23 years ago today 31 people died and over 250 were injured when two trains collided at Ladbroke Grove. First and foremost our thoughts are with the many people who are still affected by the accident years later. As well as being one of the worst train crashes in Britain over the last few decades, […]
Waking on Sunday morning I imagine that many people felt the same sense of terrible shock and sadness that I did at the news of mass fatalities at a football match in Malang, Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, amidst the outpouring of grief, there have been many calls to learn lessons from the tragedy. This would seem to
Learning from Disasters – the Indonesia Football Crush Read More »
17 years ago today, London was shaken by a series of terrorist bombings on public transport that left 56 people dead and hundreds injured. As well as remembering all those affected by the tragedy, it is timely to reflect on the lasting legacy of that day. Although living and working in London at the time,
On 11th March 2011, a tsunami off the coast of Japan triggered one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. At the time we wrote the following piece on our blog: “It is reported that the current perilous situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant is the result of the failure of backup generators to supply
Last Saturday marked the anniversary of the Kegworth Air Crash. On 8th January 1989 a British Midland Boeing 737 developed an engine fault shortly after taking off from East Midlands Airport bound for Belfast. The pilots mistakenly shut down the wrong engine and the plane crashed onto the M1 just outside the airport perimeter. Of
On 6th July 1988, 167 men died following a devastating fire on the Piper Alpha platform, operated by Occidental Oil in the North Sea. Only 61 people survived, some of whom leapt over 100 feet from the burning platform into the sea. As ever, our thoughts are with those survivors and the bereaved families. The
The Manchester Arena Inquiry Volume 1: Security for the Arena was published last week. It is now over four years since the attack, and the proceedings of the Inquiry have been widely reported as they happened; but this volume brings together all the evidence about security prior to 22nd May 2017 and, crucially, provides a
What Have We Learnt from the Manchester Arena Inquiry Volume 1? Read More »
Tributes have been paid in Glasgow and across the world to the 66 people who died in a crush on Stairway 13 at Ibrox Park fifty years ago today. A casual reading of the incident might conclude that it was simply a tragic combination of circumstances – Rangers fans elated by a last-minute equaliser against
On the evening of 18th of November 1987, 31 people died and many more were injured in a terrible fire in Kings Cross Underground station. As always in these blog posts, we should firstly remember the victims and the many others who were affected by the incident. Whilst the most obvious “cause” of the tragedy
