me it just went to show how quickly the city was demolished aftermath on the 12th of may the US congress voted for a $1000 available foreign aid for the island more countries also offered a helping hand these included Canada the UK, Germany, Italy Denmark, Japan, Russia and the Vatican officially there would be only two survivors from san pierre Louis, Auguste, Saiparis a prisoner held in an underground cell in the town's jail and Leon, Compierre, Landry in reality there were more survivors who were pulled from the city's rubble whereas others had managed to evacuate themselves but Mount Pelé wasn't finished with san pierre thousands of rescuers by the 20th of May had flooded the stricken city searching for anyone both alive or dead a second eruption emerged from Pelé sweeping a pyroclastic flow into san pierre once again killing around 2,000 rescue workers but that still wasn't the end on the 30th of August another pyroclastic flow struck Mourn Rouge Aduper, Bullion, Basset, Pont and Mourn Capel killing close to 900 it would still not be the end of the eruptions from Pelé however which after many lulls and lava flows would finally end on the 5th of October 1905 san pierre would never return to its pre-eruption population in the 60s the city had a population of around 6,000 but by the 2010s this had reduced to around 4,000 needless to say the disaster captured the imagination of many across the globe I mean it is one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in modern history and it brings us back to the rediscovery of George Millier's long lost technical marvel of a film New volcanic eruptions are captured as they happen but we need to appreciate that this film was made in 1905 using in-camera special effects at the time and it is very impressive to watch this is a plain difficult video all videos on the channel are created by me John the currently sunny but windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to listen to me talk about random subjects I've got Instagram and Twitter so check them out if you fancy seeing other things I do and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please Before we start I'm pleased to announce that the UK is the release date of my latest bunch of music The Temple Street EP You can check it out on Bandcamp, iTunes and Spotify Right that's my self promotion over let's start with this week's scheduled video It is the morning of the 19th of April 1989 and there is a fleet exercise underway in the Caribbean Sea just next to Puerto Rico one of the ships involved is the USS Iowa and she is getting ready to fire her 18 inch guns turret 1 attempts to fire its 3 guns all go but one quickly the order to fire turret 2's guns was given but 81 seconds later an unexpected explosion erupted from the turret's centre gun my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we're looking at the USS Iowa Disaster War on the horizon Our story starts 40 years before the tragic day in April 1989 with war within spitting distance of the USA it is the 1930's and Japan is rampaging around parts of Asia the USA anticipating a clash with the emerging empire has been war planning a naval clash this was called war plan orange and during this it was found that the US needed a counter to the Japanese Congo class of battleships come about in the form of the Iowa class or fast battleships capable of speeding along at up to 33 knots or 38 miles an hour fully loaded now I'm not going to go too much of a deep dive into the Iowa class battleship as the brilliant battleship New Jersey YouTube channel covers these ships history in much greater detail than I could attempt to achieve but what we do need to talk about is Iowa's guns and a brief look at her service life the guns so the USS Iowa had 9 breech loaded 16 inch 50 calibre mark 7 naval guns they were placed in 3 gun turrets of which the Iowa had 3 each gun in the turret was independently elevatable and fireable and weighed 267 1900 pounds and 21500 kilograms the turrets were armoured and contained a whole high of activity even though you can only see the gun the turret actually extended between 4 and 5 floors below the ship's deck right at the bottom of the turret was projectile and bag charge storage each room was protected behind fireproof bulkheads so how did the guns fire? well first they have to be loaded this begins in the bottom of the turret where the powder bags are placed into a hoist there are 6 needed for a full charge the hoist takes them up to the gun room at the same time the projectile was being selected in a separate room there are generally 2 types of ammunition armor piercing and high explosive there was also a nuclear shell later on in the Iowa's service life but for this video we don't need to know about that so when the projectile arrives at the top of the hoist and goes into the cradle the gun is moved to an elevation of 5 degrees the breach is opened and the cradle and spanning tray are moved to the horizontal plane a mechanical rammer pushes the projectile into the gun then the 6 powder bags are placed on the cradle and pushed via the spanning tray into the gun slowly by the rammer the rammer was used at 14 feet per second for pushing in the projectile and 1.5 feet per second for the fragile powder bags if the faster speed was used for the powder it ran the risk of creating excess friction and compression which potentially could cause it to set a light the rammer also didn't have any safety system for preventing the wrong speed being used the breach is enclosed and the primer is added and the gun is moved to its firing position and it's now ready to go after firing the gun returns to the loading position the breach is opened and any debris are blown out of the gun the breach is also cleaned and the gun is ready to go again