Why Acidents Are Rarely Accidental

The organizational disasters that I have seen (or been involved with), whether they were financial crisis, leadership problems or problems with personnel, have all had many indicators that they were imminent. When we think of disasters, accidents, etc., we usually tend to think of them as unavoidable.

I recently found the book "Flirting With Disaster", by Marc Gerstein with Michael Ellsberg. In the book, the author outlines several major disasters in recent memory, including Hurricane Katrina, the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters, Chernobyl and other events that were terrible and may have seemed sudden and unpredictable.

In all the incidents described, ample warning signs, indicators and evidence existed to take steps to circumvent disaster. For instance, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans City and Army Corps of Engineers had ample warning that a disaster could be imminent, yet stalled on taking measures to adequately protect the City. Consider these warnings:

- In 2001, Scientific American published a n article entitled "Drowning New Orleans", discussing how a major hurricane could swamp New Orleans.
- In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a series of articles analyzing the flooding risk.
- Also in 2002, PBS Frontline aired "The City in a Bowl", spelling out the risks.
- In the summer of 2004 , FEMA conducted an exercise that was based on a slow moving category three hurricane, the same scenario as Katrina and viewed as the most likely scenario for disaster.
- In October of 2004, National Geographic published a disturbing hypothetical scenario entitled "Gone with the Water", that showed New Orleans punished by a hurricane.

The book is full of examples, like the Katrina example, of how responsible parties were myopic to the risks involved, hoped things would resolve themselves despite all information to the contrary, or were unable or unwilling to act due to political, organizational or procedural pressure.

You can view the website to the book here, or view the trailer here.

If you have any interest in avoiding organizational (or even personal) disasters, would want to analyze past disasters or are just interested in seeing an overview of what happened in these past well-publicized cases, this book is a good read.