compare/contrast: hurricane katrina vs. the sinking of the titanic

Though a little quick to call spam ;)

i don't think the actual number of deaths is that relevant -- we know based on pretty reliable reports it's "a lot," and that's good enough for my purposes. a high death count is a high death count, any way you look at it.

The Bulletin
San Francisco, April 19, 1912

How could this formidable giant of the sea, born of the most advanced know-how of the time, succumb to the waters of the North Atlantic? Historians have been able to reconstruct the events leading to the ship’s downfall. Their conclusions explain the catastrophe.

Unfavourable weather conditions

In exceptionally calm polar seas, the winter of 1912 saw the detachment of a large number of icebergs from glaciers surrounding Greenland. They drifted toward the south to unusually low latitudes.
The sea was so calm that icebergs could not be easily seen from afar: under normal conditions, the wind against the sea causes foam on the icebergs' edges, making them visible from the distance.

Design and manufacturing defects

The response time of the ship’s rudder to the command of the helm (35 seconds)

The traverse bulkheads, walls that separate watertight compartments, were not high enough, allowing water to pass from one compartment to next.

The ship’s structure was too weak between the third and fourth funnels, the area where the breach occurred.

The steel used to construct the plates of the hull (25.4 mm in width) and the boat’s rivets were of mediocre quality and weak at low temperatures.

The capacity of the lifeboats (20 boats with room for a total of 1,178 people) was insufficient for the number of passengers (2,201).

Risky sailing

The speed of the vessel – 22.5 knots, or 41.7 km/hr – was too high for crossing an area known to be hazardous. At that speed, a large ocean liner measuring 270 meters and weighing 46,000 metric tons cannot turn in less than 500 meters, and, at speeds greater than 40 km/hr, would need 1.5 km to come to a full stop.

Errors and oversights of the crew

The radio operators did not relay to officers, in a timely fashion, all the messages indicating the presence of icebergs.

The watchmen observing from the crow’s nest did not have surveillance binoculars.

The seriousness of colliding with the iceberg was downplayed, resulting in the first lifeboats leaving almost empty.

Many of the internal doors in 3rd class were locked shut, some guarded by armed members of the crew.

The location of the ship was imprecise: the shipwreck was found 13.7 nautical miles (25.5 km) southeast.

Most of the personnel aboard were engaged shortly before the cruise ship’s departure and were inadequately trained.

How did the largest ocean liner in the world, designed to resist 72 hours of the worst of catastrophes, go down in less than three? During diving operations carried out since 1996, sonar has shown that there were no ruptures or cracks in the structure of the wreckage. The six openings on the starboard side of the Titanic, caused by the blow of the iceberg, demonstrate that the joints between the plates had become detached.

As it turns out, rivets were found, some that appeared ripped out of the hull because their flat parts were missing. These rivets were given to Dr Timothy Foecke, the chief metallurgist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Metallurgy Division (American governmental organisation located in Gaithersburg, Maryland). He studied their structure and composition using sophisticated analysis techniques: microscopic metallography, gamma spectral analysis, and surface chemical reactions.

The deadly detail

Scoriae are impurities that come from molten minerals. To reinforce cast iron, a small percentage of scoriae is necessary; an excess of scoriae actually makes it weak and brittle.

Normal rivets contain 2% scoriae; the rivets analysed contained an average of 9.3% (19 of 48 rivets analysed had an excess of scoriae, some as much as 17%). Cross sections of the rivets demonstrate that the scoriae are distributed all along the rivet and that the wire (direction of fibres) turns abruptly at a right angle with respect to the rivet shank, creating an area of great weakness.

These results show that the impact of the iceberg did not cause indentations in the starboard side of the ship as it was long thought, but probably caused the breakage of structurally weak rivets. This allowed the disassembly of the hull plates, and, consequently, the entry of water.

Lord Mersey's report addressed (p. 40) the question of the low survival rate of third-class passengers, as follows:

"It has been suggested before the Enquiry that the third-class passengers had been unfairly treated; that their access to the boat deck had been impeded; and that when at last they reached that deck the first and second-class passengers were given precedence in getting places in the boats. There appears to have been no truth in these suggestions. It is no doubt true that the proportion of third-class passengers saved falls far short of the proportion of the first and second class, but this is accounted for by the greater reluctance of the third-class passengers to leave the ship, by their unwillingness to part with their baggage, by the difficulty in getting them up from their quarters, which were at the extreme ends of the ship, and by other similar causes. The interests of the relatives of some of the third-class passengers who had perished were in the hands of Mr. Harbinson, who attended the Enquiry on their behalf. He said at the end of his address to the court: 'I wish to say distinctly that no evidence has been given in the course of this case which would substantiate a charge that any attempt was made to keep back the third-class passengers ... I desire further to say that there is no evidence that when they did reach the boat deck there was any discrimination practiced either by the officers or by the sailors in putting them into the boats.'

Much has been made of a supposed passivity in a crisis that, it is asserted, was part of the steerage culture, this being offered up as a significant reason for the high fatality rates among the Third Class.12 Not as much has been said, however, of the culture of those in authority on the Titanic. In particular, the view expressed frequently both by officers and First Class passengers, that the Third Class men were ‘dangerous individuals.’13 This comes out in its most extreme forms as racial allusions, animalistic images, tales of heroic threats, scoundrels caught, punishments meted out and so on and so forth, almost all directed at the Third Class men. Fifth Officer Lowe made such a spectacle of himself at the American inquiry that the Italian ambassador14 complained, and wrested a formal apology from him over his assertion (referring most likely to Third Class men on the after Well Deck) that:

I saw a lot of Italians, Latin people, all along the ship’s rail—understand it was open—and they were all glaring, more or less like wild beasts, ready to spring. That is why I yelled to look out, and let go, bang, right along the ship’s side (A.).

(anti-Catholic discrimination had already peaked, though - its high point was probably the mid-19th-c "escapee nun" craze")

any connections that can be made are always immediately tempered by an eye for their differences...do we learn more through these ill-fitting analogies? i doubt it...

iceberg = Bush adm.
&
ship = everything else in America

And then there was one...

LONDON (AP) -- Barbara West Dainton, believed to be one of the last two survivors from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died in England at age 96.

Dainton died Oct. 16 at a nursing home in Camborne, England, according to Peter Visick, a distant relative. Her funeral was held Monday at Truro Cathedral, Visick said Thursday.

Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean of Southampton, England, who was 2 months old at the time of the Titanic sinking, is now the disaster's only remaining survivor, according to the Titanic Historical Society.

The last American survivor, Lillian Gertrud Asplund, died in Massachusetts last year at age 99.