loading to firing can be done in an impressively quick 30 seconds so back to the Iowa's service life well, the things she was built for you know, the predicted war in the Pacific lo and behold actually happened she was commissioned in February 1943 and initially saw service in the Atlantic Ocean she was moved to the Pacific in January 1944 as the flagship for the battleship Division 7 during a typhoon in December 1944 Iowa suffered damage and was sailed back to the US for repair work in August 1945 she would be one of the ships to enter Tokyo Bay to oversee Japan's surrender after the war she was modernized with better radar but her first service life would end in 1949 she was then added to the country's rather vast fleet of mothball ships but not for too long as she was reactivated for the Korean War on the 14th of July 1951 and formally recommissioned on the 25th of August after the Korean War she was used for training cruises and NATO exercise strike back but yet again she would be decommissioned in 1958 the Iowa would languish in the Atlantic reserve fleet until once again she was brought back to life in 1982 this was thanks to Ronald Reagan and his campaign promise of a 600 ship strong navy to face off against the commie fleet the ship was modernized and recommissioned in 1984 amazingly within her $500 million budget but this was because of a few cutbacks in repair works most notably in her guns one other cutback was that the US Navy board of inspection and survey in-serve inspection was not completed it would take the best part of two years until the inspection was undertaken on the 17th of March 1986 and probably not much of a surprise when it failed mainly due to the engine not being as good as it should be and severe hydraulic fluid leaks in all three of the main turrets of the ship she wasn't taken out to service however instead opted to be repaired while still in use a couple of years later and after spending some time in the Persian Gulf Iowa returned to Norfolk Virginia for maintenance on the 10th of March 1988 in May 1988 Captain Fred Moussali took command of the Iowa and one of his first decisions on board was to cancel a $1 million planned repair job on the three main turrets in which they had over 75 known faults the decision assisted by the executive officer Mike Fahey reallocated the money to power plant repairs when in August 1988 came around the Iowa set sail for Cheapskate Bay for refresher training in sea trials during this time and leading into January 1989 the Iowa's main guns were used sparingly as such training was not as good as it should have been leading to poor morale and confidence in the three main turrets but although with not the most confident gunnery crews the Iowa would take part in a fleet exercise off the coast of Puerto Rico the ship would have to sail from Norfolk on the 13th of April 1989 the exercise was named Fleet X 389 and was under the command of Vice Admiral Jerome L. Johnson in which the Iowa filled in the role as the Admiral's flagship four days after leaving Norfolk the Iowa was in the Caribbean Sea and the exercise was set to begin a gunnery exercise a firing exercise was planned for the 19th of April as such during the evening of the 18th the turrets crews prepared their guns for firing this would involve blowing compressed air down the barrels of the ship's guns to clear any debris all well and good apart from the intergun where the system was not functional around the same time on the evening of the 18th during a briefing master chief Steven Skelly announced that turret two would participate in an experiment of his design where a type of propellant called D 846 powder would be used to fire 2700lbs shells you see D 846 powder burned faster than the regular powder charges it was amongst the oldest in the ship's infantry dating back to the Second World War but it's extra power came with an issue it was only rated to be used on lighter 1900lbs shells this was to not exert extra stress on the ship's guns using six charges of the D 846 and the heavier shell could result in over pressure and the type of explosion you don't want on a gun deck the bag charges even had warning do not use with 2700lbs projectiles written on the side of them Skelly had a simple solution to this instead of six bag charges he planned for his experiment to use just five simple the goal of the experiment was to improve accuracy of the guns and for the 19th gunnery exercise he devised ten shots of the heavy shells and D 846 two from the left gun and four from the centre of the turret too Senior Chief Ziegler was concerned about the experiment and the readiness of turret 2's crew many were inexperienced a job where a small mistake could lead to disaster a particularly dangerous part of the loading procedure was ramming as I mentioned before an inexperienced rammerman could over ram the bag charge at the faster speed the rammerman had never used the rammer before to fire shoot and hadn't had any experience with non-standard bag loads which increased the risk of a misfire by making too big of a gap between the final charge bag and the primer to add even more danger to the mix the rammer was known to randomly move on its own the explosion it is the morning of the 19th of April 1989 and the gun crews aboard USS Iowa are getting turrets 1, 2 and 3 ready for the firing exercise at 9.01 am the crews reported they were trained to starboard in firing position and ready to start the exercise at 9.33 turret 1 fired its centre and right guns they worked as they should but its left gun misfired the order for turret 2 to load and fire a 3 gun salvo was then given within a minute the left and right guns were ready to fire but the centre gun was having some issues Ziegler announced over the turret telephone left gun