Too Bad Hippocrates Wasn't an Engineer

NY Times ^ | June 11, 2006 | JOHN SCHWARTZ

[neverdem]

James L. Long Associates
Shuttle, 1979 The space shuttle Columbia was scheduled for its first mission in 1979. But when protective tiles fell off as it was being shipped to the launching site, it was back to the drawing board.

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times
Levee, 2005 The floodwall at the 17th Street Canal was one part of the New Orleans system that failed, sending water gushing through the levee.

Jerome Delay/Associated Press
Airport, 2004 Investigators pointed to four basic flaws in the design and construction of the passenger terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris that collapsed, killing four people.

United States Bureau of Reclamation, via Associated Press
Dam, 1976 The Teton Dam, built on a geologically suspect site, burst not long after it was completed.

[RonHolzwarth]

Is it possible that the engineering mistake was to choose to build a city below sea level?

Nawww,,,,,, we can do that!

[metmom]

I've heard that at one time parachutists in the service were dying because of improperly packed chutes. So they implimented a policy of making the parachute packers jump using one of the chutes they packed, picked at ramdom. It cut way down on chutes that failed to properly deploy.

I wonder what kind of engineering we would get if the lives of the engineers depended on the consequences of their poor design?

[randog]

Too bad journalists and editors aren't held to the same standard engineers are. A good 99% would be in jail by now.

[Texasforever]

I wonder what kind of engineering we would get if the lives of the engineers depended on the consequences of their poor design?

So you don't think that engineers drive cars, live in buildings, lived in New Orleans, fly on airplanes, ride on trains? They share the same risk of "poor designs" everyone else face.

[randog]

I wonder what kind of engineering we would get if the lives of the engineers depended on the consequences of their poor design?

I know engineers that have gone to jail for malfeasance.

[indthkr]

bump

[conservative in nyc]

More people died from the North Sea flood of 1953 in the Netherlands than died in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina. Due to levee breaks, 9% of the Netherlands' farmland was inundated by sea water. That's the worst levee-breach caused flooding in modern history in terms of loss of life.

Even more people died in the Johnstown Flood of 1889, which was caused by a dam collapse after years of neglect.

Bad engineering and neglect has happened over the course of human history.

[anymouse]

Well said. A bit of engineer bashing going on here. What isn't said is that in the above mentioned examples it was likely a pointy headed manager that overrode the engineer's more conservative approach.

How many reporters give half a seconds worth of thought into the implications of what they write? Engineers by nature consider the downside of their design failing - before they commit it to being built. Then they test and retest before subjecting the public to their product. Then some damn fool finds a way to break it and gets a lawyer to sue.

There was a time when engineers were heralded as makers of the bright future. Now whiny journalists complain and lawyers destroy careers. And we wonder why few students want to study engineering. :(

[GSlob]

For railroad bridges it used to be that the engineer would stand under it when there was the first [test] train driven across the bridge.

[MarkL]

Add to the list, the Kansas City Hyatt Hotel. There were "skywalks" that collapsed during a "tea dance." 46 people were killed in 1981.

Mark

[upchuck]

THANK YOU for linking to the Printer Friendly version of the article.

Those of us trapped in 56K dialup HELL really appreciate it!

[devolve]

Live in a swamp

Die in a swamp

--

My liberal NYC enviro sister sez New Orleans will be under water within a certain number of years anyway

Why rebuild on below seal level land that sinks more as you add more weight above it and is surrounded by water?


Money wasted on bridge studies, water fountains, casinos, bribes -


If they had wanted to hold back the waters they would have copied the Dutch

But instead the New Orleans politicians and scammers went for the quick and dirty buck instead -

[potlatch]

All true!

[vbmoneyspender]

the NY Times had a hand in covering up the deaths of millions of people during Stalin's reign of terror. Since then, the NY Times has had a hand in bringing Castro to power, as well as in helping the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge come to power. I wonder what the penalty should be for a newspaper that repeatedly does things like that?

[burzum]

Is it possible that the engineering mistake was to choose to build a city below sea level?

No. That was a political mistake. The engineering mistake was in determining the building and maintenance requirements (the first and fourth steps in most standard engineering projects).

When I was in the Navy operating nuclear reactors we had to periodically test everything to make sure that our equipment operated up to specifications. You never build something and expect it to last forever. In some cases it was difficult to test something by conventional means so alternate tests were performed (such as using radiography to test welds). But nothing was ignored.

Contrast this with the levees in New Orleans. How did they know (and certify) each year that the levees would operate to specifications? They didn't in reality. They just signed paperwork to make it look like they were. The most significant flaw was the settling of the levees and the sinking of the city so that the levees were overtopped. By measuring the height of the levees they could have determined if they needed to be repaired.

The biggest issue in this disaster is that the Army Corps of Engineers gave custody of the levees to the corrupt New Orleans Levee Districts assuming that since levee failure would hurt them the most, they would do a good job of making sure the levees were in specification. What a mistake!

Additional testing is more expensive. Perhaps New Orleans and the federal government wouldn't have bought the levees if they realized that. But that was a political issue. As far as I can tell, the initial design engineers did their jobs correctly. The maintenance engineers and politicians fouled this hole situation up.

[DB]

We'd walk everywhere we go - for starters.

[DB]

The levee wasn't designed to take a cat 5 hurricane straight on.

[neverdem]

THANK YOU for linking to the Printer Friendly version of the article.

Those of us trapped in 56K dialup HELL really appreciate it!

What about the pics in comment# 1? Do they cause any grief?

[burzum]

The levee wasn't designed to take a cat 5 hurricane straight on.

I concur. The politicians didn't want to build one that big. But that isn't the primary issue with the New Orleans levee failure. The levees failed because the water level was over specification. That is problem #1. Problem #2 is that some of the levees had sunk below design specification.

As someone who had to evaluate operational failures I can't really say much about problem #1 other than to say you get what you pay for. On problem #2, which made this casuality worse, I would rip out the hearts of the maintenance engineers and politicians.