had seen a lot of investment under the park cheongki regime and as such it was swelling and clogged up with traffic because of this in 1985 a consultation was set out to figure how to improve the city's transportation infrastructure and make the area more efficient to move around in in 1989 a feasibility study was launched to see if building a metro was even possible all the consultations were completed by 1991 and the first digging began for line 1 in December the same year six years later the first section opened to the public the final part of the line from jinxiong to daeguk opened on the 10th of May 2002 one of the line's major stations is jonggangno station but we will stick a pin in this station for a little bit later in the video the network would continue to grow with line 2 opening in 2005 and even a monorail being added to the city in 2015 but those to final 2 we will probably won't need to worry about for this video back to jonggangno station so it was built as part of the original stretch of line 1 it was a two-platform two-track affair with the two tracks running next to each other the station is in the heart of the city which boasted plenty of places to work and to scratch that retail itch it even had a shopping centre built into the station with direct entrances to the transport hub this made the station the second busiest on the network behind van woldang station noticeable for being the only interchange between lines 1 and 2 but as a side note again for this purpose of the video it's irrelevant as line 2 wasn't opened by the time of today's disaster but although very busy the station had some of the network's narrowest platforms the trains that worked the line were the machine 1000 series tegu metro trains they run off 1500 volts DC over headlines and were formed of six carriages each carriage has four passenger doors per side and they were made of aluminium body shells with plastic interiors and vinyl covered seats and plastic handles in the early 2000s the metro ran serving the city people pile on and pile off as well until a day in February 2003 the fire it was the morning rush of the 18th of February 2003 and the metro trains in tegu are crowded with passengers the early morning rush subsided and picked up again with workers for the city's retail areas many shops in the city open around 10 30 am as such the morning trains get passengers between 9 and 10 am train number 1079 was no different it was travelling along the line between jin sheng and to an shim station the journey takes its way through the heart of the city one of the passengers aboard is kim de han a semi-paralyzed ex-taxi driver in 2001 he suffered a stroke and in its wake his mental health had significantly deteriorated this would explain why he is travelling on board train 1079 with two cartons of flammable liquid and a lighter after the train departed station kim began to frantically try to spark his lighter this was around 9.53 in the morning some passengers saw this and tried to stop him in the struggle one of the cartons fell onto the floor spinning its contents as the train pulled into jong angono station a spark hit the fluid and caught a light kim's legs and back caught on fire train 1079 fully birthed into the platform and the train doors opened many fled including the perpetrated kim by now the fire was close to enveloping all six carriages as the train's plastic heavy interior burned with thick black smoke it choked the passengers saloons the fire now visible to the train operator choy yong hwan wasn't immediately reported some passengers who had managed to escape pulled fire alarms but this was ignored by the machine and equipment centre at 9.55 am train 1080 was headed in the opposite direction it left tegu station towards jong angono station the metro's controller contacted train operator of 1080 choy sang yaw requesting he approached jong angono station at caution due to a fire that they could see on their cctv monitors choy birthed his train alongside the full inferno that was train 1079 quickly the flame spread across to the other train he opened the doors and then quickly closed them to try and stop the smoke from entering what he had actually done was trap his passengers inside with the fire soon enough train 1080 was also now a blazing inferno for now two uncontrollably on fire trains tripped the fire detection system in the station which closed some of the fire doors hindering escape from the station for many another side effect was that the overhead power lines were also switched off train 1080 would only have its batteries to power the doors choy made free announcements advising passengers to remain seated whilst he contacted railway officials when he finally got through he was advised to flee the train he tried to open the doors but also took his train key and escaped however the train now low on power hadn't actually opened up all of the carriages roughly 79 people were trapped inside and would sadly die the fire spread around the station filling it with black smoke the station wasn't equipped with emergency lighting or sprinklers because of this many became lost in the vast underground area and subsequently died of asphyxiation the built-in ventilation system couldn't extract the smoke quick enough further hindering any escape emergency workers couldn't enter the station due to the toxic fumes and it would take until half one in the afternoon to fully extinguish the fire body recovery began at 3.30pm and around 1300 rescue workers had attended the scene in total officially 192 had died in the fire however this number is not precise rather grimly this was due to the intensity of the fire meaning that some remains were not at all remaining DNA played a vital role in victim identification along with mobile phone records and in one case possessions were found but no body 151 were also injured making the disaster one of the worst for peacetime South Korea the aftermath Needless to say the disaster shocked the nation in the subsequent investigations the materials used in the railroad carriages came under scrutiny it would seem the lessons from the Baku Metro fire and the King's Cross station disaster were unfortunately not learnt Metro trains were not equipped with fire extinguishers and a lack of proper ventilation and emergency lighting in the station proved to be a big killer with many suffocating outside of the trains but even with all of this the disaster could have been lessened if the train operators of both trains had acted more decisively the driver of 1079 didn't report the fire straight away and the driver of 1080 left the doors closed for way too long didn't make sure that everything was open and abandoned his train without helping his passengers as such both men were found guilty of criminal negligence and sentenced to 4 and 5 years in prison respectively but what of the person who caused the disaster Kim Dae Hun well he was found guilty of arson and homicide the death penalty was sought from the victims families and the prosecution but he was instead handed life imprisonment this wouldn't last as Kim would die in August 2004 from long term illness large parts of line 1 were closed down for extensive refurbishment works improving fire resistance and suppression systems the fleet was revamped and renovated with less flammable materials but this would not just impact Taegu but other metros across South Korea where fireproofing work would be conducted hinting at a pretty big oversight in the rush to modernize the country the disaster is a lesson for all metros across the world where fire can really be devastating it's sad though that so many had to lose their lives to relearn the age-old lessons of fires and tunnels are horrific this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commas attribution share like license plain difficult videos are produced by me John nice and sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the west of you for coming in and viewing every week I have Instagram and Twitter and a second YouTube channel so check them out for stuff behind the scenes and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us out please and thank you for watching it is around 12pm on the 19th of July 1985 and it is like any other day the village of Starver, Prento, Italy but the average midday is interrupted with rumbling no one knows this but the noise has come from further up the Rio de Starver valley and it's roughly 180,000 cubic meters of mud, sand and water released from two failed dams Starver would be hit with water and mud and debris at speeds of up to 56mph the resulting loss of life would rank this day as one of the country's deadliest in peacetime today I'm looking at the Valdes starver dam collapse my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult there's money in the hills the area around the starver valley has been a home to mining ever since the 16th century the region was home to various mineral deposits fluorite began being exploited from 1934 in small industrial operations but if we will fast forward to the 1960s and 1961 in particular a new plant is being opened to better achieve higher grade fluorite at the same time a basin was produced and a small starter dam was constructed to hold back the byproduct of the operation tailings you see the method the plant was using was known as froth flotation this method creates a greater concentration of fluorite but also tailings, tailings are basically all of the leftover rock, sand and not required materials they are stored in a basin where the water is decanted off and recycled and then the dry tailings then becomes the base for another layer of tailings on top the original dam at starver was constructed of locally sourced materials creating a gravel core a sand shell was placed over the core the downstream slope was raised at an angle of about 32 degrees to a final height of 25 meters to save money the hillside was made part of the basin by 1967 the mont Edison Company was granted the concession to operate the mine and by extension the dam as the industrialized mining ramped up the site would need more tailings storage as such the mine decided to build another dam and base in just a few feet upstream from the original the second dam was built without any real anchoring to the ground at around 1969 it was allowed to grow in size at less than an ideally controlled rate with even less than ideal drainage eventually the foot of the second dam would extend out to the pond section of the lower tailings dam just as a side note here the water pond on top of these types of impalments are usually not allowed to get close to the dam part as it can erode the loot laid material water was drained via pipe work that ultimately led into the star of the river the pipe work ran through the basins and the dams and had drain holes within it it would later be found that they did not do a pretty good job at draining even weakening the dams leaving heavy rainfall while allowing water to seep out the lower dam by 1971 ceased to be raised leaving just the upper dam as the sole depository for tailings in the mid 1970s the operation was transferred to a company called Flora Mine by 1978 the second dam was towering over the lower and its use was also discontinued only for a few years however when in 1982 it was put back into service during the mines booming use a number of residential apartments were built to house the workers coming from different parts of Italy the site that employed improper planned dams with inadequate draining would not be a surprise to anyone in experiencing some issues with its basins and dams in 1985 two partial failures of the site's water drainage system resulted in a partial landslip and sinkhole in the upper basin and a sinkhole in the lower basin it was found that the pipes were poorly placed within the dams and basin causing them to sag under the weight of the silt deposits the two failures were repaired and the lower basin pipes were diverted by 1985 the total height of the structure was some 60 meters and water was being pumped into the upper basin even with the failing drainage but what could go wrong the collapse it is around 20 minutes past noon on the 15th of July 1985 at a large boom erupts in the starva valley within milliseconds the upper dam and basin had failed the weight of the tailings silt and water smashed into the lower basin bearing in mind that the upper dam was taller than the lower there was no chance of the older structure being able to hold back the massive material certainly the lower dam also failed as the water seeped into the overstressed structure the combined destructive force of both impoundments started to slide down the valley white dust was kicked up in the air and the dam's 180,000 cubic meters flow of semi fluid slime picked up speed descending the valley slopes it reached speeds of up to 90 kilometers an hour and was herding towards the village of starva in its wake some 50 houses would be destroyed hundreds of trees would be uprooted and 8 bridges demolished the apartments built for the mine workers were also completely wiped off the map the flow wasn't slowed down by the village and the torrent continued until it reached the avizio river some 4.2 kilometers or 2.6 miles away the insuring chaos caused 268 lives to be lost 100 people were also injured and only 8 victims would be rescued alive after an extensive search and rescue effort clean up and rebuilding would take many years and the true scale of the loss would take a while to sink in but although tragic the cause had to be established the investigation the remains of the dam and flow of debris offered some evidence on where the disaster began it showed clearly the issue was within the dam structure but some of the most important places to investigate were in eyewitness accounts of before, during and after the collapse the sinkholes that appeared earlier in the year came to light and the improper rising of the second dam pointed at a maintenance and management issue it was found that even though the drainage pipes had began to sag water was still pumped behind the impoundment which resulted in a weaker structure weight behind the dam was too much for the course and loose sand beach of the structure it was found during the investigation that the dam's location was also unsuitable right from the start with the original lower basing being constructed on steep marshy land as we know from earlier on in the video using a hillside saves cost on a larger impoundment in the mid 1970s technicians even raised issues with the second dam that it was on dangerous ground however the company continued to increase the height irrespective of the warnings the ministerial inquiry into the disaster would conclude the plant collapsed essentially because it was designed built and managed in such a way as to not offer those safety margins that civil society expects from works that can jeopardize the existence of entire human communities the upper embankment in particular was poorly founded poorly drained statically at limit it could only collapse at the slightest modification to its precarious conditions of equilibrium as such 10 mine officials were charged with criminal negligence culpable disaster and multiple manslaughter and prison sentences were handed out in 1992 starve a village was reconstructed and eventually repopulated the land recovered but the wounds in the local psyche would take much longer although some saw prison time for their negligence history sadly continues to repeat itself at various tailings dams across the world this is a playdifficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed playdifficult videos are produced by me john in a currently very sunny and warm corner of south london uk i have patreon and youtube members so i'd like to thank you for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week just to watch my videos and hear me talk i have instagram twitter and a second channel made by john and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please thank you for listening it is 2007 and an old film is being restored it has long been thought to have been lost the movie from french pioneer george millies has eluded movie historians it has long been mislabeled as another film by another early director but the lost media has seen the projector once again the movie depicts in its own unique style the 20th century's worst volcanic eruption in which 30 000 people would be consumed by the disaster in just a matter of minutes the film's name is exact and to the point the eruption of mount pelay a beautiful island with a deadly inhabitant martinique is part of the archipelago of the antilles located in the caribbean sea the island is beautiful with its most prominent feature mount pelay overlooking all who call the landmass home the highest point at 1397 meters or 4583 feet above sea level and is thought to be roughly 400 000 years old although a source of beauty mount pelay has also been the source of death on the island erupting several times in its recorded history people have been known to occupy the island since the first century initially by the arowax then by the caribs the island was chartered in 1493 by christopher columbus from his vessel on another columbus voyage wouldn't set foot on the island until 1502 columbus encountered indigenous peoples who called the island martinio the name was bastardized into martinique over generations of european encounters and settlements now like many other caribbean islands its history was post european encounter marked by several cases of different settlers spanish, french, british and the accompanying battles and naval skirmishes that go along with colonization and when europeans weren't fighting with one another they fought with the indigenous people but i don't think i can do this part of the island's history justice instead i'll focus on our main point for our story the city of sun pierre it was founded in 1635 by pierre belain a french trader and adventurer it served as the first permanent french colony on the island it would become one of the cultural and financial centres of the island but also the source of a loss of poor luck in 1780 all of the houses in the city were destroyed by a storm surge which killed roughly 9000 inhabitants the city was rebuilt and gradually repopulated garnering the name paris of the caribbean by the end of the 19th century the city's population was between 25 and 28000 but the new century would start off with a disaster mount pelé erupts mount pelé had been indicating it was due for full blown eruption since 1792 with the first of two minor eruptions the second of which took place in 1851 it would take roughly 52 years for mount pelé to truly unleash her power in april 1902 people who had gone close to the top of the mountain noticed sulfurous vapours emitting from newly formed holes known as fumaroles not much was thought of this as others had appeared and disappeared previously however this time it was bad by the 25th of april 1902 a large cloud emerged from the top of the mountain throwing rocks out no one and nothing was damaged and as such nothing more was thought of it the next day an explosion near the mountain top occurred coating the surrounding area with ash and again authorities saw little to be concerned about on the 27th a group of hikers climbed to discover a new lake 150 metres wide or 590 foot wide had been formed the smell of sulfur was unbearable and over the coming days it descended down the mountain to san pierre some 6.4 miles away the stench made animals and humans feel sick alike a couple of villages closer to the volcano were increasingly becoming covered in ash the riviere, their pares and the river rock salane began to bulge at their banks pushing rubble and debris along their journeys down the mountain pele was warning it was about to blow a couple of days later on the 2nd of May at 11.30 in the evening pele emitted sounds of explosions the ground rumbled and the mountain blew out black smoke half of the island was scattered with pumice, dust and ash as the 2nd turned into the 3rd a change in wind direction pushed the ash northwards away from the island but on Saturday the 4th ash would once again fall on san pierre some decided to flee the city but others from the villages around the area sought out san pierre for refuge brief lull came in the morning of Monday the 5th but by around lunchtime smoke and dust reappeared one of the craters walls up mount pele collapsed causing a lahar of mud and boiling water to thunder down the blanche river flooding a local sugar works san pierre received more refugees throughout the day as well as some residents deciding to flee you see it was thought that the city would be safe as such officials encouraged the population to stay put even refusing ships permission to depart but it would turn out to be anything but safe the city was plunged into darkness as the electrical grids succumbed to the atmospheric changes in the early hours of the 7th of May explosions rang out from pele a mountain top glowed orange another lull came in the form of the eruption of solfier san vincent on the island of saint vincent this smaller disaster was hoped would reduce the pressure on pele at 7.52 on the 8th of May thought difference was receiving a radio transmission from san pierre apparently always looking good finally the transmission went dead a mushroom cloud over pele has shot up into the sky a pyroclastic surge shot down the mountainside sticking to the ground directly at san pierre the cloud was travelling at roughly 100 miles an hour or 160 kilometers an hour hitting temperatures of over 1000 degrees centigrade nearly 2000 degrees fahrenheit upon reaching the city it smashed through buildings animals and humans alike anything that could burn did a ship the cs grappler sunk taking all aboard with her a handful of survivors who on the fringes of the city managed to make their way out but most would die of severe burns the pyroclastic cloud had covered an area of roughly 21 kilometers squared san pierre was now silent and cut off to the outside world the governor of the island Louis Moutette was in the city at the time of the disaster now leaderless a standing governor ordered a french cruiser to sail to the city to find out the cause of the silence she was the french cruiser sushi and managed to rescue 30 people from damaged vessels which had tried to escape san pierre the city was ruined and burning and an estimated nearly 30,000 people had perished the cleanup began within a few days systematically rescuers made their way through the ruins many of the dead looked calm almost frozen in time it just went to show how quickly the city was demolished aftermath on the 12th of may the US congress voted for a $1000 available foreign aid for the island more countries also offered a helping hand these included Canada the UK, Germany, Italy Denmark, Japan, Russia and the Vatican officially there would be only two survivors from san pierre Louis, Auguste, Saiparis a prisoner held in an underground cell in the town's jail and Leon, Compierre, Landry in reality there were more survivors who were pulled from the city's rubble whereas others had managed to evacuate themselves but Mount Pelé wasn't finished with san pierre thousands of rescuers by the 20th of May had flooded the stricken city searching for anyone both alive or dead a second eruption emerged from Pelé sweeping a pyroclastic flow into san pierre once again killing around 2,000 rescue workers but that still wasn't the end on the 30th of August another pyroclastic flow struck Mourn Rouge Aduper, Bullion, Basset, Pont and Mourn Capel killing close to 900 it would still not be the end of the eruptions from Pelé however which after many lulls and lava flows would finally end on the 5th of October 1905 san pierre would never return to its pre-eruption population in the 60s the city had a population of around 6,000 but by the 2010s this had reduced to around 4,000 needless to say the disaster captured the imagination of many across the globe I mean it is one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in modern history and it brings us back to the rediscovery of George Millier's long lost technical marvel of a film New volcanic eruptions are captured as they happen but we need to appreciate that this film was made in 1905 using in-camera special effects at the time and it is very impressive to watch this is a plain difficult video all videos on the channel are created by me John the currently sunny but windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to listen to me talk about random subjects I've got Instagram and Twitter so check them out if you fancy seeing other things I do and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please Before we start I'm pleased to announce that the UK is the release date of my latest bunch of music The Temple Street EP You can check it out on Bandcamp, iTunes and Spotify Right that's my self promotion over let's start with this week's scheduled video It is the morning of the 19th of April 1989 and there is a fleet exercise underway in the Caribbean Sea just next to Puerto Rico one of the ships involved is the USS Iowa and she is getting ready to fire her 18 inch guns turret 1 attempts to fire its 3 guns all go but one quickly the order to fire turret 2's guns was given but 81 seconds later an unexpected explosion erupted from the turret's centre gun my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we're looking at the USS Iowa Disaster War on the horizon Our story starts 40 years before the tragic day in April 1989 with war within spitting distance of the USA it is the 1930's and Japan is rampaging around parts of Asia the USA anticipating a clash with the emerging empire has been war planning a naval clash this was called war plan orange and during this it was found that the US needed a counter to the Japanese Congo class of battleships come about in the form of the Iowa class or fast battleships capable of speeding along at up to 33 knots or 38 miles an hour fully loaded now I'm not going to go too much of a deep dive into the Iowa class battleship as the brilliant battleship New Jersey YouTube channel covers these ships history in much greater detail than I could attempt to achieve but what we do need to talk about is Iowa's guns and a brief look at her service life the guns so the USS Iowa had 9 breech loaded 16 inch 50 calibre mark 7 naval guns they were placed in 3 gun turrets of which the Iowa had 3 each gun in the turret was independently elevatable and fireable and weighed 267 1900 pounds and 21500 kilograms the turrets were armoured and contained a whole high of activity even though you can only see the gun the turret actually extended between 4 and 5 floors below the ship's deck right at the bottom of the turret was projectile and bag charge storage each room was protected behind fireproof bulkheads so how did the guns fire? well first they have to be loaded this begins in the bottom of the turret where the powder bags are placed into a hoist there are 6 needed for a full charge the hoist takes them up to the gun room at the same time the projectile was being selected in a separate room there are generally 2 types of ammunition armor piercing and high explosive there was also a nuclear shell later on in the Iowa's service life but for this video we don't need to know about that so when the projectile arrives at the top of the hoist and goes into the cradle the gun is moved to an elevation of 5 degrees the breach is opened and the cradle and spanning tray are moved to the horizontal plane a mechanical rammer pushes the projectile into the gun then the 6 powder bags are placed on the cradle and pushed via the spanning tray into the gun slowly by the rammer the rammer was used at 14 feet per second for pushing in the projectile and 1.5 feet per second for the fragile powder bags if the faster speed was used for the powder it ran the risk of creating excess friction and compression which potentially could cause it to set a light the rammer also didn't have any safety system for preventing the wrong speed being used the breach is enclosed and the primer is added and the gun is moved to its firing position and it's now ready to go after firing the gun returns to the loading position the breach is opened and any debris are blown out of the gun the breach is also cleaned and the gun is ready to go again loading to firing can be done in an impressively quick 30 seconds so back to the Iowa's service life well, the things she was built for you know, the predicted war in the Pacific lo and behold actually happened she was commissioned in February 1943 and initially saw service in the Atlantic Ocean she was moved to the Pacific in January 1944 as the flagship for the battleship Division 7 during a typhoon in December 1944 Iowa suffered damage and was sailed back to the US for repair work in August 1945 she would be one of the ships to enter Tokyo Bay to oversee Japan's surrender after the war she was modernized with better radar but her first service life would end in 1949 she was then added to the country's rather vast fleet of mothball ships but not for too long as she was reactivated for the Korean War on the 14th of July 1951 and formally recommissioned on the 25th of August after the Korean War she was used for training cruises and NATO exercise strike back but yet again she would be decommissioned in 1958 the Iowa would languish in the Atlantic reserve fleet until once again she was brought back to life in 1982 this was thanks to Ronald Reagan and his campaign promise of a 600 ship strong navy to face off against the commie fleet the ship was modernized and recommissioned in 1984 amazingly within her $500 million budget but this was because of a few cutbacks in repair works most notably in her guns one other cutback was that the US Navy board of inspection and survey in-serve inspection was not completed it would take the best part of two years until the inspection was undertaken on the 17th of March 1986 and probably not much of a surprise when it failed mainly due to the engine not being as good as it should be and severe hydraulic fluid leaks in all three of the main turrets of the ship she wasn't taken out to service however instead opted to be repaired while still in use a couple of years later and after spending some time in the Persian Gulf Iowa returned to Norfolk Virginia for maintenance on the 10th of March 1988 in May 1988 Captain Fred Moussali took command of the Iowa and one of his first decisions on board was to cancel a $1 million planned repair job