loaded good job the centre gun is having a little trouble we'll straighten that out centre gun captain Richard Eric Lawrence called out we're not ready yet something was happening in the centre gun over the intercom mort mort mort cooling Dale Mortison in turret 1 was heard Ziegler shouted oh my god the powder is smouldering shortly after oh my god there's a flash was heard over the intercom then just 81 seconds after the order to ready turret 2 for firing was received the centre gun exploded a fireball between 2500 3000 Farrah Heights or 1600 degree centigrade blew out from the centre guns open breach debris was blasted around the gun room and out of the front of the turret the explosion was contained within the turret and it spread across all three gun rooms even though they were separated by walls the armoured door for the middle guns powder lift was left open at the time of the explosion which helped spread the explosion down the turret usually crews would stage more powder on the lift which again assisted in the spread of the fire and explosions 47 men were killed including Ziegler 12 crewmen in or near the turret's powder magazine located to the bottom of the turret were able to escape without serious injury saved by the blast doors used to fire on the explosive propellants aftermath in the immediate aftermath firefighting crews entered the turret and blasted everything with water the ceiling the walls the floors and even the guns were soaked after the fire was extinguished the grim task of body recovery and identification took place however notes and body locations and photos weren't taken this would hinder finding out where many of the sailors had fallen the bodies were flown to Roosevelt station in Puerto Rico then off to Charles C. Carson centre for mortuary affairs at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware the bodies were released to the families on the 24th of April even before some had been positively identified meaning that it is likely that some were buried by the wrong families the Federal Bureau of Investigation assisted the US Navy to identify all 47 sets of remains and by the 16th of May 1989 this was apparently complete this was done by the FBI cutting off fingers of the unidentified bodies but back to the Iowa she still had two loaded guns and that needed to be well unloaded Operation Specialist First Class James Bennett Drake from the USS Coral Sea led the unloading operation upon seeing the middle gun he saw what he thought was evidence of overramming a set sail to return to Norfolk reaching there on the 23rd of April a memorial service was held on the 24th and was attended by President George H. W. Bush but as the families mourned the dead and the Iowa's damage was inspected the question of how could the middle gun have exploded in such a dramatic way had to be answered and this would result in a little bit of a scandal and a bit of taste in many service personnel's mouths The Investigations So as you may have noticed I said investigations this was because it would turn out that the Navy's answer was a little bit shall we say unbelievable so initially an investigation was undertaken by the Navy itself this was in the form of an informal one officer investigation the man for the job was Commodore Richard D. Milligan Milligan and his team interviewed a number of the staff aboard the Iowa experiments were brought up by some but were quickly suppressed some of those interviewed found their statements scrubbed or altered during his interview Skelly admitted that he was aware that he shouldn't have been making the gun's fire the D846 powder were the 2700 pound shells not much else was pursued as Skelly had managed to convince Captain Fred Musali that the experiments were official and legit the investigation would be given a new path to walk down you see Captain Fred Musali received a letter from one of the dead sailors sisters Kathy Kubikina on the 7th of May explaining that Clayton Hartwig double indemnity life insurance with a Kendral Truett named as the cell recipient you see Hartwig wasn't meant to be in the turret that day he was asked to assist the middle gun crew due to their lack of experience in naval investigative service as the initial investigation was informal Hartwig's sister Kathy Kubikina was taken for interview and almost right off the bat was questioned about Hartwig's sexuality Truett was then brought in for interview and heavily pressured him to admit having a relationship with Hartwig Truett's wife Carol was also brought in for questioning pressing her about the sexual orientation of Hartwig and Truett and asking pretty horrible questions about how often she and her husband had sex and what type of sexual acts they had done they also threw in whether she had had sex with any of Truett's crewmates Truett upon hearing of the interview with his wife withdrew from helping the investigation completely at around the time of these interviews someone within the NIS started leaking the homosexual relationship and by extension murder suicide theory with the media and it featured in a number of newspapers however one fact was admitted by both the NIS and the media in that the insurance policy was taken out several years before the explosion on the 24th of May NBC News identified Truett and Hartwig as criminal suspects in the Iowa explosion the NIS put pressure on one of Hartwig's known friends aboard the Iowa David Smith he was interrogated for 7 hours and 40 minutes during which he was told he would be charged with 47 counts of murder after this interrogation he was sent back to the Iowa where he was forced to do a 9 hour shift and when that was done shipped back off to the NIS for even more interrogation for another 6 hours probably very sleep deprived and scared he made a