Failure to learn from past

Sushant Chaturvedi

Incident details
In mining industry, the waste that comes out
is kept as accumulated spoil - the
overburden or other waste rock removed
during coal and ore mining.
In one such incident, this collier waste spoil
collapsed in a U.K. village causing death of
166 people many of which were children.

Incident Causes
A failure to learn from the past. Forty years earlier the causes of tip
instability were recognized and warned against but the warning went
unheeded, as none of the earher collapses caused any loss of life.
A failure to inspect adequately. There were no regular inspections
of the tip and when it was inspected only the tipping equipment was looked at,
not the tip itself.
A failure to employ competent and well-trained people. Tips
were the reponsibility of mechanical, not civil, engineers and they received no
training on choice of sites or inspection. The official report said, it was the blind
leading the blind in a system inherited from the blind'.

Learnings
a.Your past track record cannot assure you future success.
b.You always loose 100% of the efforts you dont make. same is true for
inspection.
c.Any system or organization is as strong as its weakest link. One
incompetent person doing a risky job can affect hundreds and thousands of
people.
d.Remember safety is a choice and not compulsion. if you choose to be
safe only when you are compelled to, you are more prone to accidents