on the three main turrets in which they had over 75 known faults the decision assisted by the executive officer Mike Fahey reallocated the money to power plant repairs when in August 1988 came around the Iowa set sail for Cheapskate Bay for refresher training in sea trials during this time and leading into January 1989 the Iowa's main guns were used sparingly as such training was not as good as it should have been leading to poor morale and confidence in the three main turrets but although with not the most confident gunnery crews the Iowa would take part in a fleet exercise off the coast of Puerto Rico the ship would have to sail from Norfolk on the 13th of April 1989 the exercise was named Fleet X 389 and was under the command of Vice Admiral Jerome L. Johnson in which the Iowa filled in the role as the Admiral's flagship four days after leaving Norfolk the Iowa was in the Caribbean Sea and the exercise was set to begin a gunnery exercise a firing exercise was planned for the 19th of April as such during the evening of the 18th the turrets crews prepared their guns for firing this would involve blowing compressed air down the barrels of the ship's guns to clear any debris all well and good apart from the intergun where the system was not functional around the same time on the evening of the 18th during a briefing master chief Steven Skelly announced that turret two would participate in an experiment of his design where a type of propellant called D 846 powder would be used to fire 2700lbs shells you see D 846 powder burned faster than the regular powder charges it was amongst the oldest in the ship's infantry dating back to the Second World War but it's extra power came with an issue it was only rated to be used on lighter 1900lbs shells this was to not exert extra stress on the ship's guns using six charges of the D 846 and the heavier shell could result in over pressure and the type of explosion you don't want on a gun deck the bag charges even had warning do not use with 2700lbs projectiles written on the side of them Skelly had a simple solution to this instead of six bag charges he planned for his experiment to use just five simple the goal of the experiment was to improve accuracy of the guns and for the 19th gunnery exercise he devised ten shots of the heavy shells and D 846 two from the left gun and four from the centre of the turret too Senior Chief Ziegler was concerned about the experiment and the readiness of turret 2's crew many were inexperienced a job where a small mistake could lead to disaster a particularly dangerous part of the loading procedure was ramming as I mentioned before an inexperienced rammerman could over ram the bag charge at the faster speed the rammerman had never used the rammer before to fire shoot and hadn't had any experience with non-standard bag loads which increased the risk of a misfire by making too big of a gap between the final charge bag and the primer to add even more danger to the mix the rammer was known to randomly move on its own the explosion it is the morning of the 19th of April 1989 and the gun crews aboard USS Iowa are getting turrets 1, 2 and 3 ready for the firing exercise at 9.01 am the crews reported they were trained to starboard in firing position and ready to start the exercise at 9.33 turret 1 fired its centre and right guns they worked as they should but its left gun misfired the order for turret 2 to load and fire a 3 gun salvo was then given within a minute the left and right guns were ready to fire but the centre gun was having some issues Ziegler announced over the turret telephone left gun loaded good job the centre gun is having a little trouble we'll straighten that out centre gun captain Richard Eric Lawrence called out we're not ready yet something was happening in the centre gun over the intercom mort mort mort cooling Dale Mortison in turret 1 was heard Ziegler shouted oh my god the powder is smouldering shortly after oh my god there's a flash was heard over the intercom then just 81 seconds after the order to ready turret 2 for firing was received the centre gun exploded a fireball between 2500 3000 Farrah Heights or 1600 degree centigrade blew out from the centre guns open breach debris was blasted around the gun room and out of the front of the turret the explosion was contained within the turret and it spread across all three gun rooms even though they were separated by walls the armoured door for the middle guns powder lift was left open at the time of the explosion which helped spread the explosion down the turret usually crews would stage more powder on the lift which again assisted in the spread of the fire and explosions 47 men were killed including Ziegler 12 crewmen in or near the turret's powder magazine located to the bottom of the turret were able to escape without serious injury saved by the blast doors used to fire on the explosive propellants aftermath in the immediate aftermath firefighting crews entered the turret and blasted everything with water the ceiling the walls the floors and even the guns were soaked after the fire was extinguished the grim task of body recovery and identification took place however notes and body locations and photos weren't taken this would hinder finding out where many of the sailors had fallen the bodies were flown to Roosevelt station in Puerto Rico then off to Charles C. Carson centre for mortuary affairs at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware the bodies were released to the families on the 24th of April even before some had been positively identified meaning that it is likely that some were buried by the wrong families the Federal Bureau of Investigation assisted the US Navy to identify all 47 sets of remains and by the 16th of May 1989 this was apparently complete this was done by the FBI cutting off fingers of the unidentified bodies but back to the Iowa she still had two loaded guns and that needed to be well unloaded Operation Specialist First Class James Bennett Drake from the USS Coral Sea led the unloading operation upon seeing the middle gun he saw what he thought was evidence of overramming a set sail to return to Norfolk reaching there on the 23rd of April a memorial service was held on the 24th and was attended by President George H. W. Bush but as the families mourned the dead and the Iowa's damage was inspected the question of how could the middle gun have exploded in such a dramatic way had to be answered and this would result in a little bit of a scandal and a bit of taste in many service personnel's mouths The Investigations So as you may have noticed I said investigations this was because it would turn out that the Navy's answer was a little bit shall we say unbelievable so initially an investigation was undertaken by the Navy itself this was in the form of an informal one officer investigation the man for the job was Commodore Richard D. Milligan Milligan and his team interviewed a number of the staff aboard the Iowa experiments were brought up by some but were quickly suppressed some of those interviewed found their statements scrubbed or altered during his interview Skelly admitted that he was aware that he shouldn't have been making the gun's fire the D846 powder were the 2700 pound shells not much else was pursued as Skelly had managed to convince Captain Fred Musali that the experiments were official and legit the investigation would be given a new path to walk down you see Captain Fred Musali received a letter from one of the dead sailors sisters Kathy Kubikina on the 7th of May explaining that Clayton Hartwig double indemnity life insurance with a Kendral Truett named as the cell recipient you see Hartwig wasn't meant to be in the turret that day he was asked to assist the middle gun crew due to their lack of experience in naval investigative service as the initial investigation was informal Hartwig's sister Kathy Kubikina was taken for interview and almost right off the bat was questioned about Hartwig's sexuality Truett was then brought in for interview and heavily pressured him to admit having a relationship with Hartwig Truett's wife Carol was also brought in for questioning pressing her about the sexual orientation of Hartwig and Truett and asking pretty horrible questions about how often she and her husband had sex and what type of sexual acts they had done they also threw in whether she had had sex with any of Truett's crewmates Truett upon hearing of the interview with his wife withdrew from helping the investigation completely at around the time of these interviews someone within the NIS started leaking the homosexual relationship and by extension murder suicide theory with the media and it featured in a number of newspapers however one fact was admitted by both the NIS and the media in that the insurance policy was taken out several years before the explosion on the 24th of May NBC News identified Truett and Hartwig as criminal suspects in the Iowa explosion the NIS put pressure on one of Hartwig's known friends aboard the Iowa David Smith he was interrogated for 7 hours and 40 minutes during which he was told he would be charged with 47 counts of murder after this interrogation he was sent back to the Iowa where he was forced to do a 9 hour shift and when that was done shipped back off to the NIS for even more interrogation for another 6 hours probably very sleep deprived and scared he made a statement claiming Hartwig had made sexual advances towards him and had shown him an explosive timer claiming he was planning to blow up 3 days later Smith recanted his statement in full his original statement was leaked to the media but the whole recanting bit wasn't leaked the NIS went to the FBI to do a psychological evaluation on Hartwig in two transcripts were given including Smith's but again admitted that it was recanted the FBI began testing to see if the NIS's theory of an electric timer device was used to create the explosion but no evidence was found in either the NIS investigation or the FBI's laboratory experiments that such device was present in the remains of the middle gun Captain Joseph Dominic Micelli Naval Sea Systems Command quickly terminated the assistance from the FBI a 60 page report submitted by Commodore Richard Milligan in July 1989 found that the explosion was a deliberate act most probably committed by Hartwig using an electronic timer even though the FBI had debunked this the report concluded that the powder bags had been overrammed into the centre gun by 21 inches this had been done so under Hartwig's direction in order to trigger the explosive timer that he had placed between two of the powder bags but although the FBI results were sidelined on the 28th of August technicians at the Naval Weapons Support Centre at Crane Indiana actually agreed with the FBI's conclusion that an electronic timer batteries and or primer were not involved in the explosion so Captain Joseph Dominic Micelli then said it must have been a chemical timer so guess what the Navy did of course there was nothing wrong with the ship's guns as such on the 11th of August 1989 the Navy recertified 16 inch guns for service this did not sit very well with the victims not with the public and definitely not with Hartwig's family as such Senators Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn concerned with Navy's conclusions arranged to hold a meeting on the Navy's investigation the lack of adequate training illegal gun experiments use of ancient powder and cutbacks in gun maintenance all came to light during the congressional inquiry it was announced that Sandhya National Laboratories of Albuquerque, New Mexico was requested by the Government Accountability Office to assist the Navy's technical investigation this was to see if there was an accidental explanation for the explosion Sandhya focused on the case of an overram the Navy had admitted to it in its report that it had happened they determined that the 5 powder bags in turret 2's centre gun had been rammed to 24 inches into the gun and the Navy had estimated in Milligan's report a drop test was devised to simulate an overram situation and on the 18th test the powder bags exploded importantly without any explosive timer a final technical report was published in August 1991 and concluded it is concluded that there is no explicit physical evidence that the hypothetical chemical ignition device was present in the centre gun of turret 2 it is also concluded that the high speed overram is a possible cause of the April 19th 1989 explosion aboard the USS Iowa the Navy reopened its investigation and Myceli conducted more Navy tests and the bags exploded at a variety of different ramming speeds but he tried to play down his results as such when the Navy investigation lead Frank Kelso released his findings it would follow the Navy's original conclusion the initial investigation was an honest attempt to weigh impartially all the evidence as it existed at the time and indeed despite the Sandia theory and almost 2 years of subsequent testing a substantial body of scientific and expert evidence continued to support the initial investigation finding that no plausible accident cause can be established he also stated however that the Navy had also found no evidence that the explosion was caused intentionally bearing in mind that both the Navy tests and the Sandia tests had shown overramming could cause an explosion so to me in my uneducated mind it feels like a bit of a responsibility dodge Kelso also concluded in his press conference sincere regrets to the family of Clayton Hartwig and to the families of those who died that such a long period has passed despite all efforts no certain answer regarding the cause of this terrible tragedy can be found the families of the victims and of Hartwig filed lawsuits against the Navy the Hartwig case was filed on the 19th of April 1991 but it didn't come to fruition and was dismissed on the 19th of November 1999 due to pure defamination claims being barred by sovereign immunity the Hartwig family also sued NBC but this was thrown out due to the information being supplied to the media had come from the NIS the other sailors family suits were also summarily dismissed the USS Iowa wouldn't last much longer in service with the Navy and the damaged turret was trained forward and sealed off never to be used again she was retired in Norfolk on the 26th of October 1990 and she is now a museum ship in LA this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently very sunny and warm corner of southern London UK I have patreon and youtube members and I'd like to thank you all for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have instagram and twitter so check them out for photos from behind the scenes and all that's left to say is thank you for watching please it is August 2020 and the world news cycle has been interrupted from its Covid obsession with one hell of a disaster the virus at least on UK news is pushed down the reporting list with parts of the city looking like a war has ravaged through it although looking like a bomb has gone off this destruction has been caused by what to laymen may seem as something not very dangerous a main ingredient in fertilizer although to you my loyal watches you know how deadly this stuff can actually be no surprise that it piqued the interest of the news media so today I probably don't need to introduce this video subject but I will do anyway this Saturday we're looking at the Beirut explosion a ship and a harbour the city of Beirut has been the proud owner of a port since the 1880s it has a long and interesting history with it playing an important role during the Lebanese Civil War after the war and as the city began to rebuild itself and as the country started the process of reconciliation the port would go on to become one of the largest and busiest on the eastern Mediterranean so ships come and go freight is loaded and unloaded all pretty standard fare for a harbour another not unheard of thing is that of ship abandonment where vessels come into port the owners disavow their property and often the crew are left high and dry the lucky ones usually get to bugger off but sometimes some poor souls are left aboard that would be the similar situation of a cargo ship entering the port of Beirut on the 21st of November 2013 the ship's name is the MV Rosas she is a 1900 gross tonne cargo ship built in 1986 in Naruto, Japan originally as a dredger named Daifuku Maru 8 but over the years she changed hands names and even changed use to her final form as a cargo vessel her final owner was Russian businessman Igor Grechewski from 2012 who was living in Limousole Cyprus the MV Rosas as she was now known flew the Moldovan flag this was Grechewski's first goer owning a ship and it wasn't going to go so well in July 2013 the MV Rosas was held up by Spanish authorities in the port of Seville she was falling apart and was not the most reliable she was set sail once again and be chartered to transport 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in bags in September 2013 the company that chartered the load was Rostavi Azot LLC a Georgian fertilizer maker it was to be shipped from Georgia to Fabrika de Explosifos Mozambique in Matola Mozambique by the 27th of September the MV Rosas was loaded up and ready to depart from Batami she set sail stopping at various ports along the way towards the Suez Canal on the 21st of November 2013 she entered the port of Beirut you see the ship was having financial issues with worries the owner did not have enough funds to pay the Suez Canaltel the ship's owner had found another shipment of cargo that would be dropped off along the way to Mozambique perfect this would pay for that pesky Suez fee but there was a small snack the MV Rosas important cargo hatches were rusty and weak and as captain Boris Prokojev would later say to the BBC in an interview the hatches were buckled and weak so we couldn't take it we refused you see refusing the cargo came with a fine a fine the owner refused to pay and on top of that and port fees as such the MV Rosas was impounded all but for the crew managed to flee the ship and escape back to their home country of Ukraine the remaining crew including the captain would be stuck aboard the ship for around a year and then after selling some of its fuel to hire a lawyer managed to secure their own release but the MV Rosas stayed in port the owner had claimed to be bankrupt and the cargo owners by now had lost interest as such she stayed in Barout but not just the vessel stayed her explosive materials aboard also sat there the cargo was brought to shore in 2014 and placed in a building named Hangar 12 over the years the cargo would sit and the MV Rosas still moored in port would eventually take on water and sink but although financially damaging for the ship's owner the MV Rosas's cargo was now one big of a headache for Lebanese customs officials they had essentially now got to house a 2,750 ton bomb officials trying to find someone to offload the literal ticking time bomb off to by sending out letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issue in July 2020 Lebanon's High Defence Council informed President Aoun that there were dangerous materials in Beirut's port he immediately ordered military and security agencies to do what was needed in order to remove them safely but sadly the cargo would languish inside Hangar 12 until disaster would strike in August that same year the explosion it is the 4th of August 2020 and some welders are working on a Hangar door repair the same hangar that was the home to that couple of thousand tons of ammonium nitrate the same building had also been a home to a stash of fireworks at around 1745 sparks landed on the pile of fireworks and this started a small fire a team of firefighters were dispatched upon arrival just 10 minutes later the hangar was emitting strange noises and the fire was getting increasingly more intense an explosion rang out at an estimated yield of between 1.5 and 2.5 tons of TNT this was at 1807 fireworks flashed and sparked as Hangar 12 showed some signs of damage 33 to 35 seconds later a much larger explosion erupted from the hangar some estimated it at 1.1 kilotons of TNT the explosion could be felt some 150 miles away in Cyprus the shockwave blasted out into the city of Beirut an orangey red cloud descended upon the city a common sight after an ammonium nitrate explosion next door to Hangar 12 was the country's largest grain store it was severely damaged leaving the country of less than one month supply of grain multiple buildings including three hospitals were obliterated buildings within a 6 mile radius suffered varying levels of damage leaving around 300,000 people displaced some of the buildings damaged even included cultural heritage sites museums and embassies ships in the harbour suffered extensive damage including the cruise ship or in queen which was subsequently capsized anyone who could in the city helped by pulling people out of the damaged buildings and any working vehicle in and around the port area were used for emergency transport for injured people in total 75 ambulances and 375 medics were dispatched to assist the injured and trapped local businesses offered food and medical supplies where they could and the international community arranged help for the city including the Netherlands Turkey and the UK also sending search and rescue teams a day after the explosion Prime Minister Hassan Dyeb declared a two week state of emergency and the government launched an investigation into the explosion over the coming weeks debris would be disposed of by local residents as they tried to rebuild their lives and several hotels were opened up to house the displaced eventually the death toll would become apparent a surprisingly low but still tragic number of roughly 218 with another 7,000 injured included in the dead was the original team of firefighters dispatched to the original firework fire the city like many across the world at this point in 2020 was already feeling the financial pinch with COVID shortages as such it hit the country hard financially with an estimated cost of around 15 billion US dollars the investigation now usually at this point in the video I go over the investigation where those responsible are identified but with the Beirut disaster the investigation was and is shall we say less than ideal the government formed an investigative committee led by Prime Minister Hassan Dyeb although he would resign from his job on the 10th of August 2020 a day after the explosion 16 Beirut port officials who had overseen the storage of the material since 2014 were placed under house arrest the number would increase to 25 within the first few days Interpol also asked to detain the Russian ship's owner and the captain and red notices were issued Judge Fadi Sawan was appointed to head up the investigation he started summoning various ministers and surprise surprise he would be relieved of his position in February 2021 with Tarek Beitel taking over the same month the investigation would soon fall into infighting across the country's political lines Prime Minister Dyeb and three former ministers were also charged with negligence over the Beirut port explosion the investigation ground to a halt because higher ups in the Lebanese government were immune to investigations and by early 2023 all suspects had been released and he was looking like the investigation wouldn't carry on but surprisingly Tarek Beitel resumed his work in March 2023 he would bring charges against Lebanon's most senior prosecutor but so far it hasn't led to anything substantial meaning the investigation is still ongoing at the time of writing this script in mid 2023 the investigation or lack of has created concerns in the international community as it has highlighted issues with the Lebanese judiciary the city would go on to rebuild but in 2022 the grain silo which had taken the significant portion of the explosion quarter light and collapsed the disaster showed how deadly ammonium nitrate can be when ignored most of the players in their disaster had just not really appreciated the bomb they had in hangar 12 and this is all too common as we see across the world with ammonium nitrate explosions this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are created with common attribution share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John currently because it's night time cold and dark southern corner of London UK I have youtube members and patreon so thank you very much for your financial support and the rest of you who tune in every week to listen and watch me talk I have instagram and twitter where I post up behind the scenes photographs and the like and I also have a second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next week players out please it is the afternoon of the 18th of May 1927 and Bath Charter Township Michigan United States is reeling from a terrible tragedy several buildings have been destroyed one of which is a school the destruction has been caused by several explosions and horrifyingly still it was a deliberate act as the community mourns the losses that the perpetrator had committed the act due to a lost election and an increase in taxes this reason is clearly insane and it would be no consolation for the community however it would highlight the risks of an individual who feels they have been slighted my name is John and today we're looking at the Bath School Massacre welcome to plainly difficult a frugal man our story starts and ultimately ends with one man Andrew Philip Keough now I won't give you a full biography and I'll try to keep it to the relevant information but Keough was a farmer born in Tecumseh, Michigan on the 1st of February 1872 he was known to be a clever child taking a keen interest in electricity making experiments with machinery from the family farm as such after completing school he moved to Michigan State College as it was known at the time he studied electrical engineering during this time he met a woman who would later become his wife Ellen Nellie Price after graduating he worked as an electrician for several years he even worked down in Missouri and in 1911 he received a head injury resulting from a fall which put him into a coma for two weeks presumably as a result of the injury he was taken to live with his father now widower and remarried his new stepmother wasn't Keough's most favorite person in the world and disputes between the two were a very common sight in September 1911 a suspicious event would unfold between Keough and his stepmom Francis she was trying to light an all-burning stove all of a sudden it erupted into an explosion covering the poor women in flames in an apparent attempt to save his stepmother threw water all over her and the oil fire this unsurprisingly spread the fire and Francis would die on the 18th of September all of this talk of people's wives rather neatly leads us back to Nellie Keough's return to Michigan had rekindled his relationship with Ellen Price they would marry in 1912 and move around the area until purchasing a 185 acre farm in Bath Township it was originally owned by Keough's wife's aunt and ran the couple a cost of $12,000 the property would be purchased half in cash and half with a mortgage Keough was known to help neighbors and was also known to be dependable he was intelligent, neat and a clean man albeit impatient and easily angered it would seem Keough was not particularly interested in farming he beat his animals and reportedly beat one of his horses to death what he did do on the farm was mechanical experiments making various attachments to his tractor Keough would get a reputation in the township for being rather frugal even stopping attending the local church after being asked to pay a parish assessment Bath Township residents voted in and approved the creation of a consolidated school district in 1922 this would localize schooling from smaller community schools to a more centralized system this is all well and good but how is it to be paid for well, much to Keough's dismay it would be done through land owners tax this would hit Keough's pocket hard because the tax was worked out on the value of each property of Bath Township per $1,000 the initial cost in 1922 was around $120 but it would rise over the subsequent years Keough had quite an interest in the taxes and ran for election for the school board of trustees who was elected in 1924 for three years and at the same time appointed the treasurer for one year Keough was motivated by one goal and one goal only to reduce the property tax as such he constantly protested any spending by the board and fought tooth and nail over even spending on a central school equipment in 1925 Keough was then made a temporary town clerk he would be required to run for election in April the next year but this is where he would see defeat he wasn't re-elected and no doubt it hit his ego hard and as such he began to think about some kind of revenge Nelly by now was severely ill with tuberculosis adding extra cost to the household Keough stopped working on his farm and the property began to fall into disrepair Nelly's uncle held the mortgage for the property and began foreclosure proceedings due to Keough stopping payments his life was falling apart and with revenge on the mind he began purchasing dynamite from nearby Lansing being a farmer this didn't arouse too much suspicion he also spread out his purchases to different times and different shops he procured over a ton of piratel a world war one surplus explosive popular for hedge and tree stump clearing his revenge would be taken out on the township and upon everyone who had wronged him and financially crippled him which the one big one was the school itself it is thought that he began planning a school bombing around August 1926 over the coming months he cut all of his farm's fences debarks the trees on the property to kill them and gathered lumber around his house he filled his truck with scrap metal and replaced its tires for brand new ones and he began making journeys to the school due to his role in the school board Keough had access to the bath consolidated school over the summer holidays during May 1927 he began placing explosives in the school and around his farm neighbors noticed activity at the farm in the night something was happening Nelly was in hospital during his preparations but she would be discharged on the 16th of May after returning home at some point over the next two days Keough would kill his wife and place her body in a shed on the property what we do know is she was dead by the 18th of May 1927 when things would take an