statement claiming Hartwig had made sexual advances towards him and had shown him an explosive timer claiming he was planning to blow up 3 days later Smith recanted his statement in full his original statement was leaked to the media but the whole recanting bit wasn't leaked the NIS went to the FBI to do a psychological evaluation on Hartwig in two transcripts were given including Smith's but again admitted that it was recanted the FBI began testing to see if the NIS's theory of an electric timer device was used to create the explosion but no evidence was found in either the NIS investigation or the FBI's laboratory experiments that such device was present in the remains of the middle gun Captain Joseph Dominic Micelli Naval Sea Systems Command quickly terminated the assistance from the FBI a 60 page report submitted by Commodore Richard Milligan in July 1989 found that the explosion was a deliberate act most probably committed by Hartwig using an electronic timer even though the FBI had debunked this the report concluded that the powder bags had been overrammed into the centre gun by 21 inches this had been done so under Hartwig's direction in order to trigger the explosive timer that he had placed between two of the powder bags but although the FBI results were sidelined on the 28th of August technicians at the Naval Weapons Support Centre at Crane Indiana actually agreed with the FBI's conclusion that an electronic timer batteries and or primer were not involved in the explosion so Captain Joseph Dominic Micelli then said it must have been a chemical timer so guess what the Navy did of course there was nothing wrong with the ship's guns as such on the 11th of August 1989 the Navy recertified 16 inch guns for service this did not sit very well with the victims not with the public and definitely not with Hartwig's family as such Senators Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn concerned with Navy's conclusions arranged to hold a meeting on the Navy's investigation the lack of adequate training illegal gun experiments use of ancient powder and cutbacks in gun maintenance all came to light during the congressional inquiry it was announced that Sandhya National Laboratories of Albuquerque, New Mexico was requested by the Government Accountability Office to assist the Navy's technical investigation this was to see if there was an accidental explanation for the explosion Sandhya focused on the case of an overram the Navy had admitted to it in its report that it had happened they determined that the 5 powder bags in turret 2's centre gun had been rammed to 24 inches into the gun and the Navy had estimated in Milligan's report a drop test was devised to simulate an overram situation and on the 18th test the powder bags exploded importantly without any explosive timer a final technical report was published in August 1991 and concluded it is concluded that there is no explicit physical evidence that the hypothetical chemical ignition device was present in the centre gun of turret 2 it is also concluded that the high speed overram is a possible cause of the April 19th 1989 explosion aboard the USS Iowa the Navy reopened its investigation and Myceli conducted more Navy tests and the bags exploded at a variety of different ramming speeds but he tried to play down his results as such when the Navy investigation lead Frank Kelso released his findings it would follow the Navy's original conclusion the initial investigation was an honest attempt to weigh impartially all the evidence as it existed at the time and indeed despite the Sandia theory and almost 2 years of subsequent testing a substantial body of scientific and expert evidence continued to support the initial investigation finding that no plausible accident cause can be established he also stated however that the Navy had also found no evidence that the explosion was caused intentionally bearing in mind that both the Navy tests and the Sandia tests had shown overramming could cause an explosion so to me in my uneducated mind it feels like a bit of a responsibility dodge Kelso also concluded in his press conference sincere regrets to the family of Clayton Hartwig and to the families of those who died that such a long period has passed despite all efforts no certain answer regarding the cause of this terrible tragedy can be found the families of the victims and of Hartwig filed lawsuits against the Navy the Hartwig case was filed on the 19th of April 1991 but it didn't come to fruition and was dismissed on the 19th of November 1999 due to pure defamination claims being barred by sovereign immunity the Hartwig family also sued NBC but this was thrown out due to the information being supplied to the media had come from the NIS the other sailors family suits were also summarily dismissed the USS Iowa wouldn't last much longer in service with the Navy and the damaged turret was trained forward and sealed off never to be used again she was retired in Norfolk on the 26th of October 1990 and she is now a museum ship in LA this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently very sunny and warm corner of southern London UK I have patreon and youtube members and I'd like to thank you all for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have instagram and twitter so check them out for photos from behind the scenes and all that's left to say is thank you for watching please it is August 2020 and the world news cycle has been interrupted from its Covid obsession with one hell of a disaster the virus at least on UK news is pushed down the reporting list with parts of the city looking like a war has ravaged through it although looking like a bomb has gone off this destruction has been caused by what to laymen may seem as something not very dangerous a main ingredient