Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
con
rmed in observations of doctors and experts in occupational diseases since
early twentieth century up to the Merewether and Price Report of 1930.
12
In most cases, however, until the second post-war years the health and the safety
of the workers during the processes of production, were still considered some
marginal issues. This was primarily because of the relationship between the
workplace and certain diseases even when had dramatic connotations
e.g.
the thousands workers that died from ancylostomiasis during the work of the St.
Gotthard tunnel in 1888
—
was considered as inevitable. With the result that safety
and health of the workers on the job was monetized or simply considered as a
technical matter. This approach was partly due to the dif
—
culties (in some cases to
the impossibility) of making in the public domain the documentation of many of the
environmental disasters which occurred in that period.
In general, the emergence of increasingly sophisticated techniques of
“
civil
protection
, generally applied in case of natural disasters, was further facilitated by
technological and scienti
”
c progress, but also from a revision of knowledge and
approach to professionalism and skills that, since mid nineteenth century, brought
to the af
rmation of the concept of expertise and of the
gure of the expert, a
professional with special knowledge and skill, speci
cally prepared and formed to
solve technical questions, prevent and manage disasters.
8.3 The First Post-war Years
The beginning of the studies upon technological disasters is conventionally set in
the
rst postwar period, after the so-called Great Halifax Explosion that occurred on
December, 6th 1917.
On that occasion, the Canadian port of Halifax, a strategic stopover for ships
engaged in the supply of the troops deployed in the Great War, was destroyed by
what, at least until the launch of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, would have been
the most violent explosion ever caused by man. The explosion was the result of the
collision between a Belgian military cargo and a French ship carrying thousands of
tons of explosives, acids and benzene highly
ammable.
Focusing on the disaster at the port of Halifax (the death toll was about 2,000
deaths and 9,000 wounded), Samuel Henry Prince, researcher at the Columbia
University, published a study that is considered the
rst contribution of a new
discipline focused on the study of disasters and their social implications.
13
Even this
study contains some general claims about social consequences of a disaster that
modern researchers on disasters have challenged, this study can be considered an
important turning point. Until then, the studies that dealt with disasters, including
technological ones, almost exclusively reconstructed the events, often following the
12
Merewether and Price (
1930
).
13
Prince (
1920
).