explosive turn the explosions at 845 in the morning of the 18th of May a number of firebombs went off on the Keough farm debris rained out onto other properties local residents upon seeing the fire rushed in to assist in extinguishing it one of the neighbors broke into the building to try and find any survivors upon realizing no one was inside they started trying to salvage any furniture from the flames they found some explosives inside the house and handed them off to another person fighting the fire shortly after the explosion erupted from the farm another larger explosion shot out from the bath schools north wing Keough had set up a timer for the explosives inside the school to go off at around 845 15 minutes after the school day had started presumably in an attempt to catch as many children as possible the north wing of the school collapsed burying many children underneath it back at the farm Keough fled the scene of the fire in his pickup truck and now was also loaded up with explosives and he started driving towards the school he arrived outside the bath district school roughly around half an hour after the initial explosion he summoned over some people to his car in which a scuffle broke out with members of the public trying to get a gun from Keough's hands by now many locals were surrounding the school in an attempt to try and rescue any survivors during the scuffle for the gun Keough set off the bomb in his pickup truck the explosion killed Keough Emory Hayek Nelson McFarron Cleo Clayton The Lansing Fire Department sent several firefighters and hospital workers came in from all around the region a doctor and his wife opened up their drug stores and made shift triage for the wounded and the whole community came to help local building contractors assisted in removing rubble and even the Michigan Governor came to help organize relief efforts during the search and rescue another bomb was discovered under the south wing it had an alarm clock attached set to detonate at 8.45pm it was disarmed and local police believed that the first explosion had caused the device to short circuit upon searching Keough's farm investigators found a wooden sign wired to the farm's fence with Keough's last message stenciled on it, criminals are made to report porn over the coming weeks thousands of people came to the township to help and donate money enough to rebuild the school Keough's body was buried in a pauper's grave and his wife's was claimed by her family and buried under her maiden name the Keough farm was completely plowed and searched to ensure that no explosives were hidden in the ground and were sold off at auction to pay off the mortgage a coroner's inquiry would find Keough had worked alone and had murdered his wife and that the school board was not guilty of any negligence the school's north wing would be rebuilt and on three different occasions dynamite would be found within in total 45 innocent people mostly children had been killed directly because of the bombing the total number of dead including Keough was 46 another 58 were injured with varying levels of severity with another dying a few months later of myocarditis the event marks the country's first school bombing and one of the earliest recorded school spree killings it shows how dangerous just one person can be if they have perceived the world they live in to be against them these are plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative comms attribution and share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently quite nice and warm southern corner i have instagram and a second youtube channel as well as twitter so fancy checking them out and also like to thank my patrons and youtube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you who tune in every week and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it is the 27th of june 2022 and investigators are pouring over the wreckage of an amdrak train carriages are strewn all over the place and the site is at an at grade railroad crossing the crossing is pretty lackluster in terms of advance warning to road users visibility is reduced and has been known to be a risky location you see the cause of the derailment was the collision with a dump truck it would highlight that even in the 2020s disaster involving poorly designed at grade level crossings a lot of things of the past my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult today we're looking at the tragic 2022 Missouri train derailment a dangerous crossing Mendon Missouri is a tiny community of some 160-odd residents the city founded in 1871 was moved to be near the newly built Santa Fe railroad line in the late 1880s the city and the railway became intertwined make it one of the areas biggest sources of income however ever since its peak at the start of the last century this city's population has gradually reduced from over 400 down to just over 160 it is largely surrounded by agricultural land with miles around being empty fields intersected by the railway line which over the years would change ownership eventually coming under the control of bnsf one such intersection was roughly one mile to the south west railroad 113 Porsche Prairie Avenue this crossing is somewhere in the middle of what I would like to describe as but f**k nowhere as such it has little in terms of crossing protection systems it is known as a passive crossing in that it has no active warning systems like lights or barriers instead it was armed with cross-bucks and a stop sign the line runs along a berm which raises above the Porsche Prairie Avenue or 2.7 meters above the road a side effect of this is that the road needs to rise up to meet the railway line as such there was a pretty steep incline from the road to the crossing this severely reduced visibility to road users of approaching trains which I might add can travel of speeds up to 90 miles an hour needless to say the trains have no ability to avoid a collision if running at line speed now it is all pretty standard dodgy crossing implementation we see all over the world where low traffic roads get bugger all in terms of crossing warning and protection usually no one cares so few vehicles use it and the cost is prohibitive but this crossing in particular had actually been highlighted as a concern from locals you see the types of vehicles that were most likely to cross the tracks were big tall heavy farm vehicles which gave little room for error when climbing the steep gradient onto the line the railway however did have pretty modern train control systems in place with bnsf authorising train movements with a traffic control system train movements are managed by a bnsf train dispatcher located at the dispatch centre in fort worth texas local resident mike spencer concerned about the crossing brought it to light on a 2nd of december 2019 chariton county commission meeting he was informed that he should contact the Missouri department of transportation's railroad safety division a week later commissioners spoke with officials from the state agency and were told it was on their plans to repair a couple of years would go on until a meeting at the crossing in march 2021 with a state railroad safety division engineer the issues with the crossing were pretty obvious as such it was proposed to install lights and gates along with roadway improvements the cost was estimated to be around $400,000 usually with these kind of things the federal government would pay up to 80% and the county would have to the bill of 20% but the site was rather low on the priorities list due to the limited funds available for crossing upgrades the conversion was approved to be completed in a four year plan that runs through fiscal year 2026 great all everyone needed to do was to not have a crash on the crossing but we all know what the next chapter of this video is going to be the disaster the normally pretty quiet Porsche prairie avenue in June 2022 have become a hive of activity alongside the line near the crossing the army corps of engineers were undertaking repair works to a levy to facilitate this multiple trucks cross the line to deliver aggregate one such vehicle is a 2007 kenworth W900B dump truck it is owned by MS contracting and on the 27th of June it is carrying heavy rock heading northbound towards the crossing but we will quickly pause here just to briefly talk about the train that will also be approaching the crossing the line was pretty well used being double track and all one of the trains that funded along the south west chief an amtrak operated long distance service that covers a 2265 mile route between chicago and los angeles today the train is running four hours late and is extra busy it consists of from the front to rear two GE genesis p42 dc locomotives one view liner baggage car and seven superliner railcars at approximately 12.40pm the south west chief is running along the line heading northeast at roughly 89mph at around the same time the kenworth truck is heading towards the crossing and is about to climb the steep gradient up visibility is awful and is not being helped by the vegetation overgrowth along the berm the train engineer blows the horn roughly one quarter of a mile from the crossing the truck slowly chugs up the incline and onto the crossing the time is now roughly 12.42pm the front of the truck is over the running line and slowly crossing the train strikes the truck as it still fails the line the train is travelling at roughly 87mph and the emergency brakes are applied but it wouldn't stop what would happen next the impact of the train striking the truck was enough to cause each locomotive and carriage to do rail 7 of the 8 carriages tipped over onto their side throwing passengers around within the truck was pushed down into a nearby ditch once the train came to stop many aboard made quick work of escaping the damaged carriages due to the site being pretty remote the first responders would take some time to arrive even though many emergency calls came in in a strange side effect of the time of year the route was often frequented by scouts who provided much needed first aid to the many wounded over 20 emergency crews would arrive to assist with first aid and emergency evacuations as well as body recovery locals assisted with evacuating wounded and debris removal using pickup trucks personal cars and farm equipment in total 2 would be dead on the train as well as a truck driver another passenger would die in hospital the next day of the 270 passengers and crew aboard the train 150 would be reported to have suffered some sort of injury as the disaster took place on a US railroad it would come under the jurisdiction of the NTSB to investigate the investigation so almost as soon as the dust had settled the NTSB sent a 16 person team to the crash site to pour over the wreckage the train's data recorder was pulled and it was found that the train was running as it should and they're also even to get some data from the truck as it had an onboard engine management system almost immediately the issues with the crossing were apparent and its history of concerns were dug up it would turn out that it was a tragedy just waiting to happen and the crossing was just rubbish sadly the accident was a victim of lack of a parent priority of the authorities to improve its protection controls investigators found out that just a few weeks before the disaster a farmer had posted to Facebook about the danger of the crossing that it posed and its overgrown state the crossing was blocked off to road traffic with a pile of railway sleepers the disaster in all is thought to have cost around four US million dollars in infrastructure damage but of course there would be a greater cost in lawsuits of which like BNSF and MS contracting all received cases against each other all of which so far have yet to be decided so it's really hard to rate this disaster on the legacy scale because its legacy is still yet to be understood but maybe it's something I'll come back to in a later video sorry for the slightly shorter video but normal this week I've been a little overworked because my minion army aka my family has increased basically I'm now the proud farmer of not just a toddler but also a newborn girl if you've had children, you know what it's like with the whole lack of sleep thing luckily I've got two weeks of paternity leave from my day job so hopefully I should be able to catch up with some work this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently very sunny and nice corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my patreon and youtube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week I have instagram twitter and a second channel so feel free to check them out all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it's just before noon on an august day in texas and people are carrying on with their normal day on Naguadalupe street building works are ongoing leading to banging sounds but a new sound rings out it's quickly followed by a pregnant woman falling to the ground soon enough more people also fall to the ground as the horror of what's unfolding sinks in the shots are coming from a tower in texas university the year is 1966 my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult the tragic university of texas tower shooting a sharp shooter our story to the texas tower begins and will ultimately end with this one person charles joseph wittman he was born in lake worth florida on the 24th of june 1941 he was known as an intelligent and calm child from a strict catholic family charles and his brothers were introduced to firearms at a young age this would lead them to become proficient in cleaning maintaining and shooting during his teenage years he joined the eagle scouts and took on a paper round over the years he managed to save up enough money to buy a motorcycle he was well liked in high school and charles had a career for himself in mind by the time of his graduation in june 1959 wittman enlisted in the marines on july the 6th 1959 his father didn't approve and he was also known to be violent with charles and the rest of the family however he still joined and within the first 18 months of his enlistment his experience in shooting would pay off when he achieved a sharp shooting badge he applied and was accepted into the naval enlisted science and education program this would pay for his studies initially starting with mathematics and physics eventually graduating to the university of texas in austin to study mechanical engineering his scores were initially really good making his superiors believe enrolling him was a good investment although his performance would drop when he actually started to attend uni he became known as the class joker albeit with a slightly darker sense of humour in 1962 he married cathleen france's a teaching student who was also attending the university and they had met just 6 months before his grades had a slight uptick but it wasn't enough eventually his scholarship was withdrawn and whitman was recalled to active duty and ordered to camp le june in north carolina to serve out the remainder of his 5 year enlistment he was promoted to lance corporal during his time there he was involved in an accident whilst in a jeep which had rolled over an embankment hospitalizing him for 4 days his career would take another dive when he was caught with a personal firearm on sight gambling and making threats to another marine over a $30 loan in which he was attempting to charge 50% interest on he was hit with a sentence of 30 days of confinement and 90 days of hard labour and on top of that he was demoted to the rank of private he would be honorably discharged in december 1964 after which he moved back to austin texas he re-enrolled at the university to study architectural engineering money was tight by now his wife was working as a teacher to try and help their financial situation charles took on multiple jobs he was a bill collector at some point as well as working for the texas highway department he also volunteered with the eagle scout charles and kathleen had a turbulent relationship with whitman hitting his wife on two known occasions although he had expressed concern for his behaviour of not wanting to turn out like his father speaking of parents, whitman's life would become particularly stressful when his mother announced her separation from his abusive father his mother and one of his brothers would move out to austin from florida with the assistance of charles his mother rented an apartment and secured herself a job the family break up put tremendous strain on charles and around the same time he started to experience severe headaches whitman between 1965 and 1966 saw help from several physicians but no one could get to the bottom of his severe and painful headaches he would even visit a psychiatrist in which they would later reveal that whitman had admitted to feeling hostile towards people without much provocation he felt like his headaches had worsened and his personality was changing during his time with the psychiatrist he would reference going up a tower with a deer rifle to shoot at people pressure was building up in whitman and he was only going to get worse until he could take no more on the 31st of july 1966 sat down as his typewriter to write the first of two notes attempting to explain the actions over the following day the first of august in the early hours of the first of august charles got in his car and drove to his mother's house at approximately 12 30 am he stabbed his mother to death after which he covered her body in bedsheets and left a note he then headed home and at around 3 am stabbed his sleeping wife to death he killed the two people he loved the most in the world but this wouldn't be the end of the bloodshed that day he would when the shops opened in the morning make his way to a hardware store to rent a hand truck you know those things used to carry heavy cases anyways after that he went to his bank where he cashed in some bad checks from there he went to another store bought an m1 carbine 8 boxes of ammo and some magazines after that he went on to another gun store to purchase some more ammunition and magazines as well as a shotgun from a seers shop women returned home to saw off the shotgun stock and collect his weapons in his old marine footlocker he placed the m1 a rimmington 706mm bolt action hunting rifle a 35 calibre pump rifle a 9mm luga pistol a 25 calibre pistol a smith and wesson m19 357 magnum rover the shotgun as well as over 700 rounds of ammunition he also packed cans of food coffee, vitamins dexadrine dexadrine earplugs 3.5 gallons of water matches a machete, lighter fluid binoculars, 3 knives, a small channel master transistor radio toilet paper eraser and a boss of deodorant clearly he was planning to be out for quite a while he addressed in blue overalls in an effort to masquerade as a janitor and headed down to the university of texas at around 20 past 11 am he arrived at the university using a fake id he managed to get a parking permit under the story that he was delivering supplies to a professor he carried his footlucker on the hand truck and headed for the main building he entered the building around 11.35 am and headed towards the lift as a cruel sense of luck for wittman the lift had actually originally been switched off for the day a member of staff thinking he was a repairman had actually switched it back on for him he left the lift at the 26th floor hauled his box up to the final flight of stairs and headed for the tower's observation deck in the reception he encountered a staff member he beat her unconscious with the bus of his rifle moments after he'd hit the victim's body donald waldon and sherrill botts entered the room from the observation deck in a strange lull to the violence of the day the couple left the floor unharmed and wittman began making a barricade to the floor as he began to make his way back to the deck a family attempted to push past the barricade in response wittman fired his shotgun killing a 16 year old boy and his aunt the remaining family members fled for help charles re-secured his barrier and made his way back to the observation deck he placed his weapons around him and put on a white headband the observation tower had views all around it of traffic and people moving along the guadalupe street south, east and west malls and university drive as well as a view of even further wittman sighted a couple claire wilson james and her boyfriend tom ekman claire was 8 months pregnant they were just walking outside the main building a shot rang out and hit claire in the stomach killing her unborn child soon after another shot hit ekman killing him almost instantly initially the gunshots were not noticed but soon enough more people started hitting the ground wittman would continue to change points around the observation deck making it hard to pinpoint where the gunman was soon enough members of the public returned fire upon the tower forcing wittman to fire through the storm drains on each of the towers four walls at 11.52 am the austin police department received their first report of the shootings police both on and off duty scrambled to reach the university one of the first officers on the scene was billy speed he sought cover behind a stone wall but unfortunately he was not safe wittman shot speed through a 6 inch gap in the wall killing him instantly as the gunfight unfolded wittman continued to find targets including a funeral director who had driven his ambulance to assist in ferrying the wounded many found cover from the gunfire but not all the unlucky ones caught in wittman's sights out in the open became an easy target a light aircraft was employed with a sharp shooter on board but sadly due to turbulence on approach to the tower a clear shot couldn't be made and wittman returned fire the pilot rather bravely continued to circle the tower in an attempt to distract the gunman enter this stories mad lad alan crumb he was a manager at the university bookstore and an ex-air force tail gunner upon realising the events unfolding he offered his help to the police after assisting an injured student he was given a firearm and proceeded with the police into the tower public safety agent william cohen austin police officer jerry day and crumb went into the elevator to the 26th floor where they were shortly joined by off-duty officer remaro martinez the four men made their way to the 27th floor crumb asked are we playing for keeps essentially saying the gunman wouldn't be leaving the tower alive martinez responded you're damn right we are crumb replied well you better deputise me martinez replied back consider yourself deputised they reached the observation deck martinez and mccoy went left and crumb and day went right wittman was on the north west corner crumb thought he heard movement and opened fire there was nothing and his bullet hit the parapet of the southwest corner by now it was 1 24 p.m martinez and mccoy rounded the north eastern corner wittman was looking for the source of the shot fired by crumb mccoy fired his shotgun twice and martinez fired six rounds from his revolver some of the shots hit wittman who was now lying prone the body was approached by martinez who fired one shot at him point blank shots continued to rain in from the ground as the death of wittman was not known crumb waved a white flag making marking the end of the shootout in the confusion news outlets reported crumb to be the sniper but it would be quickly corrected between 12 30 in the morning and 1 24 in the afternoon Charles wittman had killed 16 individuals wounded at least 31 others and mostly scarred hundreds more and left an indelible mark on the American psyche by 3 p.m wittman had been identified and after a phone call to the police from his dad wittman and his mother's addresses were searched and the bodies of his first victims were found wittman's note left to explain his actions requested an autopsy and cremation the first was granted but the latter was not with his body being buried with a shared service with his mother at west palm beach florida rather disgustingly he was buried with military honours and he even had a US flag draped over his coffin but back to his autopsy his body was examined a day after the shooting and a pecan sized tumour which had some necrosis was discovered inside his brain John Connolly ironically someone who had actually been shot by an ex US Marine from a tool building and also the then governor of Texas commissioned a task force to examine the autopsy findings they concluded that the tumour had no evidence of causing any neurological condition they did also say however that organic brain diseases are known to cause aggressive behaviour said that the tumour conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions they also pointed the finger of blame on the stressors in his life his parents splitting up studying and working with financial issues university closed for one day and was reopened with its flags at half mast the event ingrained itself into the culture of the decade and beyond and much like the bath school bombing just shows how much damage just one person can make this is a plain different production all videos on the channel are created commons actuation share alike licensed plain different videos are produced by me John in a currently wet corner of southern London UK and also in a currently very echoey new study room I have instagram and youtube and a second youtube channel and I'd like to thank my patreon and youtube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please this is the aftermath of a fatal error a ship has capsized a few minutes earlier cars and lorries were driving onto a roll on roll off ferry in the port of Zabruk, Belgium as the passengers made themselves comfortable aboard the ship prior to departure little did they know that they would be victims in one of the worst peacetime British maritime tragedies in living history the disaster would kill just short of 200 people and cast a worrying light on the design of row row ferries today we're looking at the MS held a free enterprise called DASTER my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult free spirit class ferries we start our story today eight years before the tragic night in belgium with the ferry company european ferries plc ordering three new ferries for its dover to calle route the shipbuilders sheikow, unterwesser ag in germany were commissioned to design and construct the new vessels required their ships to be fast and be quick to load and unload an essential part of the highly competitive dover to calle route in a pre channel tunnel world the company's predecessor towns and car ferries had pioneered the use of roll on roll off ferries and this tradition of using such vessels would carry on to the free new ferries being commissioned in 1979 the free vessels would later be named the spirit class of ferries after the name of the first in the class the ms spirit of free enterprise all three would be very similar be brandies as townsend forson ferries and be registered in the port of dover united kingdom but this is where we will say goodbye to two of the ships in our story and instead i'll focus in on one of them the ms herald of free enterprise she began paying passenger service in may 1980 the ship was of all welded steel construction comprising of eight decks numbered a to h from top to bottom a deck was crew accommodation and a radio room there was a half deck between a and b decks which housed the wheelhouse also known as the bridge b deck passenger areas crew accommodation and the galley were found there c deck also had passenger areas and a galley d deck was a suspended vehicle deck within e deck and e deck was the upper vehicle deck f deck was crew accommodation at the port end and starboard end and g deck was the main vehicle deck and finally h deck which housed the engine room stores and passenger accommodation at the forward end and g deck was the level that housed the ship's bound stern watertight doors that allowed the fast loading and unloading of vehicles the doors were kept watertight when closed by tubular neoprene seals at dover and calley the ship was loaded via the use of double link spans basically a bridge like structure that allows cars and lorries to drive onto the vessel this allowed the loading of g deck and e deck at the same time the latter had weather tight doors at the bound stern she weighed a total of seven thousand nine hundred and fifty one gross tons and had a length of a hundred and thirty one point nine one meters or four hundred and thirty two feet nine inches and she accommodated a total of 1400 people now probably goes without saying that the ship's bound stern doors need to be closed before setting sail as you know water plus hole in the ship equals ship no longer floating in order to ensure the ship's doors were correctly closed and locked the MS held a free enterprise relies solely on a person physically verifying the door status by well looking at the door and the local control panel IE the person in charge of the door has to do their job properly with little oversight the bridge had no way of knowing if the doors were closed apart from getting the word from the crew member operating the doors and the way that the ship was arranged you couldn't physically see the doors from the wheelhouse or the bridge the issue of this arrangement would be highlighted in October 1983 when another spirit class ship the pride of free enterprise sailed from Dover to the bridge with the bow doors open the person in charge had fallen asleep another similar incident would also happen later on in the same year once again on the pride although the ship didn't sink it did open up some comments within European ferries group plc and some of the company's captains suggesting some safety modifications including a door indicator light on the bridge I would say a pretty sensible suggestion from the people who operate the ships day to day and have seen the instance that can unfold some comments were passed up to management this was their reply bearing in mind this is in response to some reasonable suggestions the deputy chief superintendent replied do they need an indicator to tell them whether the deck storekeeper is awake and sober my goodness and another from another manager nice but don't we already pay someone assume the guy who shuts the door tells the bridge if there is a problem and another manager just said nice the issue was brought up again in 1986 and yet again a rubbish reply came back from the company I cannot see the purpose or need for the stern