ENGINEEREDFLAWS
ARCHIVE INDEX / TOPIC
TOPIC: The Human Factor
How corporate cost-cutting, misaligned incentives, and regulatory capture engineer disaster.
02 / MATCHING CASE FILESINDEXED ANALYSIS
The Human FactorNOV 18, 2024
The Boston Molasses Flood: When 2.3 Million Gallons of Viscous Sludge Swept the North End at 35 MPH
On January 15, 1919, a 50-foot steel storage tank in Boston's North End tore apart with the sound of machine-gun fire. A two-story wave of dense industrial molasses traveling at 35 miles per hour obliterated houses, smashed an elevated train trestle, and claimed 21 lives. Here is the mechanical autopsy of a disaster born of corporate haste.
The Human FactorNOV 25, 2024
The Grenfell Tower Fire: The Chimney Effect of Combustible Cladding and Regulatory Capture
On June 14, 2017, a kitchen fire in a fourth-floor flat in North Kensington breached a window frame and ignited the building's newly refurbished facade. Within minutes, flames raced 20 stories upward through combustible polyethylene cladding, exposing decades of regulatory deregulation and lethal cost-cutting.