in fertilizer although to you my loyal watches you know how deadly this stuff can actually be no surprise that it piqued the interest of the news media so today I probably don't need to introduce this video subject but I will do anyway this Saturday we're looking at the Beirut explosion a ship and a harbour the city of Beirut has been the proud owner of a port since the 1880s it has a long and interesting history with it playing an important role during the Lebanese Civil War after the war and as the city began to rebuild itself and as the country started the process of reconciliation the port would go on to become one of the largest and busiest on the eastern Mediterranean so ships come and go freight is loaded and unloaded all pretty standard fare for a harbour another not unheard of thing is that of ship abandonment where vessels come into port the owners disavow their property and often the crew are left high and dry the lucky ones usually get to bugger off but sometimes some poor souls are left aboard that would be the similar situation of a cargo ship entering the port of Beirut on the 21st of November 2013 the ship's name is the MV Rosas she is a 1900 gross tonne cargo ship built in 1986 in Naruto, Japan originally as a dredger named Daifuku Maru 8 but over the years she changed hands names and even changed use to her final form as a cargo vessel her final owner was Russian businessman Igor Grechewski from 2012 who was living in Limousole Cyprus the MV Rosas as she was now known flew the Moldovan flag this was Grechewski's first goer owning a ship and it wasn't going to go so well in July 2013 the MV Rosas was held up by Spanish authorities in the port of Seville she was falling apart and was not the most reliable she was set sail once again and be chartered to transport 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in bags in September 2013 the company that chartered the load was Rostavi Azot LLC a Georgian fertilizer maker it was to be shipped from Georgia to Fabrika de Explosifos Mozambique in Matola Mozambique by the 27th of September the MV Rosas was loaded up and ready to depart from Batami she set sail stopping at various ports along the way towards the Suez Canal on the 21st of November 2013 she entered the port of Beirut you see the ship was having financial issues with worries the owner did not have enough funds to pay the Suez Canaltel the ship's owner had found another shipment of cargo that would be dropped off along the way to Mozambique perfect this would pay for that pesky Suez fee but there was a small snack the MV Rosas important cargo hatches were rusty and weak and as captain Boris Prokojev would later say to the BBC in an interview the hatches were buckled and weak so we couldn't take it we refused you see refusing the cargo came with a fine a fine the owner refused to pay and on top of that and port fees as such the MV Rosas was impounded all but for the crew managed to flee the ship and escape back to their home country of Ukraine the remaining crew including the captain would be stuck aboard the ship for around a year and then after selling some of its fuel to hire a lawyer managed to secure their own release but the MV Rosas stayed in port the owner had claimed to be bankrupt and the cargo owners by now had lost interest as such she stayed in Barout but not just the vessel stayed her explosive materials aboard also sat there the cargo was brought to shore in 2014 and placed in a building named Hangar 12 over the years the cargo would sit and the MV Rosas still moored in port would eventually take on water and sink but although financially damaging for the ship's owner the MV Rosas's cargo was now one big of a headache for Lebanese customs officials they had essentially now got to house a 2,750 ton bomb officials trying to find someone to offload the literal ticking time bomb off to by sending out letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issue in July 2020 Lebanon's High Defence Council informed President Aoun that there were dangerous materials in Beirut's port he immediately ordered military and security agencies to do what was needed in order to remove them safely but sadly the cargo would languish inside Hangar 12 until disaster would strike in August that same year the explosion it is the 4th of August 2020 and some welders are working on a Hangar door repair the same hangar that was the home to that couple of thousand tons of ammonium nitrate the same building had also been a home to a stash of fireworks at around 1745 sparks landed on the pile of fireworks and this started a small fire a team of firefighters were dispatched upon arrival just 10 minutes later the hangar was emitting strange noises and the fire was getting increasingly more intense an explosion rang out at an estimated yield of between 1.5 and 2.5 tons of TNT this was at 1807 fireworks flashed and sparked as Hangar 12 showed some signs of damage 33 to 35 seconds later a much larger explosion erupted from the hangar some estimated it at 1.1 kilotons of TNT the explosion could be felt some 150 miles away in Cyprus the shockwave blasted out into the city of Beirut an orangey red cloud descended upon the city a common sight after an ammonium nitrate explosion next door to Hangar 12 was the country's largest grain store it was severely damaged leaving the country of less than one month supply of grain multiple buildings including three hospitals were obliterated buildings within a 6 mile radius suffered varying levels of damage leaving around 300,000 people displaced some of the buildings damaged even included cultural heritage sites museums and embassies ships in the harbour suffered extensive damage including the cruise ship or in queen which was subsequently capsized anyone who could in the city helped