door to be monitored on the bridge as the seaman in charge of closing the doors is standing by the control panel watching them close needless to say the indicator lights weren't instilled so the bow doors open incident happened on a Dover to Zibrug run remember when I said the ships were built for Dover to Calais well their operations had expanded but Zibrug offered a slightly unique challenge the birth that Zibrug couldn't properly accommodate to deck loading this was due to there only being one link span and to add insult to injury a high waters that same link span couldn't be raised up enough to reach the upper car deck E to allow for this the ship had to be trimmed by filling her ballast tanks to load a vessel in the water and this would be the same story that would unfold on the 6th of March 1987 the disaster it is the evening of the 6th of March 1987 and the MS Herald of Three Enterprise is in birth 12 Zibrug Harbour Captain David Lurie tonight is in charge tonight her voyage to Dover will carry a crew of 80 hands and 81 cars 47 freight vehicles and three other vehicles and this amounted to roughly 459 passengers usually the doors were closed before the moorings were dropped but today it is slightly different the task of closing the doors was down to assistant boats Wayne Mark Stanley but after clearing up the deck he went back to his quarters to take a break there he fell asleep and missed the harbour station's call Leslie Sable a first officer in lieu of Stanley was meant to wait at the bow doors however he left G deck when as he claimed to have seen Stanley approaching this would later be thought to be incorrect it is likely Sable left thinking that Stanley would be around after he heard the station's call boats Wayne Terrence Ailing was also in G deck but didn't go to close the doors even though no one knew where Stanley was he would later explain that it wasn't his duty Captain Lurie from his position on the bridge couldn't see the bow doors and assuming they were closed began to depart Zabruk the ship hadn't been re-trimmed after filling her ballast to dock at Zabruk this was at roughly 1905 or 705 in the evening by 724 she passed the outer moor now water had begun to enter the ferry via the open bow doors at 726 she started to list 30 degree support the ship briefly leveled off before listing again to port until she was fully on her side half submerged in the shallow water just one kilometre from the shore the water entered the engine room and electrical systems knocking out both her main and back up electricity plunging the ship into darkness the capsizing was witnessed by nearby dredger ship they quickly reported the sinking to port authorities helicopters and vessels from the Belgium Navy were dispatched at around 737 many were trapped inside the ship and although she had capsized in shallow water and thus had half of her ship still above the water the trapped would eventually succumb to hypothermia divers helped remove bodies and assist in helping survivors some were still stuck inside hours in the disaster and they were still alive but in a cruel turn of fate the tide rose killing anyone still within 194 people would die in the sinking aftermath the held would be required to be removed as such an impressively quick salvage operation would be kicked off Dutch company smith, tac, towage and salvage would be tasked with the job and cracked on just a few days after the disaster the ship was refloated using the salvage method once refloated the final bodies were recovered initially it was thought that she could be repaired and sold off but no buyer wanted her and as such she was sent to Taiwan to be scrapped a formal investigation was held by Mr Justice Sheen it would find that Captain David Leroy the master Mr Leslie Sable Victor Stanley were negligent in their duties Leroy the departing without checking the doors were shut Sable for leaving the doors open with no one to close them and Stanley for not being at his post the investigation would find the company was an environment ripe for disaster communication between crew aboard towns and forest and ships was abysmal and to add further fuel to the fire relations between the ships crews and the company was toxic I mean we saw that when the idea of door indicator lights was brought up the actual mechanics of the capsizing involved a thing called the squat effect this is a reduction in pressure that causes the ship to increase its draft and thus be drawn closer to the seabed this phenomenon is more prevalent in shallow water as the Herald accelerated she squatted bringing water line above the opening caused by the unclosed doors the water flowed across her car deck and as it sloshed around the deck the free surface effect came into play producing the stability of the ship causing her to turn over Townsend Forsen would be rebranded pretty quickly after the disaster to Piano Ferries and their fleet would be very quickly repainted and renamed Roro ship design would be improved because of the disaster but this is probably not much of a consolation for those who died just outside Zabrog this is a plain difficult video all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently very wet and windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos and listen to me talk I have Instagram, Twitter and a second YouTube channel so check them out if you want to see watch and listen more of stuff I do behind the scenes and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music place out please it is a snowy January evening and hundreds are piling into a theatre to watch a film the movie on show tonight is Get Rich Quick Wallingford a comedy starring Sam Hardy and Doris Kenyon and it is set to entertain the crowd no one knows that during the laughter that above them a disaster was about to unfold not only a disaster but the United States was the third most deadliest which would tie it with a building collapse nearly a hundred years later the theatre is the Nicarbaca welcome to Plainly Difficult my name is John and today we're looking at its 1922 collapse a new theatre it is the 17th of October 1917 and there is a buzz developing around the south west intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road Adams Morgan neighbourhood north downtown of Washington DC a modern and exciting building is now open to the public it's a photo playhouse not only that but it's brought to the ballroom, lounges and even parlours the lavish new building would be devoted to the burgeoning art of cinema but although flashy and new for owner Harry Crandall the Nicarbaca theatre today marks another notch in its cinematic empire Crandall a film fanatic by 1917 had four theatres under his belt and the opening of the Nicarbaca brings this number to five the theatre boasted seating for up to 1700 1000 seats on the orchestra floor 500 in the mezzanine tier and 200 lounges tier chairs as noted in the evening star of Washington DC at the time was designed, built and financed entirely by Washington people when you look at the pictures it was clearly luxurious for the day a far cry from the odians I used to go to as a teenager the building's design was penned by Reginald Wycliffe Gear he had already designed a number of theatres and would go on to design many more two of which are on the national historical landmark register today the theatre was three stories high with exterior bearing walls which facilitated the large open space for the cinema on top of the low bearing exterior wall was meant to be steel trusses and in the design spec was meant to be inserted into the walls for a seating of 8 inches the roof was concrete decked and interestingly for the time it was nice and flat now I've used a word meant to because that wasn't the actual case the year the theatre was built may explain this somewhat 1917 you see there was a little border dispute on the way called world war one and there were metal shortages notably in the need for steel as such some of the spec trusses were changed out for plate girders and beams this used less metalwork it was approved by the city but loads were not asked to be recalculated by the architect structural engineer fabricator this was due to most likely cost as Crandall had negotiated the lowest fee for the design of the theatre and if the city approved then why pay out any more money there was another significant change to the design of the building apparently undertaken by the contractor was that they only inserted the steels 2 inches into the low bearing walls a full 6 inches too short this fact would come out later and presumably it was to speed up construction and save cost however none of these issues seemed to be well an issue at least for the remaining years of the 1910s thousands poured through the theatre's doors to enjoy the wonders of the cinema Crandall's empire continued to grow and gear would design many more buildings including one still standing today the Lincoln theatre in Washington DC which is apparently next to Ben's chilli bowl which actually has quite a cool history in its own right anyways the Nicobocker theatre settled into the Washington landscape and must have felt like it would be there forever as films became more and more popular and it would until snow started to blanket the nation's capital a blizzard is coming 1922 in Washington DC had gotten off to a cult start it's the 23rd of January and the air is freezing hardly anything new but down in the Gulf of Mexico a cyclone was heading north snow started to form on its way towards the Carolinas Pennsylvania and finally Washington DC around lunchtime on the 28th of January the snow made its way to the nation's capital covering the region with a thin then thick layer of snow railway lines were enveloped houses and buildings became covered and disruptions across the city bit in. Congress was adjourned and some 28 inches of snow had fallen businesses tried to stay open but as the afternoon went on the city became increasingly more paralyzed but one business that remained open for patrons was one of the city's largest cinemas the Nicobocker theatre a popular comedy was to be shown in the evening as such the first showing crowds filled up the cinema leaving standing room only all afternoon a flat roof had accumulated heavy snow which as the sun went down turned to ice as more snow fell the strength of the roof was really being tested the second showing of the day began to welcome patrons there were markedly fewer people estimated between 400 and 1000 we can assume many had prioritised getting home for the evening due to the snow regardless the film began and the crowd enjoyed the comedy unfold on the big screen at roughly 9pm one of the trusses under the excessive weight of the snow failed and slipped off its meagre 2 inch footing on the building's walls the roof collapsed initially into the balcony then into the main floor of the cinema in mere seconds the theatre roof was gone and the cold winter air permeated into the building over 100 patrons were trapped underneath the rubble anyone nearby ran to the stricken building helping anyone who could escape one of the survivors called the telephone operator and emergency services were dispatched but the response would take a rather long time as the heavy snow hindered the early 20th century vehicles among those who rushed to begin rescuing victims was actually the building's architect some ambulances made their way to the theatre and volunteer taxis helped transport the injured a contingent of US marines were brought into assist under the command of George S. Patton yes that guy as the evening gave way to the early hours the numbers of people pulled from the rubble dwindled those stuck in the orchestral area remained trapped even into the afternoon next day a young boy was employed to run water to the victims to try and keep them alive a nearby church was used to make shift morgue and shops and houses nearby were used as emergency medical treatment areas in total 98 were perished in the collapse and over 100 would be injured architect Reginald Gear would be vital to the survival of many as his knowledge of the building helped rescuers search the rubble in the aftermath several committees were set up to try and find out the cause of the collapse the conclusions would contradict one another but one key point would run through the snow it was during these investigative committees that the improper truss seating of two inches came to light on top of that the modification of some of the truss to plate girder also came under scrutiny as such a grand jury indicted five including the architect the city's building inspector the steel fabricator the building's foreman and the mason for the bearing walls but not the contractor however all five men were acquitted at trial as reported in a contemporary story the new york times reported the snow was a concern to the staff at the theatre as a conversation about removal reportedly took place but clearly it didn't happen after the rubble was cleared the knickerbocker was pulled down a new theatre was constructed and was named the ambassador this building lasted until the 1960s when it was also demolished regional gear was hit pretty hard by guilt and financially ruined after the disaster due to no one wanting to hire the designer of a failed cinema in 1927 he would take his life and harry krandall the cinema's owner would follow the theatre in 1937 he would leave a note saying please don't be too hard on me boys not for my sake but for those I'm leaving behind me I'm despondent and I miss my theatre so much personally I believe the blame was across the board but the contractor building the seats for the truss to shallow is most likely the culprit and combined with weaker than initially designed steel work the roof just couldn't hold the weight of the snow as such I feel quite bad for the architect gear especially the disaster is joint third in the us collapse death history with another one of my videos the champion towers south collapse so the disaster I'm going to give it a rating of negligence due to the improper seating of the trusses and a six on the legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license videos produced by me John in the currently mild corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my YouTube members and my patrons for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week just to listen to me talk I have Instagram and Twitter so check them out if you want to see other random bits and bobs from behind the scenes and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please when a person goes to war what is the expectation that they may see danger there is a hole opposing side with the sole goal to beat your side after all being wounded or killed in battle is a tragedy but it is a possibility but to be killed or wounded in an accident in a war zone is catastrophic this would be the case for the USS forestal when she was in the Bay of Tonkin and a fire and then explosion ravaged her flight deck the disaster would highlight issues with corners being cut on the handling of munitions aboard US carrier ships my name is John and today we're looking at the USS forestal fire welcome to plainly difficult a super carrier ok so I won't go too deep into the forestals history as we have some background to cover in a few other places as well but the forestal was a bit of a trailblazer for the US Navy she was in the early 1950s for supporting jet aircraft and because of this it was one of the largest carriers of her time she was laid down in July 1952 and over her two years of construction her plans would change to incorporate the cutting edge of carrier technology she got steam catapults and an angled flight deck as well as an optical landing system she was the first super carrier in the US Navy when she was commissioned in 1955 she would parade around the seas to show off what the Americans can build in November 1963 she would be part of aviation history with the largest and heaviest airplane landing on a navy aircraft carrier when a C-130 Hercules made 21 full stop landings and takeoffs doesn't this photo just make the carrier seem kind of comically small and as she was 1067 feet long and 238 feet wide anywho the Vietnam War would get under the way and in 1967 she would be called up for service under the command of Captain John Kingsman Bealing and departed Norfolk in June of that year to head for the Gulf of Tonkin she was attached to the newly formed carrier air wing 17 1967 was a tough year for the Navy as a sustained bombing campaign was being undertaken from the fixed coordinate point of the Gulf of Tonkin called Yankee Station stores of bombs were running low putting strain on the demand to blow up as much of Vietnam as possible the forest tour was complimented with F-4B phantoms 4E skyhawks and RA-5C vigilantes all of which could be armed with general purpose bombs these dumb munitions i.e. unguided were dropped over a target and free fell to earth whilst we're here let's talk a little bit about bombs and rockets bombs bombs and rockets so as I mentioned there was a bit of a bomb shortage especially the 1,000 pound variants this was because the aircraft used by the Navy at the time had the ability to deploy either one 2,000 pound bomb or two 1,000 pound ones two bombs meant two separate targets could be hit during one flight offering greater operational flexibility as stockpiles dwindled the Navy was required to drag out older and older munitions as the at the time current Mark 83 bomb was being used quicker than it was being built the older bombs were in the form of the Mark 65 the exact weapons the Mark 83 had sought to replace a design hailing all the way back to 1939 albeit the ones available in the 1960s dated only back as far as the early 1950s these older bombs came with some unforeseen issues in that they were way more susceptible to cook off when exposed to fire that is exploding but the aircraft aboard for a stool also could be armed with rockets and that came in the form of the Zuni the Zuni rocket is an air to air or air to surface unguided 127mm or 5 inch wide system the Zunis were launched from a 4 tube LAU-10 rocket pod these were mounted to the underside of aircraft via a triple ejector rack both the launcher and rockets were known to be susceptible to electrical spikes causing it to launch prematurely no worries as that's what safety systems are for these came in the form of a safety pin which locked out the rocket both mechanically and electrically these by navy rules could only be removed once the aircraft was on the catapult as it's the last moment before the plane is launched and that if a missile was to be fired in theory it would just shoot off into the distance relatively safely the other way to prevent premature firing was that the launch pod wouldn't be electrically connected to the aircraft again only when on the catapult this connection was called colloquially the pigtail but it took some time to hook up as such launching was often delayed something not so good with the high-paced takeoff and landings when working from Yankee Station during the Vietnam War this would be modified after a meeting of the ship's safety committee they chose to bypass this and connect the pigtail whilst aircraft was still waiting on deck for their time for launch after all they must have thought there was still a safety pin however it was ignored by the fact that the pins could and did blow off in strong winds the idea for the modification was from operational experiences of other carriers that had been working in the Gulf Tonkin making the practice pretty widespread around the Navy but although the practice was common it didn't mean it was a good idea what the board also didn't consider was that ground crews had also been making modifications to the procedures themselves again to speed things up and get planes into the air quicker this was the ground crew removing the pins before placing the aircraft on the catapult which essentially with these two things combined left no safety system in place for disaster it is the 28th of July and the punishing level of bombing raids over North Vietnam has dwindled the ship's stockpile of Mark 83 bombs as such the forestall is being resupplied from the ammunition ship the USS Diamond Head amongst the munitions are 16 Mark 65 bombs the weapons handling crew aboard the forestall had never seen these older types of weapons before they had dates going back as early as 1953 the Korean War you'd think this isn't such a big deal but the explosive material in the Mark 65s deteriorates over time making them more susceptible to shock and heat were still the bombs received were covered in rust and were in rotten and mouldy packing cases and if that wasn't bad enough they were leaking liquid paraffin phlematising agent Captain John Bailing that the bombs were a hazard to the ship and all aboard Bailing contacted the Diamond Head demanding that they return the bombs and supply the requested Mark 83s but she had none in stock herself scarily earlier when the Diamond Head was being loaded itself at Subic Bay the audience officer refused to sign off the transfer of the dodgy bombs due to the risk that they posed he reluctantly signed off only after a written order absolving his team of any blame if anything was to go wrong was Telex to him any who's back on the forest still Captain Bailing begrudgingly accepted the bombs and they were stored on deck instead of the ship's magazine they would stay in a place called the Bomb Farm overnight to await delivery the next day to some unsuspecting North Vietnamese the morning of the 29th started off with the flights for sortie of the day at roughly 7am by around 10am the deck was packed with aircraft almost wing to wing though being armed for the day's second mission one of the planes armed to the teeth was an F-4 Phantom numbered 110 it was on the aft starboard corner of the ship's deck facing other aircraft it was armed to Rosuni rockets in their respective pods its pigtail was attached and its pin had been removed pilot, Jim, Vanguard was changing over power supplies placed to internal this had an issue it could cause power surges no points for guessing what would happen next a Zuni rocket was unintentionally fired it shot across the deck hitting an A4 Skyhawk's fuel tank which was piloted by future senator John McCain the rocket didn't detonate but it did rupture the tank spilling highly flammable jet fuel all over the deck it then erupted into flames it had severely burned and injured several crew members and this was at roughly 10.51am more fuel spilled out in turn igniting directly above it was mounted one of those very old 1000lb bombs several of the pilots including McCain managed to flee and escape the bomb fell into the fire Chief Gerald W. Farrier attempted to call it by smothering it with fire extinguisher foam 5 quarters and in general quarters were sounded at 10.52am just 1 minute and 36 seconds later the bomb cooked off the explosion instantly killed 5 men injuring scores more debris and super heated fragments were strewn across the deck creating even more fire within 5 minutes another 8 1000lb bombs had detonated some rockets had also cooked off and a couple of other size bombs had also exploded making multiple planes just a mere wreck the explosions had caused damage to quarters below the half-sex of the main deck killing many unsuspecting sailors at the same time fuel drained into the lower decks filled with night crewmen sleeping in their quarters fires erupted below the main deck causing even greater numbers of casualties fire suppression was hindered by the ongoing explosions munitions were thrown overboard and in the ensuing chaos many untrained men helped fight the fires but in doing so inadvertently they washed away the fire suppressing foam with seawater another ship came in to assist blasting the forest door with water and assisting in rescuing men who had jumped off the main deck by 11.47am the fire was under control on the main deck but below the inferno would be fought for several more hours in total after a lot of searching 134 men were accounted for as dead and 161 were injured as recovery efforts began multiple bombs were found amongst the debris luckily they hadn't exploded 21 aircraft were destroyed in the fire and explosions and searching for the dead and wounded would take all the way into the evening due to men being displaced onto other ships significant parts of the deck were heavily damaged and vast areas below deck were burnt to a crisp needless to say the ship wasn't any more fit for service a few days after the forest door limped back to the Philippines for temporary repairs after which she returned to the United States for several months of proper repairs but it's asked to cost the Navy $72 million in damages not including the cost of the expensive aircraft of course with such a colossal loss of men and material the cause had to be established and that would lead us onto the next section of this video the investigation whilst in the Philippines surviving crew members were interviewed by a team headed up by Rear Admiral Forsythe Massey quickly issues with the Zuni rockets and the aging bombs were discovered it also wouldn't take long to find out about the modifications to the safety precautions when the aircraft were on deck awaiting takeoff it was found that the meeting aboard the forest door, the safety committee didn't run their amendments of the pigtail procedure to the captain bailing leaving the guy in charge out of the loop however it was still known it was common practice across carriers operating around Vietnam the investigation panel concluded that the spike in electrical current was caused by the switchover of power source aboard the plane which set off the rockets and had their two safety processes bypassed captain bailing was absolved of all blame for the disaster however he did know of the zuni rocket issues and as such should have made greater effort to ensure procedures were followed well that was the gist of the investigation panel summary even though not to blame bailing was reassigned and would never command a ship again until his retirement in 1973 one of the glaring issues for crew safety was the lack of proper training for crew and that of the older bombs they had been told that during training the bombs would last at least 10 minutes before a potential cookoff sadly this time frame was for the newer and more stable mark 83 bombs the navy would learn from the disaster and train all crew as firefighters and also they attempted to better enforce regulations however another disaster involving a zuni rocket would unfold during the vietnam war in 1969 this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike license plain default videos are produced by me john in the currently warm but windy corner of southern london uk i have instagram and a second youtube channel so check them out if you fancy seeing more stuff i would also like to thank my patreons and youtube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week listen to me talk and watch my poorly drawn cartoons and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it is mid november 1985 and rescue workers are searching a town for survivors it has been hit by deadly mudflow caused by volcanic eruption the town's inhabitants were caught by the tragedy by surprise many were unaware of the danger they were in until the very last minute bizarrely the nearby volcanic eruption had been predicted and government officials knew of the town's potential for being wiped off the map however information to the people was sparse and evacuation was a bit of an afterthought as bodies are recovered and the true loss of life is calculated quickly it becomes apparent that november the 13th 1985 will go down in history as the second deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century today i'm looking at the armero columbia tragedy my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult columbia's white city our story starts in the town of armero built upon an alluvial fan the settlement over its history was a hub of significant portions of the country's rice and cotton production that's why it's called the white city i know you thought i was going to mention something a little bit more elicit the town owes its agricultural prosperity to the navado del ruiz volcano that sits above it as previous eruptions had made the soil fertile the town was also not a stranger to volcanic activity with two disasters occurring in 1595 and 1845 with the main cause of destruction was from la haas that is a violent mud or debris flow consisting of a slurry of pyroclastic material, mud and water these things are deadly and usually follow the flow of a river any hoos after the disaster in 1845 the volcano would erupt again some 71 years later in 1916 the ruiz would once again go quiet lulling the residents of armero into a false sense of security the town continued on but some warnings of ruiz awakening were upon the horizon it is December 1984 and scientists have been watching the 17,716 foot navada del ruiz she wait do we call a mountain she or do we even anthropomorphize volcanoes who knows and probably who cares well she is giving some hints of eruption seismic activity and steam releases were seen now this might sound worrying but it is apparently normal as said in a contemporary la times interview with us geological survey official David Norris but the activity would continue to increase higher sulfur deposits were found on the volcano's peak and minor phreatic eruptions were noted activity continued into 1985 and in September a large phreatic eruption occurred shooting a massive plume of steam into the air the government began to plan for an evacuation and started compiling a hazard map a mudflow between 60 and 70 feet wide traveled about 20 miles down the acufredo river valley it caused not a lot of damage but officials closed off parts of the mountain nevertheless a report for government officials was published by an Italian volcanologist team on the 22nd of October 1985 it was rather worrying that the scientists had determined that the risk of lahars was unusually high leading officials to predict a 67% chance that an eruption was imminent the hazard map by now was completed it was to be distributed to the areas most affected and highlighted the risks of rock debris pyroclastic flows and lahars but there was a bit of an issue the distribution wasn't great the idea was to print the hazard map in newspapers and magazines although printed they didn't reach most of the at-risk areas and the