A nine-thousand-ton ship with a blind spot over safety … One of the most horrific maritime disasters since The Titanic. James Nesbitt: Disasters that Changed Britain II: Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster
On the night of the 6th March 1987 the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the icy waters of the English channel. 193 died from drowning and hypothermia. And the one thing everybody knows: they forgot to close the doors. But there is another story, one of near misses, ignored warnings, a story of time and money. ibid.
Time was money and all the crew knew it. ibid.
19th December 1982: Just outside Harwich harbour the Townsend roll-on ferry the European Gateway smashed into a cargo vessel: water flooded the ship and within ten minutes capsized … Six died. ibid.
By the late ’80s the English channel was in a golden age. ibid.
A vast oil platform packed with hazardous equipment. A rig worker whose warnings were ignored. And a pump that should never have been switched on. James Nesbitt: Disasters that Changed Britain III: Piper Alpha
The discovery of oil drew some new guests to Scotland. ibid.
They constructed a massive new platform. Christened Piper Alpha, it weighed around 14,000 tonnes and would be able to pump a quarter of a million barrels of oil every day. It soon earned the nickname The Monster. ibid.
An oil industry spreading rapidly across the North Sea. ibid.
There were 241 men on the platform but unknown to them, inside one of the high-pressure gas units the equipment was overheating. At 1 p.m. it exploded; highly flammable gas poured on to the platform and quickly caught fire … The crew of Piper had been lucky. ibid.
Workers who tried to push for union action over safety could find their careers in trouble. ibid.
It was the handover between day and night shifts Occidental had been warned about before. ibid.
The order was given to turn on Pump A. Gas poured out and quickly ignited. The blast tore threw the gas module and wiped out Piper Alpha’s control room. ibid.
Piper was a vast inferno visible for miles. ibid.
This is the story of a group of brilliant young footballers and one visionary manager. A snow-covered runway in West Germany. Two brave wartime fighter pilots. And a state of the art aircraft with a flaw. This is the countdown to an infamous plane crash that shook Britain to its core. James Nesbitt: Disasters that Changed Britain IV: Munich Air Crash
The loss not just of life but what might have been. ibid.
In the years after the war there were hundreds of crashes. ibid.
It skidded off the end of the runway, crashed into the fence and then hit a house. ibid.
A warren of underground tunnels with no escape route. A fire chief warning again and again of the dangers yet no-one would listen. A wooden escalator and a match. This is the countdown to the worst fire in British transport history. James Nesbitt: Disasters that Changed Britain V: King’s Cross Fire
7:45 p.m. on 15th November 1987: A vast fireball exploded into King’s Cross underground station turning the ticket hall into an inferno. It’s a story of wooden escalators, piles of rubbish, carelessly dropped matches, but also carelessness and a sense of complacency. ibid.
Three months earlier a fire had gutted Oxford Circus station. ibid.
Families trapped in an unimaginable nightmare from which for many there would be no escape. James Nesbitt: Disasters that Changed Britain VI: Grenfell Tower
The fire at Grenfell Tower: In the early hours of 14th June 2017 a fire ripped through Grenfell Tower in west London. 71 people lost their lives and an entire community was left devastated. ibid.
The problems began decades earlier. ibid.
It would be constructed using the latest building techniques: precast concrete blocks. ibid.
The Utopian dream of tower-block heaven began to fade. All over the country poor maintenance, vandalism and social deprivation turned the streets in the sky into slums in the sky. ibid.
Safe? I never felt safe. I was always frightened. The Good Shepherd 2006 ***** starring Matt Damon & Angelina Jolie & Robert de Niro & Alec Baldwin & William Hurt & Joe Pesci & John Turturro & Billy Crudup & Michael Gambon & John Sessions & Tammy Blanchard & Timothy Hutton et al, director Robert de Niro
On 14th June 2017 people across the country watched as Grenfell Tower burned. For some, this was history repeating itself. In the decades before Grenfell, five fires across of the British Isles gave clear warnings of the tragedy. But key lessons were ignored. The Fires that Foretold Grenfell, BBC 2018
Failures that allowed the tower to be wrapped in cladding that turned the building into an inferno. Failures that saw people told to stay put in their homes as the Tower burned. And failures to protect the building from the spread of fire creating a death-trap that took the lives of 72 people. ibid.
Douglas, Isle of Man, 1973, Summerland: The deadliest fire in the British Isles since the Blitz … One of the largest indoor holiday parks in Europe … Three boys smoking cigarettes had set fire to a crazy golf kiosk … ‘Floor to ceiling flames … a waterfall of flames’ … Fifty people died … The Inquiry found that the building had been wrapped in highly flammable materials causing the fires’ rapid spread and high death toll. The Inquiry also found the advice to people to stay put in Summerland seriously hindered the evacuation. ibid.
5th April 1991 Knowsley Heights: The newly installed cladding on a Tower block in Liverpool caught fire … Britain’s first Tower block cladding fire. ibid.
Cladding was not required to be fireproof. ibid.
1999, Irvine, North Ayrshire: A cladding fire in western Scotland echoed what happened at Knowsley Heights but this time it proved fatal. ibid.
Stevenage, 2005, Harrow Court … ‘The fire was started by some tea-lights’ … ‘The advice at the time was to stay put.’ ibid. firefighter
South London, 2009: This time six people would die. At 4:15 on a hot July afternoon a faulty television started a fire on the ninth floor at Lankanal House. ibid.
February 2023: ‘The town is under a state of emergency after fifty train cars derailed causing a massive fire half a mile long.’ How Corporate Greed Destroyed East Palestine ***** news, Second Thought 2023
‘Well over 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride.’ ibid. news conference
‘Breathing issues, tightness in our chests, severe headaches …’ ibid. victim
East Palestine Residents Report Health Problems After Train Derailment. ibid. Newsweek
These amounts are nothing. They are worse than nothing. They are an insult to the people [Norfolk Southern] they just poisoned. ibid. commentary
Between 2012 and 2014 North America was hit with a string of devastating trail derailments … labelled ‘bomb trains’. ibid.
Unions were sounding the alarm … [about] cutting costs and reducing the operating ratios for rail companies. ibid.
Safety is a cost that needs to be minimised. ibid.
Five major rail unions have stood in common sense opposition to this attempt to make railways even less safe … Rail companies use the piles of money they made by caring less about safety to influence policy and make sure that safety is even further reduced, and as a result, we suffer preventable catastrophic accidents. ibid.
This train derailment wasn’t being talked about much … a media matter. ibid.
So long as the profit motive remains the driving factor, nothing will meaningfully change. It’s time to nationalise the railways. ibid.
My sister, Jo Cox, was MP here until she was murdered … by a far-right extremist. Dispatches: MPs Under Threat, Channel 4 2022
Last October, MP Sir David Amess was fatally stabbed in his constituency.
With MPs getting more and more threats and abuse, do we still feel safe to do our jobs? And what does this mean for democracy and the people we represent? ibid.
Most people are living an illusion. An illusion of safety. Dogs of Berlin V: Foul, Erol’s sister on date, Netflix 2018
What would you do if your broke down in a smart lane on a motorway. There’s no hard shoulder to keep you safe. It means you’re more likely to be seriously injured or killed if you break down … Thousands of safety failures are putting motorists at risk. Panorama: Smart Motorways: Then Technology Fails, BBC 2024