Disaster

In August 1989, 51 people lost their lives when the Bowbelle dredger collided with the Marchioness passenger boat on the River Thames. The design of both vessels was criticised. Numerous warnings about the inevitability of such an accident had gone unheeded for years.

In December 1991, two passenger trains collided in the 6.5km long tunnel under the River Severn in England, 185 people were injured. Rescuers did not reach the train until two hours after the accident

In August 1985, Japan Air Flight 123 crashed into the side of a mountainNorth West of Tokyo. It was the largest single aircraft fatality in history.520 people died. A poor repair was the cause. But the real story behindthe crash was the scandalous incompetence in reacting to the accident and the rescue attempt in the immediate aftermath.

In 1993,Chief Biomedical Scientist Neil Woodward noticed that there was a problem with the way the Kent & Canterbury Hospital’s laboratory was screening cervical smear slides.It took three years and a leak to the national press before any action was taken.

When Mexican warehouseman Vincente Sotelo dismantled an unused hospital x-ray machine and sold it for scrap, he had no idea he was causing a radioactive spill 100 times worse than Three Mile Island. 6,000 pellets of cobalt-60 were spread across the USA and Mexico. The disaster was only discovered by accident.

In 1957, a fire was discovered inside Britain’s first nuclear reactor atWindscale. At the time emergency procedures were minimal, but its effects are still being felt today.