ones that did most notably the one in El Espectador newspaper in Bogota had some glaring flaws the scale was all messed up and parts of the map were cut off not properly showing the edges of the danger zones there was colour which was pretty good but the zones of blue, red and green and yellow ink had no key so made it virtually useless for working out what was expected where and as a spoiler, green and blue didn't actually mean the area was safe also the maps weren't particularly well distributed due to the fear of economic issues but you know, evacuating people in an area would create there was a reason for the poor distribution as the government was also fighting the guerrilla forces the government also wrongly thought that evacuation would have plenty of time because mud flows slowly right? as such, Armero went pretty unnoticed in terms of solid evacuation and warning plans because of this, most stayed put in Armero but Ruiz was screaming I'm going to blow by late October with multiple small earthquakes near the mountain and lava beginning to appear at the top but the people continued on as normal all the way into November seismic activity continued but to a lesser level than what was seen a couple of months earlier in September the eruption it is the morning of the 13th of November 1985 and it didn't seem too different for the people living under Ruiz at roughly 3 in the afternoon Nevado del Ruiz began to erupt shooting ash into the air the local civil defence conducted in Gio Aminas Columbia's geological survey and explained the situation local officials were advised to begin evacuation of the surrounding areas the Armero civil defence director was then told to contact the civil defence directors in Bogota and Tolima by now the ice cap on the mountain was melting from the heat of the eruption but down in Armero Mariquita and Honda the ash had slowed down this was around 5pm residents were instructed to stay home and stay calm in Armero a local emergency committee meeting was arranged it would last until 7pm after which the Red Cross was contacted a storm was building up as the evening drew in cutting Armero off from lines of communication civil defence officials from other areas tried to order an evacuation of Armero but in the heavy wind and rain the messages were not received electrical issues persisted hindering radio communications and lighting at around 9.45pm rumbling could be heard from up in the mountain pyroclastic flows melted more ice and gathered up ash, mud and water into a deadly slurry it began to run down the sides of the top of the volcano destroying a volcanic lake consisting of salty water which in turn melted even more snow and ice the overflow of mud and material rumbled down the mountains 11 flank valleys at speeds of up to 35km an hour the lahars engulfed in China killing an estimated 1000 people but the worst was yet to come the mudflow was speeding down the slopes to Armero reaching speeds up to 50km an hour the town was hit by lahars at approximately 11.30pm many residents were still inside obeying the orders from earlier on in the evening in an instant the lahar swept through Armero smashing into buildings sweeping up cars and pushing people along with the deadly mudflow there were roughly 28,700 people in Armero and 3 quarters would be gone after the first lahar would hit and last 30 minutes by now 85% of the town was under mud and debris another lahar followed yet again albeit slower but this time lasting for over 2 hours buildings collapsed trapping their occupants the lahars carried very small sharp pieces of rock and if caught in it would cause hundreds of cuts to the skin the mud also caused suffocation which pretty much is stuff of nightmares in total at least 23,000 people were killed approximately 5,000 were injured and 5,000 homes were destroyed throughout the 13 affected villages the region was decimated by the time rescue efforts began the next day Armero was a mix of eerie quiet interrupted with screaming and moaning from the trapped the aftermath relief workers struggled to help the trapped and this was hindered by the mud difficult terrain and limited working infrastructure and power the mud had a depth of over 4.5 meters or 15 feet in some places and those who ventured walking in it could sink several bridges had collapsed in the lahars rendering road travel almost impossible Armero's hospital had been destroyed as a result helicopter was the only viable method for extraction of the wounded as such many treatable injured people died before help could reach them even a week after the eruption relief workers were digging through the rubble but sadly they were only finding bodies there were many tragedies one world famous one was of Armero Sanchez Garzon a 13 year old girl trapped among the rubble the picture taken of her trapped would illustrate to the world the sadness the eruption had caused guerrilla fighters called off attacks and the government's presidential election was called off but the low in the bloodshed would remain forever the disaster caused economic hardship for the country with the cost running up as much as a fifth of Colombia's gross national product at roughly $1 billion and that was in 1985 the event generated a lot of anger towards the government with many blaming them more than the volcano I mean it's understandable local officials had on multiple occasions tried to warn their higher ups of issues of proper evacuation plans so Armero wouldn't be rebuilt the surviving residents were moved to Gaia Yabbo and Lirida leaving the remains of what would be a ghost town Navarro del Ruiz is still a risk to some 500,000 people in the region and that means Armero may repeat itself in the future this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel attribution share a light license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently very wet corner of southern London UK I have Instagram and what I'm still calling Twitter so check them out if you want to see extra odds and sods that I post up I also have a second channel called Made by John and I'd also like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos and all that's left to say is thank you Mr Music, place out please it's December the 21st 2022 and a new bridge is being opened for vehicular traffic this event marks the third bridge on this site usually a new bridge is due to the old one being put out to pasture as it's gotten a little bit too expensive or complicated to maintain however this time the previous bridge kind of forced the requirement of a new one by refusing to stay collapsed interestingly the previous bridge only fell apart 11 months before marking a pretty impressive rebuild time this video is a bit of a rare one for me as no one thankfully died a feat of brilliant luck when you look at this picture of the bridge post self dismantling well although disaster came in 2022 our story will start just over 50 years before in the magical bridge known as the 1970s background this point on the map has been a location of a bridge dating all the way back to 1901 it carries the Forbes avenue across Frink Park in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania the road allows a quicker cut through for traffic heading towards and away from Pittsburgh but in 1970s the original steel deck arch was getting a bit long in the tooth over 70 years it needed replacement this would come along in 1972 when the original Fern Hollow bridge closed to traffic and a new one started construction the new crossing was penned by Richardson Gordon and associates design firm it had a four lane undivided roadway which was two lanes in each direction the main structure had two steel girders running in parallel each side of the bridge held together with a k-frame running along the bridge under the roadway was rolled steel stringers at each end of the bridge concrete caps were placed on masonry abutments in which the steel structure was placed the steel structure was then supported by steel beams with X-bracing sighted on reinforced concrete the steel used wasn't planned to be painted over well that's madness what about rust you may be screaming at the screen but there was a neat feature of the particular steel employed on this bridge the bridge was built with a thing called weathering steel it was a particular alloy formulation that would in theory not corrode instead forming a layer of protecting rust on its surface it wasn't perfect though as it wasn't impervious to rust from standing water as such proper drainage is required on top of that worlds can be weak points in the structure like this and as such they need to weather at the same rate as the steel if not then failure can occur the 447 foot long bridge opened on the 1st of June 1973 and just the next year it won an award from the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1974 the bridge had a speed limit of 35 miles an hour for vehicles and a maximum posted vehicle weight of 26 short terms as the years went on the weathered steel would prove to be not completely safe as corrosion beyond the surface level patina started to set in as early as 2005 corrosion and deterioration was seen in the bridge's legs causing concern with inspectors block drains were allowing debris to form over the vital steel sections in order for the weathered steel to work it needs to form the patina during dry periods this can be hindered by material sitting in drainage areas keeping the steel damp you see parts of the bridge were rusting so much so that in 2009 the city installed steel cables to laterally support the bridge on its legs to help the original and rusting cross bracing over the coming years the bridge would continue to be inspected and issues would continue to be noted each inspection came with recommendations but were not performed by the city in 2014 the cables were retightened and in 2018 one rusted cross beams was photographed by a local resident the issue was reported and the beam was removed leaving just the cables in place the bridge was again inspected in 2021 and yet again issues were highlighted but soon enough disaster would strike the Fern Hollow bridge the disaster it's the snowy morning of the 28th of January 2022 and a port authority bus approaching the Fern Hollow bridge overnight snowfall had covered the bridge's structure it's heading eastbound and as it drives across the bridge it's bouncing and shaking along the roadway the time is roughly 6.35 in the morning and the western part of the bridge is seen on the bus's rear facing camera to have fallen off of its abutment at around the same time the eastern ends expansion joint opened as also seen on another camera on the bus residents around the same time heard loud banging and whooshing sounds emitting from the area of the bridge shortly after the structure plunged 100 feet down into the ravine 5 vehicles were on the bridge at the time and in a case of terrible luck another vehicle was approaching westbound it flew off the abutment and landed on its roof amazingly no one was killed in the collapse and some were injured emergency calls came in and first responders were dispatched the first on the scene had to repel down the hillside to reach the stranded victims and a jogger who was thankfully running by managed to assist in rescuing people from their cars a ladder was placed next to the bus helping in evacuating its driver and a couple of passengers aboard if a collapsed bridge wasn't enough then a burst gas main had to be installed into the wound it had been damaged as it ran along the underside of the structure this would require the evacuation of nearby residents until the gas line was shut off everyone was rescued by 8.30 in the morning although the wreckage would still be searched for several hours more but amazingly no one else was found to be trapped a crane was employed to remove the stricken vehicles with the bus finally being lifted to safety aftermath so due to it being a road bridge the NTSB would be in charge of the investigation NTSB officials were dispatched and began pouring over the wreckage the same day they discovered via the bus's cameras that the failure started on the western end of the bridge but initial inspections of vital welding joints showed no fractures what they did find however was a very rusty and poorly maintained structure a preliminary report was posted in February 2022 but a full report has yet to be released however the NTSB did release some recommendations for other bridges of similar design and construction to be inspected as there was a high risk of a similar failure unfolding quickly the need for a new crossing led to the third bridge over Frink Park which opened in December 2022 now hopefully we'll find out more soon about the definitive cause of the disaster but we will have to wait and see but in the meantime maybe check out one of my other videos of a bridge self deconstructing itself this is a plainly difficult video all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light licence plainly difficult videos are produced by me, John in the currently warm but rainy corner of southern London UK I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel if you want to see other stuff that I make and I'd like to thank my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please it is roughly 7.50 in the morning on the 24th of March 1972 and a school bus is driving collecting students for NIAC High School this morning although clear and sunny is a little bit different for the driver he has had to do his regular pickups in reverse due to a road closure as his bus makes his way along the Gilchrist Road he is heading for a railway crossing 20 minutes later than normal and due to having to do his pickups in reverse the bus is a whole lot fuller almost overloaded in fact with some students having to stand in the aisle instead of sit on their seats the bus seemingly unaware of the crossing storms over the railway tracks and a laugh of a freight train welcome to Plainly Difficult my name is John and today exploring Gilchrist Road Disaster Clarkstown Clarkstown is well a town in New York State in Rockwell County it's made up of several hamlets and has a population today of just under 90,000 residents and it is a pretty standard residential area nothing really out of the ordinary very nice homes, plenty of places to shop and eat not too far from the hustle and bustle of New York City and on the whole looks like a nice place to live the town also not unusually has a railway line that snakes its way through it it's a single track affair and predominantly is used for freight as such most of its crossings are at grade on the same level as the road traffic the line was ran by Penn Central this of course opens it up to conflict points where cars and trains might interface or on a more technical term go smashy smash along this line in 1972 roughly 8 trains run in each direction each day with one usually traversing the line between 7 and 8am the trains can run along the line at speeds up to 40mph and it probably goes without saying that freight trains take a lot of distance to stop so yielding at the crossings is the responsibility of road use because of the low frequency of trains and relatively minor roads they had very little in the form of crossing protection and warning systems pretty much boiling down to cross-bucks which is this sign and stop markings to tell cars to stop look then proceed across the line this was the case for the crossing at Gilcrest Road the one lane in each direction only had a couple hundred of cars use the road each day even today the road looks quiet and almost rural going west vehicles are limited to 15mph but eastbound have no restrictions as such they can approach the crossing at 30mph as far as known by the 1970s the crossing was incident free with no reported police action or reports from train crews of course that doesn't make it immune to future disasters the morning of the 24th of March 1972 it is 7.30am and a school bus driver aged 37 is preparing his bus to depart the garage he is a fireman by day and moonlights as a bus driver some days of the week his bus is a GM derived chassis vehicle and has 66 seats he has been driving buses for around 6 years he usually departs around 7.30am and returns at 8.25am from there he speeds off to New York City to start his shift as a fireman which is around 9am shortly after departing he comes across a diversion this morning this required him to do his route and pickups in reverse of normal this would take longer not good when you've got another job to go off to by the time the bus reaches Gilcrest Road it's full with children some 48 in number and some are even having to stand in the aisle normally the bus approaches the railway crossing heading westbound but today he is going east 20 minutes later than normal this was around 7.54am and the bus was chugging along the Gilcrest Road roughly around the same time freight train WV1 was heading north the train consists of 3 GE UB 25B diesel electric locomotives and 83 wagons and a caboose it weighed around 4200t the lead loco was painted very dark green and the train was crewed with 5 an engineer, breakman and fireman in the lead loco and a conductor and flagman in the caboose the time is now 7.55am train WV1 is travelling at around 25mph and it is approaching the Gilcrest Road as per instructions and the whistle post the train blows on the horn its bell is also ringing and its headlight is on roughly 500ft south of the crossing the train emerges from a row of trees and the crew in the cab spot a yellow school bus travelling eastbound roughly 480ft west of the crossing the bus doesn't appear to be slowing down but continuing on an even pace children aboard the bus at this time see the train and start shouting at the driver at roughly 220ft from the crossing the school bus momentarily slows down but picks up speed yet again we can guess that the driver maybe thought he could beat the train as being stuck at the crossing would take too much time a few more seconds passed and the train was roughly 150ft from the crossing seeing the bus wasn't looking like it would stop the engineer slammed on the train's brakes the impact was inevitable by now as both vehicles reached the crossing the train slammed into the school bus's side this was slap bang in the middle and on its right hand side of the vehicle the rear section of the bus was torn away pushing it towards the western side of the crossing landing upside down the main section was pushed along the track a further 1100ft some students in the impact were thrown from the bus in the initial impact three students jimmy mcginnis age 17 richard mackalo age 18 and bobby meltiere age 14 were killed instantly 45 students were rushed to hospital with varying levels of injuries some would require amputation of limbs and life-saving treatment the bus driver was also rushed to hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries two more would die 14-year-old thomas gross and 16-year-old steven ward luckily no one aboard the train was injured likely due to the bus taking the brunt of the impact needed to say such an event would spark outrage rightfully aimed at the bus driver and the design of the level crossing it's also then unsurprising that the ntsb would be the ones to undertake the investigation the agency would examine the accident site the bus wreckage and the train as well as the drivers actions and sadly it would dig up some worrying driving habits of the bus driver aftermath the ntsb poured over the bus wreckage and the barely damaged train and they found that nothing was mechanically defective interviews with passengers the bus driver had previously driven gave a rather worrying picture his drive style was described as sometimes dangerous and he often took risks this was likely due to his need to get to his day job after driving a bus there had been a complaint even made by a parent about his driving the way the school buses were run in the area was via contractors and as such the driver wasn't hired directly by the school district instead by a bus company the company also selected the routes and it didn't consider the risk of including the crossing on the scheduled journey the driver had to make but the driver did have the relevant licence at the time a class 2 chauffeur ticket although the driver clearly was the cause of the disaster the crossing also played its part by not having barriers you see with just a stop marking crossbucks and the warning horns of the train they also opened the opportunity of someone trying to beat it before it gets to the crossing potentially if there was a physical barrier then the bus may have stopped but the NTSB found that the crossing was missing one of its crossbucks the advance warning sign was also too close the NTSB advised implementing better crossing controls as well as better training to school bus drivers they also noted that better school bus route selection should be undertaken to avoid as much using unprotected level crossings the driver of the school bus refused to speak to the NTSB during the investigation this was on the advice of his lawyer because he had a criminal case to answer to the driver would be taken to trial and would be found guilty of negligent homicide and he was given 5 years probation this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons actuation share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john and the currently very nice and sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my youtube and patreon members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to listen to me talk I have instagram, twitter and a second youtube channel so check them out if you want to see photographs and random odds and sods as well as behind the scenes photographs and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please recently a new story came on my tv and although I'd heard of it before I hadn't actually really taken too much notice please excuse my ignorance this time round the story picked my interest it's a worldwide scandal that has spanned decades and turned what was sold as a wonder treatment into a nightmare that has affected hundreds of thousands of people reducing the life expectancy of many making others seriously ill and in some cases would even kill its victims scarily those affected wouldn't necessarily be aware until it was too late all whilst government officials and pharmaceutical companies failed to even admit there was a problem our blood is a vital component in all of us to be dealt a hand in life in which there is a genetic issue with it is bad enough let alone then becoming infected with HIV or hepatitis by accident today we'll be looking at the infected blood scandal and welcome to Plainly Difficult part 1 blood clots this is blood well not really it's actually proper blood that I bought from ebay but for the purpose of this video it will stand in for the real stuff when the human body is cut blood vessels beneath the skin are damaged and we bleed this is all pretty basic biology assuming you are still alive your heart continues to pump and it pushes out of that blood the vessel linings trigger the release of clotting factors your blood which is now escaping your body start clumping together to form a barrier or a clot so this works by these things called platelets and they clump around the gap the platelets have thrombin receptors on their surfaces that grab serine thrombin molecules which then converts soluble fibrigen into fibrin at the wound site fibrin is vital as it creates long strands of insoluble protein which creates a mesh that holds everything together and stops you from bleeding to death to help link the fibrin bonds a pro-enzyme called factor 8 is needed this is what links the fibrin making that vital mesh above the platelet plug the complex world of a blood clot in stopping a bleed is pretty much reliant on factor 8 working or that the body is able to create the factor in the first place not having factor 8 can cause extensive bleeding from even minor cuts to easily bruising all the way to severe bleeding inside joints and a pretty nightmare scenario of bleeds on the brain low factor 8 production is called hemophilia A there is also B and C which is efficiencies in other clotting factors it's a genetically inherited condition with no cure thus treatment is an ongoing process that requires replacing the missing blood clotting factors with disease have been described throughout history as a cause of someone dying from a minor trauma but it's scientific study wouldn't really start until the 19th century for a long time treatment was ineffective or outright dangerous as during the early 1900s aspirin was recommended not good as we know that also prevents clots part 2 an effective treatment treatment in the 1950s and 1960s was in the form of frozen plasma the creamy yellow fluid part of blood after platelets and red cells are separated off plasma does contain the vital factor 8 this is all well and good but the concentration of the factor is so low that a large amount of blood is needed it was a really inefficient way to treat hemophilia which would require a lot of time in hospital and came with the risk of vascular overload if only there was a better way well, Dr. Judith Graham-Paul a researcher at Stanford University would publish a major breakthrough she discovered that the precipitate left from thawing plasma was rich in that vital factor 8 the breakthrough meant the greater concentration of factor 8 could be administered to patients this had massive benefits for hemophiliacs they could be administered with the concentrate in emergencies of heavy bleeding during elective surgery and even stealth administered factor products alleviating the need to attend lengthy hospital infusion sessions finally, sufferers had the chance at a more normal life as such life expectancy for severe cases dramatically increased in order to produce a batch of factor concentrates multiple plasma donations were mixed together donations that had come from different people up to 40,000 donors are stated by the UK hepatitis trust although they now had a better form of treatment it was still reliant on human donors of blood, which creates an issue you see, not a lot of people just out the kindness of their own heart donate blood I'm not saying it's out of cruelty but more out of inconvenience donating blood isn't the worst thing in the world but it's hardly on the list of many's most enjoyable experiences no one really likes to be jabbed with a needle even I'm guilty of this I donated blood some years back and never got round to doing it again and thus there was the supply issue part 3 untested blood in order to get that much needed blood sometimes incentives were offered usually in the form of financial this attracted some of the more shall we say monetarily depleted individuals this group of people were sometimes from high risk groups themselves such as drug users, prisoners, prostitutes clinically ill and even in some rare cases the freshly dead this may not have been an issue if diseases weren't transmissible via the concentrated factor products but it was and the main disease that was transmitted especially in the 1970s was hepatitis remember the up to 40,000 donors used in the creation of factor concentrate batches well if just one of the donors was infected with hepatitis then the virus had a very high chance of being transmissible to a product recipient in the early 1970s blood wasn't regularly tested for hepatitis it was known however that hemophiliacs were becoming infected with the virus right from the get go concentrate products were considered controversial the world health organization at the time recommended that countries source their blood products internally and not from other countries this was to reduce the risk of certain viruses being transmitted from donors across countries and even the US federal government in 1973 began advocating for a fully voluntarily produced blood donation supply but for the pharmaceutical companies there wasn't a ready supply and thus they continued paying for donations even allegedly targeting the high risk demographics due to the ease of recruitment this wasn't solely a united states issue over here in the UK we can only be self sufficient for around 50% of the nation's requirements as such a lot of blood was imported from you guessed it US pharmaceutical companies which in turn created greater demand for blood which made the same companies target even more at risk demographics some companies even source blood from outside the US borders developed countries this created an even more distorted picture of who was donating even though transmission of hepatitis was known concentrated factor blood products continued to be delivered to patients and by the early 1980s there was a new disease that hemophiliacs has started to contract part 4 an unknown virus it is the 5th of June 1981 and 5 cases have been reported as a rare lung infection present in previously healthy young men the 5 men also have a number of other rare infections hinting at some kind of impaired immunity condition the numbers of this strange condition would increase and in July 1981 the CDC would release a mobility and mortality weekly report another strange occurrence linked to the new disease was the heightened cases of Kaposi's sarcoma very rare skin cancer initially in the US these initial cases were really only seen in a few particular groups homosexual men and intravenous drug users but another group would start to show the same symptoms and that was hemophiliacs in July 1982 the CDC reported that 3 hemophiliacs had acquired the disease all have been treated with factor blood products at the time the mystery disease was called GRID or Gay-related Immune Deficiency but evidence was showing it wasn't a homosexual only issue as such the term AIDS acquired immune system deficiency syndrome was coined it's becoming increasingly clear that AIDS was being spread to hemophiliacs who in most cases weren't from the highest risk groups and that spread was coming from infected blood products in 2003 the pharmaceutical companies producing factor products were aware of the risk one such company was CUTTA it was the biological division of pharmaceutical company Bayer in January a CUTTA official acknowledged in a letter reported in the New York Times that there is strong evidence that AIDS can be passed on via plasma products the CDC warned about the risk of blood products and the risk of catching AIDS this was going to be bad for business CUTTA officially to its suppliers was trying to save sales