Costa Concordia - in the context of workplace and public safety, interpret the elements. This is a massive failure in duty of care - to passengers, to workers on the ship - and to the ship's captain, placed in a job for which he seems to have been ultimately unfitted. The big question is not 'what did the captain do, or not do?' but rather how in an age of extraordinary, magical, technology could the ship sail blithely into danger? What did the ship's owners Costa Cruises do, or not do, that allowed no over-ride of the decision to go too close to shore? There's a fascinating article by Robert Winston in Britain's 'Telegraph' for Monday 23 January on the known paralysing effects of disaster - that people will as easily freeze as fight. The article 'Costa Concordia: what made the captain panic?' is at http://tinyurl.com/75kbsb. It's an argument about the unpredicability of people's panic reactions - we simply do not know how we will react, until it happens to us.
Winston refers to the Titanic, as have many. He concludes that the Titanic reminds us that 'in our technologically dominated environment, the bigger and more powerful the machine, the more that can go wrong.'
Of course most of us will be far more familiar with other big and powerful transport machines. When something goes wrong with an A380, airline journalists move quickly to raising public awareness. Look at the very public chat over the past week re, um, 'hairline cracks' in the wings of this beautiful giant duck. The Costa Concordia disaster has to serve as reminder that public knowledge not delayed or diluted, a public capacity to act and/or a fearless corporate duty of care are key defenders against the mistakes, often birthed in laziness, arrogance and profiteering, that cost lives. If only one person goes down for this, if the accident is quickly sheeted home to the error of one human, the lesson will be lost. There have been and there will be bigger safety crimes. Think back to the lies over Bhopal; think the terrible inaction on Hurricane Katrina; think the fragmented lines of command during Victoria's Black Saturday fires. Listen critically to the unfolding narrative of Costa Concordia. Every such event is a failure of forethought, care and disaster management. Be loud, be noisy, be heard; they should not happen again.
