Catastrophe
Disasters, collapses, fires, storms, shortages, and systems that failed.
Investigations
44 results found
The Dam That Didn’t Fail
In 1963, a mountainside fell into Italy’s Vajont reservoir and killed about 1,900 people. The dam survived. The deeper failure had happened before the wave.
Almost Home
On April 27, 1865, three of Sultana’s four boilers exploded as the overloaded steamboat headed north from Memphis with more than 1,900 former Union prisoners aboard. More than…
Six Inches of Water
Before 2.3 million gallons of molasses tore through Boston’s North End, the fifty-foot storage tank was tested with only about six inches of water. The surviving engineering record…
The Morning San Francisco Lost Its Water
In 1906, the earthquake lasted less than a minute. The water failure that followed helped determine what burned for the next three days.