saying AIDS has become the centre of an irrational response in many countries this is of particular concern to us because of unsubstantiated speculations that the syndrome may be transmitted by certain blood products there was clearly a significant risk to the public using contaminated blood with even one donor out of thousands being able to put the whole batch of blood products at risk and this denial wasn't just located to the US in November 1983 UK MP Kenneth Clark publicly stated there is no conclusive evidence that AIDS is transmitted by blood products this helped the continuation of plasma imports to the UK from the US but even at this time it was widely accepted as noted in the later Penrose Inquiry that all hemophilia clinicians at this stage clearly believed that commercial blood products could and were transmitting AIDS UK official statements on the disaster would move a little bit in January 1984 when Lord Glen Arthur said it remains the case that there is no conclusive evidence of the transmission of AIDS through blood products although the circumstantial evidence is strong but there was an alternative to untreated factor 8 concentrate and it was being developed in the early 1980s part 5 a safer alternative in 1981 the West German government licensed the method of heat treating plasma the company that brought the new product was Beringwerk AG and their process involved heating at 60 degrees the factor concentrates for up to 10 hours this process reduces the risk of contamination but came at a cost of 40-90% less which yield in factor concentration thus this increased the cost of production of factor products gradually pharmaceutical companies moved towards heat treated products although I should say that they were far from perfect and would be improved in the amount of time required for heating would increase but they were a step in the right direction the last US company to get approval for the new heat treated products was you guessed it cutter and this was in February 1984 they were in possession of a financial conundrum they had loads of old treated factor products to get rid of now they could have stopped selling the older treated products there was even a voluntary understanding between the factor concentrate producers and the FDA that the untreated products would be phased out of US circulation but cutter had another plan the new treated blood was beginning to sell well once it was brought to market but cutter still had the old products burning its pockets cutter decided to and as I said in an internal memo to review the international markets again to determine if more of this product can be sold and this was stated in a New York Times article basically a case of don't shite on your own doorstep cutter would later say the reason for this was due to a shortage of plasma for treated blood products production however as far as September 1984 cutter was still using some of their limited plasma stock to produce the cheaper untreated product there was still a market for the older products not all countries were quick to approve the new heat treated factor products however cutter hadn't actually applied for permission either most notably in Taiwan which approval wasn't sought until mid 1985 again from the same New York Times article cutter reportedly in an internal memo said the company had too much old product in stock so that it could sell off the older remaining stock cutter held off introducing the newer stuff in its non-western markets when Hong Kong hemophiliac started transmitting HIV cutter tried to ease concerns with its distributors by saying there was no severe hazard by mid 1985 most markets were refusing the untreated factor product the FDA couldn't ignore the dumpster fire any longer and ordered the pharmaceutical companies to stop selling untreated products worldwide cutter complied in July 1985 but the heating process used for factor products only reduced the chance of infection not stopping it completely the big game changer came in the form of blood testing for HIV which would go quite a long way to eliminating infection from the pool HIV testing began in 1985 but it wouldn't be fully employed in blood donation until the 1990s it started in the UK in 1986 by 1992 hepatitis C could also be effectively detected and an even greater advancement would come with recombinant blood products which is a form of synthesized factor product which virtually eliminates all disease transmissions part 6 living with the failings of others now to be affected with HIV in the 1980s was not only a potential death sentence it also had quite a significant social stigma many were ostracized it was a mix of fear of the unknown and although many hemophiliacs weren't part of the gay community they were also rounded up in the horrific homophobia of the time many lost their jobs due to the ignorance surrounding the transmission of HIV and AIDS for the longest part of the contaminated blood crisis victims weren't even informed that the products they had been given had the risk of transmitting an infection but it wasn't just HIV transmitting hepatitis C can result in severe liver damage mainly due to symptoms taking a while to appear delaying identification and treatment the numbers of people infected with HIV is pretty staggering with around 6 to 10,000 hemophiliacs transmitting HIV and AIDS in the USA and 1,200 in the UK and across the globe 10,000 more were exposed in the UK a shocking 76% of those who use commercial clotting factor products became infected with HIV as far as here in Blighty goes the blood scandal hasn't had any government or pharmaceutical companies properly admit liability but although in August 2022 compensation was paid out to victims but other countries in some cases were just as bad in France allegedly some politicians held back accepting screened blood products until a domestic company reached the market essentially allowing the untested blood products to get through Canada's Red Cross failed to track down infections in 1985 Italy was slow to inform and prevent the spread of HIV through contaminants and Japan was slow to ban untreated blood products however the scandals victims there did receive the better amounts of compensation at just over $400,000 each although it's no consolation for getting HIV and hepatitis compensation in the US was settled in 1997 at $600 million for more than 6,000 hemophiliacs infected in the United States in the early 1980s each person received an average estimation of $100,000 victims are still living with the ramifications of greed and ignorance from over 40 years ago but the tragic thing is those alive living with the horrific illnesses are the lucky ones so many thousands in fact have passed away it really is a largely unknown modern tragedy this is a plain default production that goes in the channel Creative Commons Actuation ShareLite License Playing difficult videos produced by me, John in the currently very warm corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week I have Instagram, Twitter or X and a second YouTube channel so check them out if you want to see more random things that I make and all that's left to say is next to music, play us out please this is the aftermath of poor quality work undertaken 54 years before, unknowingly residents of the Crestmore residential neighbourhood of San Bruno, California were sitting on top of a ticking time bomb just a few defective worlds were to blame but like with most stories on this channel a little bit of carelessness and negligence goes a long way today we'll be diving into the San Bruno Pipeline Explosion my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult gas, gas and gas natural gas is important no prizes for that statement be it for power stations or being ripped off at the home meter gas is a vital component for many personally I've only recently had to deal with gas as my previous place I used to live in was a bit of a rarity in the UK being fully electric this caused us some issues in selling as most people preferred gas central heating anyways UK house buying and selling aside natural gas requires a network of pipes gates and pumping stations in the case of our story today we're going to focus on the pipeline side one such network is in the San Francisco Peninsula area and is taking shape in the mid 1940s multiple gas lines run north from the Milpitas Terminal running a length of roughly 46 miles but for today we'll be looking at just one of those transmission lines named line 132 building work on 132 took place over stages beginning in 1944 the line had varying pipe diameters ranging from 20 to 36 inches the pipe work was built from different gauges of steel as well as employing different types of joints and welds two such welds were seam welds where two halves of a pipe are stuck together like this and girth welds which are around the circumference of the pipe and look like this the line was built upon in 1948 during the project around 10% of the welds were radiographed for defects this amount of checks was agreed between PG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric Company and the construction contractor in total 209 radiographs were performed on the pipeline of these 19 welds were rejected and 4 were reexamined and deemed ok in addition to the rejected welds they also had 14 more considered borderline some of the pipe work had been logged as damaged during construction needing repair once the line was down pressure testing could be undertaken this involved air pumped in at 100 PSIG and by using soapy water on the outside they looked for any bubbling like what you do with a bicycle tyre then air was pumped in at 100 PSIG and held in the system for 48 hours to look for more slower leaks after that the line was filled with gas and once again checked for any more leaks you see transmission gas lines operate under high pressure in order for the gas to move but even the smallest hole would cause a catastrophic failure all would be good until 1956 when a section of line 132's pipe in San Bruno needed to be relocated so in 1956 some houses were to be built around the Glenview Drive area the area is rather hilly and as such the pipeline was at a different elevation to the housing and this required 132 to be moved the work was to be done in house by PG&E the 1851 feet section was known internally as segment 180 the 30 inch pipe work for the relocation job wasn't brand new it was left overs from other projects dating back around 10 years or so as such to make the required lengths several pieces had to be welded together one such section was of 6 short segments known as pups they ranged from between 3.5 and 4.7 feet each and were seemingly made up of non APIX52 standard steel each piece was welded together and records of inspection and radiographs weren't kept hinting that maybe they weren't even done in the first place this section of segment 180 also wasn't recorded to be made up of the different lengths welded together I'll say remember this dodgy bit as it will be important later on the relocation project was finished and the pipe work was covered back over roll forward 40 or so years and line 132 is seeing some modernization pipe work got replaced to the north and south of segment 180 in 1995 so the pipe work is controlled by a system called SCADA or supervisory control and data acquisition the system is controlled by 3 controllers during the day and 2 at night SCADA has sensors all over the system allowing for real time pressure monitoring as well as control over fixed point valves on top of that they can liaise with workers on the ground all controllers monitor the system as such when alarm goes off one could acknowledge it and deal with the issue now without further ado it's time to jump forward to September 2010 a disaster it's the 9th of September 2010 and some upgrade work is being undertaken on the gas networks uninterruptible power supply part of the upgrade involved interrupting the SCADA system as different parts were powered down a side effect of the temporary loss of power was that some of the valves would fail safe and close as such some of the valves were manually locked open during the work technicians began to remove an unlabeled circuit breaker this resulted in a local control panel unexpectedly losing power troubleshooting found 2 power supplies giving out erratic voltages the erratic voltage led to the pressure transmitters reading an erroneous low pressure signal to regulating valve controllers causing them to fully open at 5.22pm due to the regulating valves being fully open and the erratic signals caused by the varying voltages the SCADA center alarm console displayed over 60 alarms within a few seconds needless to say this overloaded the controllers with quite a few issues to troubleshoot several lines from the Milpitas terminal were alarming at high pressures one of the Milpitas technicians called the SCADA center to see if they could see any pressure values the center reported 458psiG but this was incorrect it was actually 396psiG but the system wasn't working as it should the lines incoming to Milpitas were lowered to 370psiG but the pressure on line 132 was still way too high at 6.02pm one operator commented to a SCADA operator at the Brentwood facility we've got a major problem at Milpitas and we're over pressuring the whole peninsula a technician was asked to get a manual reading on the output at Milpitas it was reading at 396psiG soon enough the high pressure was going to find a release the pipeline revealed its weakest point and this was the 6 short pup sections of pipe along segment 180 this part was near Skyline Boulevard and San Bruno Avenue gas blew out at 6.11pm causing a massive explosion the high pressure gas continued to stream out fuelling a massive fire several houses nearby were completely enveloped in the blaze the explosion created a crater roughly 167 feet long 26 feet wide and 40 feet deep 35 houses were levelled and many more suffered serious damage by 6.15pm Martin Station 7 miles downstream from San Bruno Avenue showed the first low pressure alarm at 150psiG for Line 132 and just 10 minutes later the pressure was down to 50 911 calls flooded in and firefighters were dispatched to what looked like hell on earth the high winds had fanned and spread the flames smoke reached hundreds of feet into the sky 200 firefighters battled with the blaze the first PG&E official arrived on the scene at 41 minutes past 6pm followed by two others however none were qualified to operate mainline valves one of the SCADA operators remotely closed the valves downstream from the rupture by at 7.29pm which stopped the gas coming from the north a minute later technicians manually closed the valve upstream finally stopping the gas flow after 91 minutes however the fire continued to burn all the way until 11.40pm the next morning 8 people were killed in the explosion but it wouldn't take until the 29th of September before the figure was actually confirmed pretty much everyone from the Crestmore residential neighbourhood had to be evacuated although some were allowed to return a few days later the aftermath so in the following months after the explosion PG&E reduced its pipe pressures by 20% over its network and the company stock price also reduced by 8% knocking off a billion and a half dollars worth of value on top of that the company had to re-evaluate its pressures over its 1800 mile network scarily the company when asked to provide proof of pressure tests of their network resulted in large sections of the gas line being unaccounted for prompt modernisation projects on the system with new pipework automatic valves and proper inspection of all remaining lines needless to say this would cost a lot of money the company would also be sued which is a pretty standard affair and would settle with 499 victims a total of $565 million but what of the cause well friends of the channel the NTSB would be tasked with that little problem the investigation so you know how I said that PG&E couldn't provide evidence of testing for some of its network well surprise surprise segment 180 was one of those evidence-less parts upon investigation of the rupture location the 6 welded pipe sections were discovered on top of that it was also found that 3 of them had only been welded from the outside thus making the bond improper for high pressure applications and to make matters worse all of the pups had seen worlds further weakening the pipe not only that but it was also found that the pups metalwork varied in thickness and wasn't up to standard it was discovered during the investigation that residents around the disaster area had smelt natural gas in the days leading up to the explosion the pressure on the pipeline at the time of its failure was 386.4 psi G 11 higher than the company's maximum operating pressure but it was actually below the 400 psi G that the pipe should have been rated for but we know why it failed the unregulated and improper gauged and welded pups the NTSB released its report and put the probable cause as 1 inadequate quality assurance and control in 1956 during its line 132 relocation project which allowed the installation of a substandard and poorly welded pipe section with a visible seam weld floor that over time grew to a critical size causing the pipeline to rupture during a pressure increase stemming from poorly planned electrical work at the Milpitas terminal and number two inadequate pipeline integrity management program which failed to detect and repair or remove the defective pipe section they also added in their conclusion contributing to the severity of the accident were the lack of either automatic shutoff valves or remote control valves on the line and PG&E's flawed emergency response procedures and delay in isolating the rupture to stop the flow of gas so this disaster shows just how close we all are to a potential time bomb and especially in this case it was set almost half a century before this is a plain different production all videos on the channel are creative commons actuation share light licensed plain different videos produced by me John in the currently warm but windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my patrons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have Instagram, Twitter or X or whatever the hell you want to call it today and a second channel called made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please The world is just about to witness a tragic disaster Millions across the globe have tuned in as the first participant of the teacher in space program ascend into space Excitement is building as the challenge of space shuttle is just moments away from launch the time is 11.38 a.m and it's the 28th of January 1986 the shuttle is just about to lift off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center and although initially off to an apparently good start just 36 seconds later the craft is hit by a strong wind shear not long after a small plume of smoke is seen at 60 seconds post launch Capcom informs Challenger to go up throttle up just 5 seconds later the Challenger began disintegrating and quickly after a fireball consumed for shuttle stack the world had just witnessed the loss of one of NASA's cutting edge in human space travel today we're looking at the Challenger Disaster my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult So this event happened 3 years before I was born and my first true exposure to it was via one of my favourite films, Koyana Scotsy Ever since the first time I saw that film back in secondary school in 2001 I'd been fascinated by this disaster Something as apparently infallible as NASA easily became the victim of its own confidence that this story today would even lead to a new term normalised deviance which probably can be applied to a lot of subjects on this YouTube channel Right let's get cracking with a little bit of background NASA during the design phase of the Apollo missions sought out a more cost effective reusable heavy spacecraft for orbital missions The concept was decided upon in the early 1970s and this design was set in March 1972 The design had the orbiter which housed a crew and payload with two separate reusable solid booster rockets and an external fuel tank During the mid 1970s the first orbiter named Enterprise was constructed She couldn't actually go into space but acted more as a testbed for the systems needed for the project Eventually over the coming decades six orbiters will be built but for today's video we will focus on just shuttle Challenger She was manufactured by Rockwell International originally being attended as a structural test article to be completed in 1978 After which she was sent to Lockheed for 11 months of vibration tests designed to simulate entire shuttle flights from launch to landing We will pause with the Challenger story just briefly to talk about how the orbiter actually gets into space So to get into orbit engines are first to fire up and a few seconds later the solid booster rockets also start This is enough to get the spacecraft off the launch pad After lift off the stack goes inverted The solid rocket boosters and the shuttle with its external tank separate This is roughly 2 minutes after flight has begun The solid booster rockets deploy their parachutes land in the sea and they are recovered and refurbished for re-use later on So the orbiter and the external tank continue to ascend with the orbiter's main engine still firing The external tank is separated from the orbiter The external tank, after being jettisoned disintegrates in the Earth's atmosphere So that was a very basic description of how the orbiter gets to orbit For more information I'd recommend watching maybe a curious droid video Apparently people think we're related but we're not So after its mission the orbiter was designed to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and upon re-entry glide to Earth and land much like a conventional aircraft Well wasn't that little side tangent exciting Well let's get back to the history of the Challenger It was decided that Challenger should have a new lease of life after her experiments and was to be converted into a full blown orbiter She had her refit for space flight beginning in 1979 Many of her parts were sent back to her manufacturers for reworking She also even had a new fully functional crew module added The refit took around 3 years with Challenger rolling off the production line in July 1982 Her first flight was as STS-6 lifting off on the 4th of April 1983 She was taken to space over her operating life to be the first African American first woman first Dutch person and be the first night launch and landing She was used more often than Columbia between 1983 and 1986 making her the go-to orbiter amassing 10 flights and over 62 days in orbit But we'll have to talk about an issue with the shuttle program and it was around those solid booster rockets the SRB were vital to launch as they provided the most amount of thrust at the beginning They were built by Morton Firecool Each one consisted of multiple sections Each section was constructed in Utah separately to be put together at the Kennedy Space Center ready for use for blasting an orbiter into the sky Of course this requires a joint between the sections and this came in the form of a Tang and Cleavish joint They were free in total for each SRB and they have several vital especially important for this video components so the Tang and Cleavish joint works like hang on with me this is relevant to the disaster like this with the Tang being the upper segment connecting the two sections by fitting into the lower Cleavish section There is a retaining pin clip and band placed to hold the two sections together The joint is also externally wrapped with fiberglass reinforcement tape To create the seal between the sections two rubber O-ring seals are employed They run the entire circumference of the SRB and they are bonded to the case using an adhesive The seal design was originally considered to be redundant as if the primary first O-ring failed then the secondary one could also be relied upon as such the seal was rated as critical but a redundant setup The gaps between the components were then sealed by zinc putty The O-ring seals are vital in containing the hot gases produced from the SRB's motors during burning During operation they would be compressed sealing the surface thus stopping any unwanted flames out of the side of the boosters which you know could be a little bit catastrophic but the system design was flawed Issues were discovered in the early 1970s This was that the O-ring wouldn't always compress and would instead extrude I thought this was acceptable but the issues didn't end there In 1977 a test discovered that the tang and clevis joint could bend away from each other This weakened the compression on the O-ring and thus reduced its seal effectiveness The outer spec situation then allowed combustion gases to erode and damage the seal causing more gases to escape The issue was further exacerbated when in lower temperatures as like with everything different materials expand and contract at different rates This greatly concerned NASA engineers and they requested a redesign of the joint to include a shim to close the gap in 1978 One year later and not having received a response to their 1978 memo a second one was sent continuing to object to fire called solid rocket motor joint seal design A test in 1980 showed yet again in a tang clevis relative movement was greater than originally predicted in May 1980 the verification certification committee recommended that NASA conduct full scale tests to verify the field joint integrity including firing motors at a mean bulk propellant temperature range of between 40 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit NASA applied NASA specialists have reviewed the field joint design with larger O-rings and thicker shims and found the safety factors to be adequate for the current design Reanalysis of the joint with larger O-rings and thicker shims is being accomplished as part of the lightweight case program The joint has been sufficiently verified with the testing accomplished to date The first shuttle mission took place on the 12th of April 1981 all went well but just on the second mission STS-2 O-ring erosion was noticed but was found to be an infrequent problem over the coming years erosion was found in March and April 1983 and in February and August of 1984 the latter of which had discovered soot had blown past the primary O-ring Even though after 1982 the O-rings designation of redundant was removed and with evidence of blow by shuttle launches still continued NASA would push the design beyond its temperature limits when in January 1985 the launch of STS-51C being the coldest space shuttle launch to date the air temperature was 62 degrees fahrenheit or 17 degrees celsius and it was estimated that the O-ring temperature was 53 degrees fahrenheit or 12 degrees celsius surprise surprise both SRBs experienced O-ring erosion and blow by Morton Fire Coal determined that the low temperature reduced the elasticity of the O-rings which in turn resulted in the gap not being fully filled which would then in turn lead to blow by of soot and gases nearly all of the 1985 launches resulted in O-ring deterioration this prompted Morton Fire Coal to redesign the case however it was going to take some time and as such the original design was to be used but the replacement was available this would cover the missions that would eventually run into the start of 1986 STS-51L so I'm not going to go into too much detail about the background of this mission however it was quite important in terms of boosting the public's opinion of the shuttle program the orbiter, Challenger was mated to her solid rocket boosters and external tank at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the 17th of December 1985 the mission had been pushed back to January 22nd 1986 after a number of cancellations beginning in July 1985 then due to payload issues in November 1985 as such NASA really wanted to get Challenger into space she was built and ready to go and her crew were trained and eager to get on with it one of the crew of STS-51B was the first participant in the program again the mission found itself delayed in January 1986 and was pushed back to the 28th however there was an issue the air temperature was forecast to drop to 18 degrees fahrenheit minus 8 degrees celsius during the night before the launch date this would mark a significant drop in lowest temperature the shuttle would ever be launched in as such this actually caused some concern with Morton Firecalls engineering team blow by of the vital o-rings had occurred in warmer temperatures after all a conference call was set up between NASA and Morton Firecalls engineers in the call Morton Firecalls employees Robert Lund the vice president of engineering and Joe Kilmenster the vice president of the space booster programs advocated against launching until the temperature was above 50 degrees fahrenheit or 12 degrees celsius aka the lowest the shuttle had previously been launched in but something about the mood had changed in communications between the Marshall Space Center and Morton Firecalls usually it would be a case that Morton Firecalls would have to prove that the SRBs were safe to fly understandable in an environment of if in any doubt don't risk it however the Marshall Space Center had moved its position of to prove that the shuttle can't fly almost as if that was no longer acceptable Robert Lund would later say we had to prove to them that we weren't ready so we got ourselves in the thought process that we were trying to find some way to prove to them it wouldn't work and we were unable to do that we couldn't prove absolutely that the motor wouldn't work it would also continue to say later on well that is the kind of mode we got ourselves into that evening it seems like we have always been in the mood in the opposite mode I should have detected that but I did not but the roles had kind of switched as such after a 30 minute break in the conference call to confer amongst Morton Firecalls staff management came to the conclusion that flying in low temperatures should in theory cause no more issues than when the shuttle flew at a temperature of 53 degrees Fahrenheit when the conference call resumed fire call came back saying that there was substantial margin in the event of failure and gave their final approval for flight on the 28th of January measurements overnight recorded lows on the left SRB of 25 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 