by pulling people out of the damaged buildings and any working vehicle in and around the port area were used for emergency transport for injured people in total 75 ambulances and 375 medics were dispatched to assist the injured and trapped local businesses offered food and medical supplies where they could and the international community arranged help for the city including the Netherlands Turkey and the UK also sending search and rescue teams a day after the explosion Prime Minister Hassan Dyeb declared a two week state of emergency and the government launched an investigation into the explosion over the coming weeks debris would be disposed of by local residents as they tried to rebuild their lives and several hotels were opened up to house the displaced eventually the death toll would become apparent a surprisingly low but still tragic number of roughly 218 with another 7,000 injured included in the dead was the original team of firefighters dispatched to the original firework fire the city like many across the world at this point in 2020 was already feeling the financial pinch with COVID shortages as such it hit the country hard financially with an estimated cost of around 15 billion US dollars the investigation now usually at this point in the video I go over the investigation where those responsible are identified but with the Beirut disaster the investigation was and is shall we say less than ideal the government formed an investigative committee led by Prime Minister Hassan Dyeb although he would resign from his job on the 10th of August 2020 a day after the explosion 16 Beirut port officials who had overseen the storage of the material since 2014 were placed under house arrest the number would increase to 25 within the first few days Interpol also asked to detain the Russian ship's owner and the captain and red notices were issued Judge Fadi Sawan was appointed to head up the investigation he started summoning various ministers and surprise surprise he would be relieved of his position in February 2021 with Tarek Beitel taking over the same month the investigation would soon fall into infighting across the country's political lines Prime Minister Dyeb and three former ministers were also charged with negligence over the Beirut port explosion the investigation ground to a halt because higher ups in the Lebanese government were immune to investigations and by early 2023 all suspects had been released and he was looking like the investigation wouldn't carry on but surprisingly Tarek Beitel resumed his work in March 2023 he would bring charges against Lebanon's most senior prosecutor but so far it hasn't led to anything substantial meaning the investigation is still ongoing at the time of writing this script in mid 2023 the investigation or lack of has created concerns in the international community as it has highlighted issues with the Lebanese judiciary the city would go on to rebuild but in 2022 the grain silo which had taken the significant portion of the explosion quarter light and collapsed the disaster showed how deadly ammonium nitrate can be when ignored most of the players in their disaster had just not really appreciated the bomb they had in hangar 12 and this is all too common as we see across the world with ammonium nitrate explosions this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are created with common attribution share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John currently because it's night time cold and dark southern corner of London UK I have youtube members and patreon so thank you very much for your financial support and the rest of you who tune in every week to listen and watch me talk I have instagram and twitter where I post up behind the scenes photographs and the like and I also have a second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next week players out please it is the afternoon of the 18th of May 1927 and Bath Charter Township Michigan United States is reeling from a terrible tragedy several buildings have been destroyed one of which is a school the destruction has been caused by several explosions and horrifyingly still it was a deliberate act as the community mourns the losses that the perpetrator had committed the act due to a lost election and an increase in taxes this reason is clearly insane and it would be no consolation for the community however it would highlight the risks of an individual who feels they have been slighted my name is John and today we're looking at the Bath School Massacre welcome to plainly difficult a frugal man our story starts and ultimately ends with one man Andrew Philip Keough now I won't give you a full biography and I'll try to keep it to the relevant information but Keough was a farmer born in Tecumseh, Michigan on the 1st of February 1872 he was known to be a clever child taking a keen interest in electricity making experiments with machinery from the family farm as such after completing school he moved to Michigan State College as it was known at the time he studied electrical engineering during this time he met a woman who would later become his wife Ellen Nellie Price after graduating he worked as an electrician for several years he even worked down in Missouri and in 1911 he received a head injury resulting from a fall which put him into a coma for two weeks presumably as a result of the injury he was taken to live with his father now widower and remarried his new stepmother wasn't Keough's most favorite person in the world and disputes between the two were a very common sight in September 1911 a suspicious event would unfold between Keough and his stepmom Francis she was trying to light an all-burning stove all of a sudden it erupted into an explosion covering the poor women in flames in an apparent attempt to save his