Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
societies. Therefore, there is no doubt that the rise of industrial society, the mod-
ernization process and the spread of technology determined, after the First and the
Second Industrial Revolution, a dramatic increase of harmful events. Hazard
management in developed societies has consequently shifted from risks associated
with natural harmful events to those arising from technological development and
application.
Since early nineteenth century, but especially after the second half of the cen-
tury, industrial accidents, maritime disasters, railway and public transportation
wrecks became unavoidable aspects of most advanced societies. According to some
studies major disasters occurred in this period can be classi
ed into three main
categories that can also be applied to some contemporary technological accidents.
These main categories are respectively: large scale engineered structures (public
buildings, bridges, dams), industry (manufacturing, storage and transport of
hazardous materials, power production) and public transports (sea, rail, air).
Fire can be considered one of the most relevant agents in large scale structures
disasters. From the Great Fire of London of 1666 (13,200 houses burned down) to
the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (18,000 houses burned down, about 300 victims)
and from the Vienna Theatre Fire of 1881 (850 dead) to the Iroquois Theatre
incident in Chicago (571 dead) these kind of disasters were extremely common in
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century industrial societies. According to
some of the rst
“
disaster specialists
”
, at the turn of the century the death toll
resulting from theatre
res in the nineteenth century England was nearly thousand
people.
7
Between other major large scale structures disasters occurred in these years there
are the collapse of Tay Bridge in Scotland in 1879 (75 dead) and the failure of
South Fork Dam in Pennsylvania in 1889 (more than 2,000 victims). For the
engineering elite, these calamities represented a sort of shock that eventually led to
a more precise codi
cation of building regulations. Another important consequence
of these events was in the approach.
“
Scienti
c speech and the rhetoric of risk
”
supplanted
instead of waiting for bridges to
collapse or people to be burned alive in opera houses, structural engineers and
social psychologists were employed to predict the effectiveness of design and the
psychology of the crowds in danger
“
the didactic language of the pulpit
”
:
“
”
.
res and other industrial accidents determined new
kinds of threats and damages and putted at risk not only safety of the workers but
also life and properties of communities close to factories and industrial plants. Even
disasters in mine
Steam-boiler explosions,
elds were particularly frequent during the nineteenth century: in
United Kingdom, particularly in Wales coal
elds, there were recorded several
accidents such as the gas explosions at the Albion Colliery in 1894 (almost 300
deaths) and at the Universal Colliery in 1913 (439 victims). In the United States the
number of documented mine accidents with
ve or more deaths through 1876
-
1921
was 497. Many accidents occurred also in main European mine
elds especially in
7
Gerhard (
1899
).