4 degrees Celsius and the right SRB at 8 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 13 degrees Celsius ice had formed all over the fixed service structure this caused concern with the orbiter's manufacturer Rockwell International they were concerned that ice could damage the orbiter's thermal installation however engineers at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centres advised that there was no issues with the ice however an hour delay was ordered to allow the temperature to warm up a little bit the launch was set for just after half 11 in the morning of the 28th of January at 20 minutes before liftoff ice was seen to be melting and clearance for flight was given for 1138am the air temperature now was around 36 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius time for liftoff 6 seconds before 1138am challenges 3 main engines ignited at T-minus 0 seconds the 2 solid rocket boosters ignited and challenges started to move almost immediately a grey puff of smoke was observed around the right booster's joint near the attachment strut this was hinted at gas blow by due to the improper sealing of the o-rings just 2 seconds later however the smoke stopped this was due to some of the solid fuel falling within the booster and temporarily sealing the gap at 36 seconds post liftoff challenger experienced a severe wind shear to counteract this the shuttle attempted to correct its trajectory the change in yaw and pitch dislodged the solid fuel that had been acting as a plug and this was at an altitude of 3000 meters or 9800 feet at around T 58 seconds another plume of smoke appeared around the same spots as before on the right SRB strut 2 seconds later the plume begins to touch the external tank at 64 seconds a hole could be seen being burned into the tank this caused a leak of liquid hydrogen fuel challenges computer tried to counter the now lost in thrust from the right SRB and the crew aboard the orbiter were still unaware of the unfolding disaster and at 68 seconds the instruction of throttle up was given at around 72 seconds the crew fell to lateral load pilot Michael J. Smith was recorded as saying uh oh the pressure was falling in the external tank and thus was affecting the main engine's performance at 73 seconds the aft dome of the external tank failed and at around the same point the right SRB rotated away from the strut moments later the whole vehicle began to break up the altitude of Challenger was around now at 47,900 feet the external tank was now fully disintegrating Challenger was pushed against the airflow and was hit by aerodynamic forces resulting in a load factor of up to 20g the orbiter separated from the external tank and continued to fly for another 30 or so seconds the shuttle stack had been completely separated in sections of the now disintegrated orbiter flying about in different directions hurling back towards Earth the crew compartment remained relatively intact the force at separation was estimated to be between 12 and 20g but quickly dropped down to 4g and then free fall it could then be seen falling through the sky the crew cabin fell for approximately 2 minutes and 45 seconds after its separation eventually slamming into the Atlantic Ocean at 89 seconds post launch the video Challenger was seen in mission control and now the full weight of the disaster began to sink in NASA Public Affairs Officer Steve Nesbit would announce the explosion when just a few moments before he had been reading out stats from the flight data he would say we have a report of the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded the flight director confirms that we are looking at checking with recovery forces to see what can be done at this point recovery operations were dispatched immediately with the ship's MV Freedom Star and MV Liberty Star heading towards the crash site however due to falling debris recovery couldn't begin until 1237 understandably hopes were held for any survivors but with an estimated impact force of the crew compartment with the sea being 200g it was very unlikely by 7pm some recovered debris from the orbiter and external tank was found with surface operations concluding on the 7th of February subsurface operations ending the next day however submarines and submersibles would scour the seabed around the impact area for SRB and crew compartment debris for months to come pieces of Challenger would continue to wash up even as late as 2022 when a pretty large piece of around 20 feet long was discovered off the coast of Florida the crew compartment would be found on the 7th of March 1986 the remains of the crew were removed on the 4th of April however one of the bodies floated away this was Gregory Jarvis his remains were recovered just over a week later but what the public really needed to know now was how could such a tragedy happen to NASA to NASA of all organizations finding the cause now I'll say straight away as this video outline has hinted at that we know what the cause was it was the poor decision to launch in cold weather but it reduced the effectiveness of the o-ring seal but in January 1986 that wasn't exactly obvious after all blow by had occurred several times before and the orbiter had completed many successful missions the shuttle had over 2.5 million parts and it was the world's most complex flying machine the investigation would be no small task the presidential commission on the space shuttle challenger accident was set up in February 1986 and it was tasked with sifting through thousands of documents photographs and statements although the failing o-rings was a big contender they did have to look at every potential avenue for disaster the board included chairman William P. Rogers vice chairman Neil Armstrong Aikerson Eugene Covert Richard Feynman Robert Holtz Donald Kutcher Sally Ride Robert Rummel Joseph Sutter Arthur Walker Abbot Whelan and Chuck Yeager the investigation would gain the name the Rogers commission after its chairman the committee was split into four panels the accident analysis panel development and production panel pre-launch activities panel and the mission planning and operations panel each panel will contribute to over 160 total interviews over 35 sessions and will involve over 6,000 employees from NASA and its main contractors over a period of four months they were zero in violate extensive footage of the launch on the cause of the plume of hot gases that appeared on the right SRB next to the strut the evidence was pretty damning of an instance of blow-by on the 11th of February during a televised hearing the board member Richard Feynman produced a sample of SRB O-ring and placed it in a cold glass of water Richard Feynman I took the stuff that I got out of your seal and I put it in ice water and I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it it maintains it doesn't stretch back it stays the same dimension in other words for a few seconds at least and more seconds there's no resilience in this particular material when it's at a temperature of 32 degrees this memorable moment helps redefine the public's mind of the poor oversight that NASA had demonstrated Feynman had been at odds with other members of the commission including his chair Rogers due to his harsher approach to investigating the evidence he was much more critical of NASA management and their apparent lack of understanding of the risks that they had taken the O-rings but other parts of the shuttle program NASA's standards had seemingly dropped in order to keep up the busy schedule of orbit emissions which fostered a management culture of quantity over safety where blatant red flags were ignored we can see this in Robert Lund's statements after the disaster I mentioned earlier that he felt the culture had changed from prove safe to prove it won't be safe Feynman's criticisms and investigation would appear in the report's appendix F these conclusions were pretty harsh Feynman would say if a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained engineering often can't be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle in these situations in these situations subtly and often with apparently logical arguments the criteria are altered so that flights may still be certified in time and therefore fly in a relatively unsafe condition with a chance of failure of the order of a percent it was a clear case as of what sociologist Diane Vaughan would coin of normalised deviance which is the normalisation of clearly unsafe practices exactly what happened with the first case of O-rings blow by just because it didn't cause a disaster doesn't mean it was safe but NASA a molten fire call carried on regardless the disaster would result in the redesign of the SRB where the joints tang would have a reduced risk of rotation NASA also re-evaluated other parts of the shuttle project which wouldn't have saved the Challenger's crew but would overall improve safety of future crews in a multitude of different events and now for the slightly grim part of when did the crew perish although the exact moment isn't known is likely some survived post-separation as some switches have been operated that couldn't have been done so by the impact the crew were failed that day by a culture of safety ignorance of course space travel can't be 100% safe but Challenger really shouldn't have flown that day Feynman in his conclusion to appendix F would rather eloquently say I think it best describes the situation for a successful technology reality must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled pretty poetic if you ask me I definitely recommend reading the full Feynman appendix F section as he was obviously a genius so that's it my video on the Challenger disaster although it is a little bit longer than my usual videos I still feel as if I've barely even scratched the surface I highly recommend reading the Challenger launch decision book by Diane Vaughan I'll put an Amazon affiliate link in the description and if you decide to buy it it helps out the channel with a little kickback so if you want me to cover the Columbia disaster let me know in the comments but I do also fear that it will be quite a larger video please feel free to comment, like and subscribe hit the bell and all that jazz I'm really trying to push for a million subscribers because why the hell not and all I have to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please this Sunday day in August and I'm on the south bank of the River Thames in London my daughter wanted to see the Globe Theatre and my YouTuber brain kicked in it's given me an opportunity to look at the disaster right next to where I'm standing that involved a party boat and a dredger colliding in the night the sunny bright south bank of today was witnessed 34 years ago to the untimely deaths of 49 people aftermath would be controversial with coroners cutting off the hands of victims for later identification all without the knowledge of the families and others were not even allowed to view the remains of their loved ones today I'm looking at the 1989 Marchanes disaster now our story involves two boats one with a very interesting history pre-disaster and the other one a little bit more crashy I'll start with the tragedy's namesake Marchanes she was built in 1923 by the company Salter Brothers of Oxford the firm had a long history of constructing pleasure vessels going back to the 1850s the boat was built for Joseph Mears who as a side note had a pretty interesting life he was one of the founders of Chelsea Football Club he was also for a while the mayor of Richmond he also was the owner of a group of cinemas and the owner of Joseph Mears launches a motor's limited Marchanes was designed to live on the Thames as a pleasure boat boasting a size of 85.5 feet long and 14.5 feet wide at the beam and measured 46.19 gross tons in 1935 her owner Joseph Mears passed away but the vessel continued to work the Thames all the way up until the outbreak of the big unfriendliness also known as the Second World War she was requisitioned during this time by the Thames Hospital Emergency Service where in 1940 she would find herself part of the Little Ships flotilla that participated in the Dunkirk evacuation post war she was sold to the successor company the Thames launches limited company she worked the Thames for another 33 years until another sale in 1978 to Tidal Cruises Limited again for pleasure work along the river Thames she was registered to Lamb of Peer Albert embankment London SE1 and her first few years at her new owners would involve an extensive overhaul this increased her covered accommodation by providing an upper and lower saloon the upper section rose higher than the wheelhouse and inhibited vision to the after the vessel not ideal but acceptable she was also noted to steer well so after her rebuilding in 1981 she set sail on the brown murky waters of the Thames allowing parties and sightseers to gawk at the bridges and the river banks of London the other boat in our story is an aggregate dredger called the Bow Bell she was made in 1964 and much like the Martian S she was designed for use on the river Thames as such her design allowed her to pass under the river's bridges by having a lower than usual superstructure this could be known to reduce visibility when trimmed at the stern to reduce visibility further still on her starboard side the Bow Bell had her dredging equipment after a number of changes of owners mergers and company purchases by the late 1980s the Bow Bell was owned by east coast aggregates but managed by south coast shipping the Bow Bell wasn't shy of a bump or two and the Bow Bell was owned street bridge in 1982 both vessels worked the Thames both during the day and night and due to the reduced visibility of both required effective situational awareness when traversing the river and as such we now move on to the fateful night of the 20th of August 1989 the disaster it's just after midnight on the 20th of August 1989 and two boats are getting ready to travel along the Thames around 130 people she is moored here at the embankment pier and has been hired for the princely sum of 695 pounds for 5 hours between 1am and 6am she was set to depart her pier at 1am but was delayed until 125 her plan was to travel down eastwards towards Tower Bridge then along to Greenwich then back to embankment pier for an arrival time of 5.45 in the morning Bell was departing her pier 9 elms around here on the map and this was at 1.12 in the morning she was travelling eastbound faster than the Martian S at 5.5 knots to the pleasure boat 3.2 but because of the distance between the two the Martian S was further down the river eastbound she was carrying aggregate and was trimmed down at the stern this pushed her bow up hindering forward visibility the Martian S travelled under Blackfriars Bridge overtaking her sister ship Hurlingham and steered for the central arch of Southern Bridge a little after the bow bell overtook the Hurlingham just after it passed under Blackfriars Bridge she was now just 160 feet from the Martian S by now both vessels were approaching Cannon Street Railway Bridge none aboard the bow bell noticed the Martian S and at 1.46am the two boats made contact the bow bell's bow hit 20 feet away from the Martian S's stern the impact pivoted the smaller vessel around the bow bell tilting it at an angle the second resulting impact along the side of the Martian S ripped off part of her superstructure water flooded into the lower deck of the Martian S plunging the vessel under water she had sunk within 30 seconds and in doing so drowned the Martian S's captain the nearby Hurlingham witnessed the collision pulled alongside the collision point and started dropping flotation devices and helping survivors the crew radioed the incident via the VHF radio to the Thames division of the Metropolitan Police Service saying this message was misunderstood as Battersea bow bell hit one of the peers of the Cannon Street bridge after the collision and her skipper radioed in to correct the Battersea misunderstanding I've got to get underway now and proceed out through the bridges I believe I have struck a pleasure craft it has sunk I'm getting clear of the bridges now I was distracted by flashing lights from another pleasure craft my vessel was proceeding outboard just approaching Cannon Street bridge and well I just lost steerage I don't know after that I really can't say anything else Sir, over she then continued on and dropped anchor at Gallion's Reach further eastbound but didn't stay to assist or drop any flotation devices some 28 survivors made it aboard the Hurlingham and police launches rescued around half of the total survivors from the river some even managed to swim themselves to the river banks half an hour after the collision a major incident was declared on the River Thames at the same time the police's body recovery team was sent to the collision scene with the first body being removed recovered at 6.50am the police station at Wapping acted as a holding point before being sent to a mortuary in Westminster by the afternoon of the 20th the Marchioness wreckage was located and quickly lifted the wreckage was then moored up on the North Bank at the Thames bodies would keep on showing up for several days to not cause distress from viewing bloated bodies Paul Knappmann, the coroner for the city of Westminster decided to not allow identification via family instead opting for fingerprint identification however in some instances it was decided that the hands of the victims needed to be removed in total 25 pairs of hands were removed no records were kept of the removal however most of these victims would actually be identified by other means the rather gruesome affair didn't really seem to follow any established guidelines the Marchioness was removed from her mooring four days after the collision and was towed down to Greenwich for scrapping in total 49 people had died in the disaster but how did the disaster happen in such a well known and well traversed section of water well as always this would call for an investigation the investigation the maritime investigation branch launched an investigation entity collision they released an interim report towards the end of August with recommendations for vessels over 130 feet long to have a forward look out in contact with the bridge by radio the MAIB also did a reenactment of the events over the night of the 16th to 17th of September the boat bell was used with another boat acting as a stand-in for the Marchioness however no second pleasure boat cruiser was used and the stand-in didn't have any disco lights or music thus making the reenactment a little bit inaccurate the inquest was odd as there was a constant threat of a looming criminal case against the bowbell skipper 31 years old Douglas Henderson as such a full-blown inquest couldn't really commence as it could prejudice a criminal case because of this it turned into an event of many individual investigations for each of the victims on the 26th of April 1990 the director of public prosecutions finally stepped in to stop the inquest the case against the captain opened on the 4th of April 1991 at the Old Bailey he was accused of not having appropriate look out so bought the bowbell he ran to the 14th of April but the jury failed to reach a decision a second trial was held later on in the year and also resulted in a hung jury a public inquest took place between October and November in 2000 when published the next year it concluded the basic cause of the collision is clear it was a poor look out on both vessels neither vessel saw the other in time to take action to avoid the collision the captain during the inquest was criticized for his heavy drinking before undertaking the journey and his actions after the collision he did not broadcast a mayday call and did fail to deploy either the life boys or life raft this was in contravention of section 422 of the merchant shipping act of 1894 the compensation side of things for the victims families was pretty rubbish ranging from £3,000 to £190,000 per person but that's the UK for you compensation is usually only issued in the case of significant financial strain on the victims families and because most of the people involved were young and thus didn't have very well established careers or salaries many of the victims families received pretty much nothing in terms of compensation but what of the bow bell well she too would find a life under the water when in March 1996 she broke in two and sank off Ponte de Sol, Madeira a crew taken with her and that's the story of the March and Esther disaster probably most of the people here don't even realise a tragedy happened time has moved on but sadly for those lost in 1989 they're frozen in time this is a plainly difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commas actually we should share like licence plainly difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently very warm corner in southern London UK I have Instagram and a second channel so check them out if you want to see all sorts of random odds and sods I also have Patreon and YouTube members so thank you very much for your financial support and for the rest of you who tune in every week to watch me talk and listen to my videos and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please ok so why am I crawling around under a 12 year old two reasons one my mrs won't let me crawl around under her car and I'm trying to locate my petrol tank for the purposes of this week's scandal video there it is my car has a hybrid so around here is the battery pack and that takes up some space as such my car does have a rather small petrol tank design around this part of the car are pretty vital in the case of a rear end collision because you don't want an explosion like one infamous model of the 1970s whilst I'm here just look at how unrusty this exhaust is amazing considering it's lived most of it's life ungaraged in the salt world known as the UK my Bums Astra is a similar age and is on it's third back box ok well enough of me talking about irrelevant stuff about my car today's video will be about the Ford Pinto and it's association with notoriety of having an exploding fuel tank this scandal would work it's way into popular culture even becoming the but of many a joke but the story probably isn't as clear as you may think part one the little carefree car so our story begins during a period in the US car market of what you would call a shakeup small sized import cars had been making inroads throughout the 1960s they offered cheap economical motoring with the likes of Toyota and it's Corolla Datsun with it's 510 and the big one the VW Beetle other manufacturers would flood in later on in the beginning of the 1970s with Honda and it's in my eyes gorgeous first generation Civic domestic manufacturers started augmenting their land yacht fleets with smaller cheaper to run models amongst the US car makers that attempted to fight the influx of foreign cars was Ford their plan was to draw upon it's worldwide operations and release a European model in the US market this birthed the Ford Cortina a captive import of the same named UK vehicle by the late 1960s Ford set out to build from scratch a new subcompact vehicle for the US market this was an industry ride trend with AMC and Chevrolet also penning new subcompact designs around the same time planning began on Ford's new offering in 1967 of which design was approved by Ford's Board of Directors in January 1969 Named the Pinto the car would be targeted at a sub $2,000 price point which in today's money is about a mid-slash top range Dacia Sandero stepway the car as requested by Ford's Vice President at the time Lee Iacocca would have a weight below a tonne and on top of that would have to come to market pretty quickly as a side note Iacocca would become president of Ford in 1970 as such the development cycle was rather short at the time for 25 months the car's quick development was achieved by setting the design and sticking to it early on thus allowing bodywork machining tools to be going into production whilst the interior was still in its planning stages the car's structural integrity was from its unibody design the car would come over its life in a number of different body styles including a two door saloon, a two door hatchback and a two door station wagon although when initially entering the market on the 11th of September 1970 it was only offered as the two door saloon it was marketed as the little carefree car I got a little bit ahead of myself we need to look at the car's fuel system part two, somewhere to put a tank so the late 1960s would be a strange time to develop a new car in the USA a new set of regulations would come out on the 1st of March 1967 and this was called the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards they would cover a variety of design requirements including front-end crash worthiness a couple of years later in 1969 proposed testing would next focus on rear-end collisions all good so far eh? well yes and no yes for the public but no for the manufacturers especially when you're in the middle of a car's development cycle this was the case for the Pinto as a rear-end collision test would require changes to the car's design the proposed test involved a 20 mile an hour moving barrier collision this thawed thought they could actually achieve the car's petrol tank was placed in the generally industry standard behind the bumper and in front of the rear axle that rear bumper wasn't really designed to stop any significant impact and to add insult to injury the rear of the car was also meant to crumple in a collision this essentially put the tank between the solid front-end of another car and the solid axle of the Pinto in the case of a rear-end collision there was also four bolts on the differential case on the rear axle which were very likely to puncture the tank so imagine this coke can is the tank then imagine the floor is the axle this piece of paper is the Pinto's rear bumper and my size 11 boot is the car impacting from the rear so hopefully my very scientifically accurate demonstration shows the issues the tank had but weight varies a little bit more the internal four crash tests discovered a few more issues apart from the obvious industry standard tank placement the fuel tank ruptured in all tests above 25 miles an hour emptying the tank of fuel in some cases as little as a minute they also found that the fuel filler pipe would detach from the thin metal fuel tank helping create that quick spillage time engineers at Ford set about trying to rectify the issue there was a few options to pursue how about moving the tank to above the axle not a bad idea that was to set up in the Capri after all but sadly this relatively easy redesign wouldn't work on the hatchback and station wagon and due to the tooling already being made a serious change in the car's body shell would not go down well for Ford management's career trajectory Iacocca had set out a strict turnaround time for the Pinto as well as its cost and weight limits there was a couple of other options open to the engineers there was an internal fuel tank bladder it wasn't to be again as it would add cost then there was the idea to install extra reinforcement to protect the filler pipe but again weight and cost restraints shot that one down finally there was also a small $1 piece of plastic that could be placed between the tank and the differential and this could stop the bolts puncturing the tank great but to no surprise to anyone it wasn't implemented again due to weight and cost concerns the cost to improve the car in a rear crash was estimated to be around $11 but why spend out if you don't have to especially when the car's production line was already being set up Part 3 Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling so we are back to 1970 and the Pinto is released for the 1971 lineup of Ford vehicles their import busting car has a rather attractive entry price of $1850 undercutting one of Ford's domestic rivals the Chevrolet Vega the car's first year sold over $350,000 after the lineup expanded to include the hatch a year later sales jumped to $480,000 units in 1972 the lineup welcomed Ford's first Ford or station wagon in a decade 1974 would be the car's best year selling with over $500,000 rolling off of Ford four courts one of the cars many advertising taglines was the Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling well I'm sure the marketing department wouldn't realise how fitting a line that would be sadly with so many Pintos on the road some would crash and some of these would be from rear end collisions and some of these some would be causing a fire and thus some people would die quickly these incidents would garner legal cases as it was noticed that the Pintos seemed to be a little bit flamey when hit from the rear the NHTSA would also take notice and start considering launching an investigation but out of all the crashes one in May 1972 would result in the car's dodgy design being laid bare for the public to see in a landmark lawsuit Lily Gray is driving her Ford Pinto she has a 13 year old passenger Richard Grimshaw as the car begins to merge on a Californian highway the relatively new car's transmission conks out soon enough the car grinds to a halt the sudden stop resulted in the Gray's Pinto being rear-ended at a speed at 30 miles an hour the petrol tank became ruptured and began leaking fuel onto the floor and vapours into the cabin the car burst into flames Gray would die in hospital a few hours later of her burns but Grimshaw would survive but it would require many years of surgeries this would eventually lead to two court cases in 1977 but we'll have to pause that and come back to that in a little bit so by 1974 the Centre for Auto Safety was very much aware of the issue with the Pinto as well as other subcompact cars going up in flames when hit from behind the consumer advocacy non-profit group petitioned the NHTSA to investigate and order a recall for the Pinto but they thought that no recall was required likely due to industry pressure around the same time Ford was aware of the Pinto's ever-growing explosive reputation and they internally developed a cost-to-benefit analysis in 1973 although it was not meant for eyes outside of the industry it would eventually be outed for the public to see it would balance off the cost of modifying Pinto's to not explode upon rear impact against the cost to society of a victim being burned alive long story short this memo analysis showed that it would be cheaper to not modify Ford's fleet but