Small Mistakes With HUGE Consequences

Here are some small mistakes with huge consequences!

Legal Stuff.

[rrachelbeann]

Wow! That last story was refreshingly admirable. I was waiting to hear "and William ignored her warning", but the fact that William listened to Diane was great to hear. Thanks for this one!!

[DroidzandBrix]

Yes, I can confirm fireworks only need a small mistake to be dangerous. Back in July 2021, we were celebrating Fourth of July in our neighborhood. My family had only brought smaller fireworks, but one of our neighbors and his friends had lit a big rocket in their backyard. Just after lighting the rocket, they noticed the plastic wrapper on the rocket hadn’t been removed. So, one of them went to go take it off, and knocked it sideways. The rocket launched, and exploded right in the middle of the neighborhood. My family scattered. Everyone had a fireball less than half a foot from them, one of the fireballs landed on the neighbors’ Shelby GT350, but fortunately, no one was hurt. After watching this I can see how much worse that could’ve gone

[KaiM]

Omg that last one! Not only was William cool about having someone tell him his design had a flaw, he accepted it and worked on how to fix it, without causing panic amongst people unnecessarily. Good for him, he really stepped up. And good for the lady too, who notified him of the issue instead of just thinking “not my problem”

[ShockDiamondStudios]

Props to the designer of the building for making sure that the building was safe and not assuming he was right. If more people looked into structural issues, many disasters could be avoided.

[TheSandwhichman]

You gotta love William’s story. He didn’t ignore the situation or just tell them off for pointing it out.
He realized his mistake and did everything he could to rectify it.

[konradzukowski]

15:54 it's actually surprising how much a single lit bud can cause a lot of trouble. In my previous job, we had a "big tool room" where a lot of people used to go for smoke breaks since it had large doors leading outside. One day i was left in our building to prepare tools and materials for a job, when I noticed smoke in the corridor. I looked through all the rooms only open the tool room and see it filled to the brim and fire somewhere.
After telling others of the fire and putting it down, we realised that it was a trashcan someone dropped a still lit cigarette into it and things could have been much worse. Trashcan stood next to jerry cans filled with benzene and diesel as well as propane tanks and if it wasn't for the can melting away from jerry cans and us noticing fire fairly early, things could have gone much worse

[Pluggit]

I was on vacation in NYC from the UK and witnessed the blackout. My friend and I were very lucky - we’d just been on the subway and were minutes away from being in an elevator. We managed to grope our way up to our floor and escaped the mayhem on the streets.

[stephenwest]

A small change to the building plans for a pedestrian catwalk in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City led to its collapse during a party in the early 80's. There were something like 180 fatalities. It wasn't faulty materials, or improper methods. It was simply a small change made after the plans were completed. As a result of 1long bolt changing to 2 short bolts, the weight distribution went from being shared across multiple levels to being entirely put on one level. A high school student doing a small experiment could have determined the logic behind the change being catastrophic, but it was changed for 1 stupid reason. Its easier to carry 2 small ones than 1 big one.

[God-heavenlife]

I'm really glad William LeMessurier actually listened to Diane and actually spent the time, money, and effort to correct his mistake. So many architects get too prideful of their work, and just ignore the warnings of others, and just let their work be.

[amberkat]

A correction on the Comet airplane one- yes, those square corners may have been where it was always going to break, but planes broke so quickly because at the time they didn't have any experience with flying that high so the metal was just too thin. That thin metal flexed with every flight cycle- every cycle of depressurization and repressurization- and was bound to give out.

[Iamrealnowturnaround]

A Priest : "My small mistake was saving a kid from drowning in a lake named Adolf Hitler."

[ThisIsHunglo]

I was absolutely livid when the El Dorado fire happened. I went home on leave while still serving the military after being away from family for almost 2 years. Literally the day after I arrived home, I woke up to tinted orange skies and was forced to cancel all plans I had the following few days due to all the smoke and restricted outings because of covid, forcing me to stay home until my flight back 10 days later. Stuff like this are the reasons why we can't have nice things.

[Aiko--]

As a resident of Japan I don't find fault with your information about the Hanshin earthquake but I do want to point out that at 23:33 you state that 1995 is remembered for a single catastrophic event. Actually it is ALSO remembered as the year the crazy cult, Aum Shirikyo released Sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system resulting in many deaths and thousands with serious physical effects.

[gaywerewolf]

No, no. fireworks and dry forests in the summer do get along... like a house on fire! 😂

[mattiemathis]

Kudos to the engineer who fixed the building. When watching disaster videos it seems many times the problems are ignored causing the disaster.

[jslb]

8:34 *The Comet disasters weren't specifically the passenger windows.*
It was microcracks from the punch-type rivets. With each the cracks lengthened.
There are YouTubes videos about the Comet that can describe it in more detail.

[Retroman]

Blackout 77, was from a frequency converter messing up. How do I know I was the one who delivered it from Boston where it was sitting in a box

[warrenwattles]

The first story about the power outage was repeated in 2011 in San Diego, but without the riots, although with an even more stupid cause. An engineer was doing maintenance tests at a major power hub in Arizona and did some steps out of order. The result was the trunk line from AZ being shut off. Which left all the load for San Diego falling on the trunk line from Los Angeles, and that rapid spike caused it to shut down as well. The result was all of San Diego and surrounding areas to be in the dark for 11 hours, with some areas taking up to 36 hours to get restored.

[AretaicGames]

There's more to the Citicorp building story. If the building had been constructed as LeMessurier (pronounced "le-measure") had specified, it would likely have been adequate to resist "quartering winds", but an on-site change to the construction of the diagonal braces that directed load to the legs of the building - from through-welding to bolts - significantly weakened the structure. LeMessurier discovered that on his own, once he was prompted to start thinking about quartering winds.

The timing as reported here is also very sloppy. It was only toward the very end of the refit of the building - which could be done at night, with minimal disruption - that the hurricane showed up, and it veered away from the city, in any case. LeMessurier took his time to mobilize the people, resources, and plans needed to carry out the refit responsibly. It's really a model of how professional engineers should behave.

Also, fun fact: the building was one of the first to feature a tuned mass damper, a huge block of concrete on bearings at the top of the building, which served to reduce sway . . . but which would have increased damage to the surrounding area had the structure failed.

Also also, at the time of the building's construction, New York City building code did not have any specifications regarding quartering winds, which just goes to show that building codes are often inadequate on their own.

[L.S.Stryke]

The blackout in NYC in 77 also Happened in August 03... to the entire North East Coast. One of the power plants in Niagara falls around Ontario Canada went down and created a chain reaction. It lasted a few days.