stepmother threw water all over her and the oil fire this unsurprisingly spread the fire and Francis would die on the 18th of September all of this talk of people's wives rather neatly leads us back to Nellie Keough's return to Michigan had rekindled his relationship with Ellen Price they would marry in 1912 and move around the area until purchasing a 185 acre farm in Bath Township it was originally owned by Keough's wife's aunt and ran the couple a cost of $12,000 the property would be purchased half in cash and half with a mortgage Keough was known to help neighbors and was also known to be dependable he was intelligent, neat and a clean man albeit impatient and easily angered it would seem Keough was not particularly interested in farming he beat his animals and reportedly beat one of his horses to death what he did do on the farm was mechanical experiments making various attachments to his tractor Keough would get a reputation in the township for being rather frugal even stopping attending the local church after being asked to pay a parish assessment Bath Township residents voted in and approved the creation of a consolidated school district in 1922 this would localize schooling from smaller community schools to a more centralized system this is all well and good but how is it to be paid for well, much to Keough's dismay it would be done through land owners tax this would hit Keough's pocket hard because the tax was worked out on the value of each property of Bath Township per $1,000 the initial cost in 1922 was around $120 but it would rise over the subsequent years Keough had quite an interest in the taxes and ran for election for the school board of trustees who was elected in 1924 for three years and at the same time appointed the treasurer for one year Keough was motivated by one goal and one goal only to reduce the property tax as such he constantly protested any spending by the board and fought tooth and nail over even spending on a central school equipment in 1925 Keough was then made a temporary town clerk he would be required to run for election in April the next year but this is where he would see defeat he wasn't re-elected and no doubt it hit his ego hard and as such he began to think about some kind of revenge Nelly by now was severely ill with tuberculosis adding extra cost to the household Keough stopped working on his farm and the property began to fall into disrepair Nelly's uncle held the mortgage for the property and began foreclosure proceedings due to Keough stopping payments his life was falling apart and with revenge on the mind he began purchasing dynamite from nearby Lansing being a farmer this didn't arouse too much suspicion he also spread out his purchases to different times and different shops he procured over a ton of piratel a world war one surplus explosive popular for hedge and tree stump clearing his revenge would be taken out on the township and upon everyone who had wronged him and financially crippled him which the one big one was the school itself it is thought that he began planning a school bombing around August 1926 over the coming months he cut all of his farm's fences debarks the trees on the property to kill them and gathered lumber around his house he filled his truck with scrap metal and replaced its tires for brand new ones and he began making journeys to the school due to his role in the school board Keough had access to the bath consolidated school over the summer holidays during May 1927 he began placing explosives in the school and around his farm neighbors noticed activity at the farm in the night something was happening Nelly was in hospital during his preparations but she would be discharged on the 16th of May after returning home at some point over the next two days Keough would kill his wife and place her body in a shed on the property what we do know is she was dead by the 18th of May 1927 when things would take an explosive turn the explosions at 845 in the morning of the 18th of May a number of firebombs went off on the Keough farm debris rained out onto other properties local residents upon seeing the fire rushed in to assist in extinguishing it one of the neighbors broke into the building to try and find any survivors upon realizing no one was inside they started trying to salvage any furniture from the flames they found some explosives inside the house and handed them off to another person fighting the fire shortly after the explosion erupted from the farm another larger explosion shot out from the bath schools north wing Keough had set up a timer for the explosives inside the school to go off at around 845 15 minutes after the school day had started presumably in an attempt to catch as many children as possible the north wing of the school collapsed burying many children underneath it back at the farm Keough fled the scene of the fire in his pickup truck and now was also loaded up with explosives and he started driving towards the school he arrived outside the bath district school roughly around half an hour after the initial explosion he summoned over some people to his car in which a scuffle broke out with members of the public trying to get a gun from Keough's hands by now many locals were surrounding the school in an attempt to try and rescue any survivors during the scuffle for the gun Keough set off the bomb in his pickup truck the explosion killed Keough Emory Hayek Nelson McFarron Cleo Clayton The Lansing Fire Department sent several firefighters and hospital workers came in from all around the region a doctor and his wife opened up their drug stores and made shift triage for the wounded and the whole community came to help local building contractors assisted in removing rubble and even the Michigan Governor came to help organize relief efforts during