it's not as black and white as it seems the analysis found that fuel system modifications to reduce fire risks in rollover events to be $11 per car across 12.5 million cars and light trucks across all manufacturers this would be a total of 137 million the design changes could save up to 180 burn deaths and 180 serious injuries per year bringing a benefit to society of 49.5 million this resulted in an $87.5 million saving to not do anything but remember this was across all manufacturers and society as a whole it would save Ford the incentive to not bother to change anything part 4 Pinto Madness so remember when I said that I'll come back to that 1972 crash of Lily Gray's Pinto well a lawsuit was brewing both from the Gray's family and the Grimshaw family that was the 13 year old passenger well by 1976 Richard Grimshaw had gone through 4 years of horrific pain due to his total body burns two cases would be brought against Ford with the main being Grimshaw vs Ford during preparation for the court case that cost of benefit analysis memo came back to light it had actually been sent to the Department of Transport a few years earlier when Ford was fighting increased rear crash protection as a form of proof that fiery death wasn't a big issue so with all this information coming to the public realm Mother Jones Magazine received the infamous cost of benefit memo Mark Dowey set about pinning his investigative article named Pinto Madness the article would go on to shock the public as it presented Ford as cold and calculating with the lives of its customers I mean it wasn't wrong but the way the memo was presented in the article was a little bit inflammatory by misconstruing the numbers to mean Ford only vehicles and the NHTSA provided numbers for cost to society as a 4 generated number it also didn't go too deep into the fact that fuel tank location although Ford was used rather a lot across the board in US subcompact car manufacturing however although Ford the Mother Jones article exposed Ford for knowingly selling a faulty product by the time the magazine had been published Ford was actually making adjustments to its Pinto's design albeit seven years a bit too late a day after the Mother Jones article was released the author held a press conference around the same time the Centre for Autosafety resubmitted their petition to the NHTSA with the public's interest focused on the NHTSA a new investigation was embarked upon on 11th August 1977 this time around the investigation would be a lot more critical of Ford and by June the next year a voluntary recall was negotiated and Ford called back their vehicles just a few days before the NHTSA was planning to order a compulsory recall this resulted in 1.5 million Pinto's and Mercury Bobcats being recalled for remedial work but all whilst this was undergoing Ford was still answering multiple lawsuits most notably that Grimshaw case well it would be initially decided in February 1978 for a record setting $125 million in punitive damages and $2.8 million in compensatory damages the judge reduced the jury's punitive damages award to 3.5 million but this was still a lot of money for 1978 the result was affirmed as appeals court in 1981 part 5 aftermath so the whole scandal was a bit of a mixed back Ford was rushing the Pinto to market but it wasn't really a radical design as such it inherited all the downfalls of a full sized car but with the small crush zones of a subcompact officially 27 deaths are linked to the Pinto fires many more were severely wounded the number of fatalities is likely conservative due to the way road traffic accident deaths were reported however it is unlikely to be as high as the mother Jones article speculated at between 500 and 900 burned deaths the scandal also resulted in Ford's rivals to rethink their subcompact designs showing that the problems weren't solely a Ford issue but an industry wide one however where Ford suffered was in its public image especially with that controversial memo car designs did evolve thankfully as well they had to especially when your feet could be held to the fire in a very expensive lawsuit the last Pinto would roll off the production in 1980 to be replaced by a more modern front wheel drive transverse engine design the Pinto went down in history not only as a dangerous car but also just a rubbish one much like in my mind to the UK's Rover 100 or Metro so that's my video on the Ford Pinto to go along with the videos I have designed this sticker it will be up on my bank camp stores this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons shared like licensed playing different videos produced by me, John currently a bit miserable windy and wet corner of southern London UK I have Patrons and YouTube members so thank you very much for your financial support and I also have a second YouTube channel called made by John and on Instagram and ex or Twitter or whatever the hell it's called so check them out for extra random odds and solves of things that I do all that's left to say is MrMusicPlayers out please thank you this is Libby Montana from the outside it looks like just any other small US town the best part of 3000 people live here the nearby Kutenei Falls has even made it to the silver screen but it's normal looks are a little bit deceiving this small towns population has been slowly poisoned for over 60 years with clouds of asbestos that have descended upon its residents one of the populations most important exports would turn out to be its worst import of death my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we'll be diving into the Libby Montana asbestos clouds a little town so our story begins and we'll end here in Libby Montana American settlers began to inhabit the area in the early 1800s before this area where Libby is today was part of the vast areas covered by indigenous peoples in the 1800s the town or more really a settlement had the name Libbysville the area had seen hard rock mines during the 1880s around this period gold miners digging around the area discovered vermiculite not much would be done to exploit it until the 1910s now I should say here that the dates of when the vermiculite was discovered and exploited vary from source to source with even the EPA seeming to contradict itself in at least two of its publications but it seems that mining operations for the material started to begin between 1916 and 1921 parts of rainy creek were brought up and the zonolite company formed to begin mining and exploiting the vermiculite at Libby what is it anyways well it's a naturally occurring material and is useful for many purposes it's highly heat resistant and due to its ability to be highly absorbent it's found its way into many peoples homes the vermiculite over the early part of the 20th century became a product used in insulation feed additives, fertiliser and soil amendments construction materials absorbance and even packing materials this is great and all but sometimes but not all times vermiculite can appear alongside tremolite asbestos which is what happened at the mines just outside of Libby but in the 1920s the risks of tremolite wasn't really known or at least cared about as such the zonolite company found great success in becoming the supplier of over 70% of the US's vermiculite home insulation and soil additives products this was also the case in and around Libby the readily available vermiculite went into the walls and lofts of the buildings within the town gardens were spread with material essentially contaminating the whole town but this wasn't particularly different from any other early to mid 20th century town you know even my house when we moved in had vermiculite insulation it was a bit of a tradition of the time to asbestos everything up but what made Libby unique in its cancerousness was that the vermiculite was being prepared and shipped from the town which was the source of rolling dust clouds which was made up of very unsafe fine particles of asbestos not only was it in the walls and lofts but it was wafting around the air for all to breathe for the town the epicentre was the shipping plant a 17 acre site right near the centre of the town next to the Kutenai river baseball games being held next to the loading area would sometimes need to be postponed due to excessive dust clouds created by the loading of railway carriages to the export centre operations of the mine and shipping facility changed hands in 1963 to the W.R. Grace & Company Company mining operations expanded and shipping to every corner of the country carried on this increased productivity it would turn out to be a bit of a double ended sort mining work made many in the town proud of the industry at Libby but it would come at a cost of course mining work was known to be dangerous and a miner's life expectancy as the working environment was known to be very unhealthy but it was not just the workers who would have a short lived average life expectancy those who had never even set foot in a mine would come down with severe lung conditions waste materials from the mining processing and shipping operations were given out to schools and the city for any type of landscaping as the rocky wastes were perfect for hard fill two baseball fields were built using it as well as a couple of running tracks over the period between the 1960s and 1990 many would contract asbestosis over a 50 year period the population of Libby of around 2700 would have roughly 400 deaths linked to asbestos interestingly 25% were mine workers which was kind of expected 25% were from their families but the largest share would be of people were not directly linked to the vermiculite operations many of the victims showed symptoms in their 40s and due to asbestosis taking some time in some cases many decades to show its ugly head meant that they must have been exposed during their childhood a number of legal cases have been brought against W.R. Grace from families of the deceased miners in around the 1980s but the conservative society of Libby often backed the company understandable as it was the major source of income but not only was Libby deadly the company operating the mine would be hit with hard times in the late 1980s in 1989 the EPA banned most uses of asbestos products which would not be great the vital income source of the town would dry up when the W.R. Grace mining operations closed its doors in 1990 although no new vermiculite was being dug up Libby residents were still treated to contaminated soil being kicked up by the wind and dust blowing across the closed export plant the numbers of residents exhibiting signs of asbestos related illnesses kept on racking up Needless to say this created a bit of a media storm and with public pressure building the EPA would eventually get involved Enter the EPA Now it was hardly a surprise Libby was a contaminated asbestos nightmare as even as early as 1956 a state inspector took care of samples of the vermiculite mine and processing mill and they found that the asbestos in the air is of considerable toxicity environmentalists, lawyers and the Seattle Post Intelligencia launched the Libby asbestos disaster into the national consciousness forcing the EPA to dispatch a cleanup team in 1999 the EPA started to work with the community in assessing and cleaning up the mess two years after arriving in the town it was declared a superfund site hundreds of millions of dollars over the following decades would be funneled into the cleanup to make Libby safe again with the town and its surrounding areas being subdivided into things called operable areas this included 2600 houses and over 7600 properties in the surrounding area this would result in over 1 million cubic yards of contaminated soil needing to be removed and disposed of in a special landfill site but although work was underway to clean up the town its residents were struggling with the health ramifications in an asbestos hellscape in 2009 the EPA declared a public health emergency this was the first time one had ever been called by the agency up until that point it allowed federal healthcare assistance for the victims of asbestos related diseases but what about the company behind the line shared the town's contamination well W.R. Grace got off pretty lightly in 2001 it declared bankruptcy to shield itself from lawsuits filed by asbestos victims nationwide pretty standard stuff for a company in a plainly difficult video a court ordered the company to pay $54.5 million to help cover the costs of the Libby cleanup but of course they appealed and got out of it due to the bankruptcy filing however in 2008 W.R. Grace agreed to pay a $250 million sum which was the highest sum in the history of the Superfund program in assisting the cleanup some of the company's executives were charged with knowingly contaminating Libby but to no surprise of anyone they were acquitted in 2009 officially in 2018 the cleanup program in the town was complete leaving the area known as OU3 left to be done this is the property in and around the former mine impacted by Libby asbestos including a tailings dam and impoundment of amiculite to mine waste $425 million would be spent during the cleanup but thankfully the town's levels of asbestos has been significantly reduced although victims will still be affected of asbestosis as it is irreversible and many more residents are likely to succumb to asbestos related illnesses due to the amount of time it takes to show symptoms after prolonged exposure this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution and share alike licence plain default videos are produced by me John in the currently mild corner of southern London UK and Patreon members so thank you for your financial support I also have Instagram, X or Twitter whatever it's called and a second YouTube channel so check that out for stuff varying from pictures of what I'm up to today to absolute nightmare fuel and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please news agencies from all over the world have descended upon a relatively well to the outside world at least unknown Mexican town they're reporting on a rather bizarre event it looks like this field has just exploded was it a bomb, a deliberate act or some kind of industrial disaster well kind of but not all of the above the disaster was the result of a gasoline explosion caused by what officials believe to be fuel theft on a large scale theft that had become pretty common in the country today we will be looking at the 2019 Cloudy Leap Pan Pipeline Explosion my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult background this is Pemex it's owned by the Mexican state and operated by the country's government the name is a portamento of petroleum and Mexico the company manages and maintains a pipeline network that crosses the country the company throughout its history has had a multitude of disasters as such its balance sheet was so bad that it is one of the most indebted oil companies in the world it exports crude oil but it also imports petroleum this causes issues with pricing not great in a country with high levels of poverty the country's GDP per capita in 2019 was $10,450 compared to the USA $65,100 Pemex's infrastructure was a regular victim of theft with organized crime perforating the company's pipelines to extract fuel for sale on the black market instances of theft followed upward and downward trends of the international fuel prices the higher it goes the more petrol finds its way into the illicit market there was a lot of money involved as such the usual organized crime tactics of bribery and strong-arming were used with Pemex officials to inform them of when the pipelines in the country are to be used thieves have the local slang name of Cochileros the stolen fuel they sell goes down pretty well in the poorer communities significantly cheaper than official channels the problem was widespread throughout the country with over 13,000 instances of people drilling into the pipelines to steal fuel in 2018 alone it was costing Pemex and by extension the Mexican government around $3 billion per year in repairs and compensation to customers but the powers that be wanted to change this financially draining excuse the pun form of organized crime on the 1st of December 2018 Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador assumed the office of the president of Mexico and one of his policies was to stamp out fuel theft the plan was simple guard the pipelines and divert the fuel from the pipes and transport it via truck some 5,000 soldiers and police were drafted up for guard duties but the plan would come with some unwanted issues you see all of a sudden starting transporting the country's petroleum needs via truck instead of pipe created logistic issues shortages at petrol pumps resulted in long queues and hiking prices desperation usually begins to sink in when there are fuel shortages I remember just a few years ago in London we had a fuel shortage and the queues were really something else this then creates a bigger demand for fuel which can be plugged by the black market by January 2019 the logistical issues were really biting in but luckily or unluckily as it would turn out one of the country's main pipelines that crosses Hidalgo State had sprung a leak for disaster so we're back in the town of Kilulu Pan just a few miles away is the Pemex Refinery in Tula de Allende and it is being pumped to the port city of Tupan transfers are done by pipeline and as such one line runs through Kilulu Pan on the 18th of January 2019 rumours are spreading about the town that a high pressure petrol pipeline has sprung a leak in a field to the south west as the news spreads residents start making their way down to the pipeline with anything that could carry petrol people took buckets, plastic bottles cans and gerry cans with them to try and capture some of the free fuel now the cause of the leak is unknown officials suggested rather strongly that thieves were the cause but there was always a possibility of a pipeline failure albeit rather unlikely as the public descended upon the pipeline 25 soldiers were already at the scene however they were not properly equipped for dealing with what some witnesses were claiming as nearly a thousand locals trying to get some free fuel just to add a note here the estimated numbers of people was thought to be officially between 6 and 800 the soldiers who were heavily outnumbered were shouted at and threatened with sticks and rocks when attempting to intervene eventually they couldn't stop the flow of people and their officers ordered them to pull back and to not engage with any fuel thieves due to the risk of a shootout causing an explosion and or catching anyone in the crossfire at around 5pm a 911 call was made to report the leak but Pemex chose not to operate the isolation valves as they believed the leak was small as the petrol was shot into the air it released highly flammable fumes many at the scene were covered in petrol and it would only be a matter of time until pretty much a fuel-air bomb materializing at the pipeline would go off disaster was strike just 2 hours after the 911 call at 10 past 7pm the fumes ignited quickly a fireball erupted spreading out to the surrounding fuel-soaked fields anyone within the facility of the explosion were burned beyond recognition needless to say the death toll was high due to the crowds that had gathered to fill up on the free petrol shrapnel from the pipeline had spread out into the surrounding fields injuring even more the area surrounding the pipeline looked like a war zone just look at this dramatic footage flames would keep on being fueled by the lack of fuel isolation even after Pemex operated the isolation valves firefighters would take over 4 hours to extinguish the blaze dozens of injured were strewn across the burnt fields many were airlifted to hospitals in the surrounding areas some were even taken out as far as Texas in the United States the immediate area around the blast site evacuated leading to even more people being displaced the aftermath so there was a field with over 130 dead bodies needing identification and this would prove to be difficult as well let's just say many were beyond recognition anyone who could be identified via face-to-face observation in local morgues was done so however others would be identified but a significant amount of the deceased would have to be identified by DNA and this would require a lot of time leaving many families without closure officials pretty quickly after the disaster announced that none of the locals that had descended upon the perforated pipeline would be criminally charged officials investigating the explosion pretty quickly put forward a theory of organized crime being behind the leak the cause of the explosion was slightly less obvious was it deliberate or not it's kind of hard to tell the initial theory was that a static electricity had set off the vaporized petrol I mean all it would take would be just one spark the disaster was a result of the social economic issues prevalent in Mexico with no cheap alternatives to fuel many more people than usual had gone to the leak location even the mayor would say the disaster was especially bad because the locals acted out of necessity rather than greed albeit still being irresponsible each victims family had been compensated with 15,000 Mexican dollars roughly 800 USA dollars as well as having any medical and funeral costs covered but not particularly the best payout I would say perforations still continue to be an issue within Mexico and it costs the country millions every year which is still not much of a consolation for those who died in 2019 this is a plainly foot production all videos on the channel are creative commas attribution share light licensed plainly foot videos are produced by me John in the currently very wet and windy corner of southern London UK I have instagram and a second youtube channel as well as twitter or x or whatever the hell you want to call it so check them out for extra odds and sods and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please it is the 12th of April 1991 and an oil tanker is being towed since the day before she had been on fire crude oil was flowing into the sea and in a bid to try and reduce the environmental impact the stricken vessel has been dragged closer to the Italian coastline the vast vessel now starts to disappear beneath the waves the effort has been wasted the disaster would become one of the worst environmental accidents in Italian history and cause the largest shipwreck in European waters today we are going to be having a look at the empty haven my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult the ship so our story will begin with the launching of a new ship but not in Italy in the early 1990s where she would eventually find her watery grave but in Spain in the early 1970s a new very large crude oil carrier is being built by Astilleros Españoles SA in Cadiz Spain the new vessel was launched on the 20th of January 1973 taking the name Amoco Milford Haven she was a crude oil carrier and in her early years was pressed into service transporting oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world the ship was an absolute unit at 334 meters or 1069 feet long with a beam of 51 meters or 167 feet and a gross weight tonnage of 230,000 tons this gave her the classification of a very large crude oil class tanker as a side note her sister ship Amoco Cadiz would sink in the late 1970s causing one of the worst oil spills in history leaking 256.2 million liters of oil into the English Channel maybe this will have to be a subject for a future video Anywho's back to the Haven she was operated by Amoco an American chemical and oil company and as I said earlier she transported oil from the Middle East this part of the world during the 1970s would become a little bit tense and Iraq were involved in a few disagreements which would lead to a very big unfriendliness called the Iran-Oak War which ran between 1980 and 1988 what's the point of all of this I hear you asking well the Amoco-Milford Haven would unwittingly get dragged into the war the Persian Gulf had become a bit of a battlefield in the 1980s and both sides would target oil tankers in an effort to screw each other's economy during this period the Haven would hit in the late 1980s by an exocet missile and it is to say this caused damage to the ship and she was required to be sent to Singapore for refitting and repairing and after which she was sold off to a broker now under the new ownership the Amoco-Milford Haven would get the new name the MT Haven she would work a route between the Mediterranean and Iran's Kharg Island and the world terminal the terminal like the MT Haven had received damage during the Iran-Oak War and as a side note in the 1960s it was the world's largest offshore oil terminal the MT Haven was operated by the Trudos Company owned by Locus Haji Lianobi and his son Stelius who would later go on to set up EasyJet so the MT Haven carried on working the oil routes or would be good I suppose until a day in April 1991 a disaster so it is the 11th of April 1991 and the MT Haven is at the Maltido floating platform roughly around 6 miles off the coast of Genoa, Italy the plan is to offload her 144,000 tons roughly 1 million barrels of oil the process involves connecting and disconnecting from the platform this was to allow the oil to be pumped around her various storage tanks you see oil tankers aren't just one big tank but several smaller ones as it helps with ballasting the ship to make it all level and happy it also helps in the case of a collision in theory in stopping all of the ship's contents being released into the ocean the first 80,000 tons of oil was transferred safely next came disconnecting from the platform to pump the oil from the MT Haven side tanks into her centre tanks long after the pumping began at roughly 12.30pm allowed metal rattling to be heard the ship's crew were baffled by this but not for long an explosion ripped out of the MT Haven's front section killing 6 of her crew immediately the explosion was caused apparently by a spark during the ship's tank cleaning process as part of the oil transfer flames erupted 100 metres into the air and enveloped the ship her hull now damaged began leaking oil out into the sea multiple rescue boats were dispatched to try and save crew members stuck aboard the tanker while this was happening strong winds pushed the flames along the ship towards the stern fire crews were dispatched to the disaster scene and began frantically trying to put out the inferno it proved to be a bit of an impossible task as the MT Haven began groaning under the heat as some of her hull plates melted more explosions rang out from the Haven breaking off parts of her bow with the fire still burning and the ship leaking oil authorities deployed floating barriers in the effort to try and corral the thick flammable material oozing out into the sea a plan was hatched to try and get a better hold of the situation due to the distance from the shore firefighting was less than ideal as such it was decided to drag the MT Haven closer to the Italian coast the next day a tugboat was attached to the MT Haven and the blazing ship was pulled towards Aranzano it now had a horrendously weakened structure and unsurprisingly after a bit of tugging she would begin to break up a section of the vessel broke off sinking in roughly 480 metres of water but that wouldn't be the end of the breakup and sinking at around 10am on the 14th of April the stern sank plunging 80 metres below the water level as the final part of the MT Haven sank the fire was finally extinguished after 70 hours of burning it is thought that up to 50,000 tonnes of crude oil had been released into the sea with the remaining of the Haven's cargo going up in flames the disaster was an environmental nightmare affecting over 25 miles of coastline once she had came to rest the MT Haven was now Europe's largest shipwreck over the coming months oil seepage would be plugged by divers and submersibles years would pass by and the wreck would become a tourist attraction for divers but what of the disaster's immediate aftermath the aftermath oil had contaminated the Italian and French coastlines with thicknesses of oil between 1 and 2 inches this ended up costing millions of dollars in clean up and remediation works reportedly there was a 43% decrease in fish captures compared to the year before the disaster so the operators of the ship would be brought before the Italian courts the allegations were of negligence in maintenance of the MT Haven as well as manslaughter it was theorised that she probably should have been written off after the missile incident but we'll never know for certain as the refurbishment in Singapore did certify the ship for work Lucas and his son Stelios were charged but acquitted after three retrials taking place in 2002 similarly in a court case the company was also let off obviously Italian officials and the public weren't too happy with this outcome in a bit of a tone deaf statement after the final trial Stelios was quoted my main comment is to ask why it took so long to clear innocent people of these terrible charges of course at the time that went down like a lead balloon it turns out that April 1991 was a bit of a rubbish time for Italian disasters as only a day before the MT Haven the Moby Prince Ferry had collided with the Agit Abruzzo tanker off Leverno which left 140 dead and also caused an oil spill of just over 2,000 tonnes now I think I'll probably have to cover this one in another video what do you think this is a Plain Diffcourt production all videos on the channel are created by the Creative Commons Attribution share light licence Plain Diffcourt videos are produced by me John in a currently very cold and miserable corner of southern London UK I have Instagram and X or Twitter and a second YouTube channel so check them out for all sorts of other random bits and pieces of what I get up to when I'm not working on Plain Diffcourt videos I also have Patreon and YouTube members so thank you very much for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please so you made it to the end of this ridiculously long video congratulations I don't know what else to say have a good new year and thank you again for watching and I'll see you on the next video and yeah, thank you very much well done, you should get a little certificate for reaching this far I mean, it took my computer a good few days to render it and it got really hot so yeah thank you very much for watching and well done I'll see you on the next video