A Flood of Thoughts About Failure.

I tried using the stair stepper machine for the first time this afternoon. Interesting experience. But the best part was that it gave me an excuse to watch one of my favorite YouTube channels - Tasting History with Max Miller. I've mentioned him before, specifically on my British Isles Day 2 post, when I was discussing bakewell tarts. Today I watched his video about the great molasses flood in Boston, MA and about Boston Brown Bread. Some of the quotes from primary sources are absolutely brutal. One that really hits hard talks about the speaker and another man trying to pull someone out of the gooey mess, but only succeeding at pulling his arm off. 

Afterwards, as I processed the newfound information, I kept returning to the shoddy engineering and lack of oversight that led to the failure of the storage tank. Especially when considering that the leaks were a known issue. As Max points out, rather than fix the tank, they just painted it the color of molasses. If you can't see a problem it goes away, right? That's how it works? Unfortunately not. Furthermore, the fact that to test for leaks they added about six inches of water is utterly insane, especially since the tank was expected to hold the same area of molasses up to a depth of fifty feet. The cost cutting resulted in the loss of life, which is totally unacceptable in my opinion.

However, it does raise an important point. I've mentioned the professor, engineer, and author Henry Petorski. Two of his books about engineering failure and design have made a significant impact on me. Granted, I've only read those two, and perhaps his others will also when I get around to them, but that's beside the point. In my understanding, his thesis is built on the idea that humans are inherently fallible so, by extension, anything made by humanity will inherently have flaws. Often times it can simply be a matter of discovering new knowledge - failures can stem from issues that we don't know how to predict or simply don't know that we have to check. 

What is important though is being thorough. It is the responsibility of each and every engineer to understand that people's lives are at stake. There is no excuse for recklessly endangering the public. Relying on external oversight is not a viable approach - the FAA and Boeing's Max fiasco are an example. As such, it is up to every engineer to, as Dr. Petorski put it, "be human". But I think that there is more to being human than occasionally failing. Being human, to me, means feeling compassion, love, and trying to do what's best.