the search and rescue another bomb was discovered under the south wing it had an alarm clock attached set to detonate at 8.45pm it was disarmed and local police believed that the first explosion had caused the device to short circuit upon searching Keough's farm investigators found a wooden sign wired to the farm's fence with Keough's last message stenciled on it, criminals are made to report porn over the coming weeks thousands of people came to the township to help and donate money enough to rebuild the school Keough's body was buried in a pauper's grave and his wife's was claimed by her family and buried under her maiden name the Keough farm was completely plowed and searched to ensure that no explosives were hidden in the ground and were sold off at auction to pay off the mortgage a coroner's inquiry would find Keough had worked alone and had murdered his wife and that the school board was not guilty of any negligence the school's north wing would be rebuilt and on three different occasions dynamite would be found within in total 45 innocent people mostly children had been killed directly because of the bombing the total number of dead including Keough was 46 another 58 were injured with varying levels of severity with another dying a few months later of myocarditis the event marks the country's first school bombing and one of the earliest recorded school spree killings it shows how dangerous just one person can be if they have perceived the world they live in to be against them these are plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative comms attribution and share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently quite nice and warm southern corner i have instagram and a second youtube channel as well as twitter so fancy checking them out and also like to thank my patrons and youtube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you who tune in every week and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it is the 27th of june 2022 and investigators are pouring over the wreckage of an amdrak train carriages are strewn all over the place and the site is at an at grade railroad crossing the crossing is pretty lackluster in terms of advance warning to road users visibility is reduced and has been known to be a risky location you see the cause of the derailment was the collision with a dump truck it would highlight that even in the 2020s disaster involving poorly designed at grade level crossings a lot of things of the past my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult today we're looking at the tragic 2022 Missouri train derailment a dangerous crossing Mendon Missouri is a tiny community of some 160-odd residents the city founded in 1871 was moved to be near the newly built Santa Fe railroad line in the late 1880s the city and the railway became intertwined make it one of the areas biggest sources of income however ever since its peak at the start of the last century this city's population has gradually reduced from over 400 down to just over 160 it is largely surrounded by agricultural land with miles around being empty fields intersected by the railway line which over the years would change ownership eventually coming under the control of bnsf one such intersection was roughly one mile to the south west railroad 113 Porsche Prairie Avenue this crossing is somewhere in the middle of what I would like to describe as but f**k nowhere as such it has little in terms of crossing protection systems it is known as a passive crossing in that it has no active warning systems like lights or barriers instead it was armed with cross-bucks and a stop sign the line runs along a berm which raises above the Porsche Prairie Avenue or 2.7 meters above the road a side effect of this is that the road needs to rise up to meet the railway line as such there was a pretty steep incline from the road to the crossing this severely reduced visibility to road users of approaching trains which I might add can travel of speeds up to 90 miles an hour needless to say the trains have no ability to avoid a collision if running at line speed now it is all pretty standard dodgy crossing implementation we see all over the world where low traffic roads get bugger all in terms of crossing warning and protection usually no one cares so few vehicles use it and the cost is prohibitive but this crossing in particular had actually been highlighted as a concern from locals you see the types of vehicles that were most likely to cross the tracks were big tall heavy farm vehicles which gave little room for error when climbing the steep gradient onto the line the railway however did have pretty modern train control systems in place with bnsf authorising train movements with a traffic control system train movements are managed by a bnsf train dispatcher located at the dispatch centre in fort worth texas local resident mike spencer concerned about the crossing brought it to light on a 2nd of december 2019 chariton county commission meeting he was informed that he should contact the Missouri department of transportation's railroad safety division a week later commissioners spoke with officials from the state agency and were told it was on their plans to repair a couple of years would go on until a meeting at the crossing in march 2021 with a state railroad safety division engineer the issues with the crossing were pretty obvious as such it was proposed to install lights and gates along with roadway improvements the cost was estimated to be around $400,000 usually with these kind of things the federal government would pay up to 80% and the county would have to the bill of 20% but the site was rather low on the priorities list due to the limited funds available for crossing upgrades the conversion was approved to be completed in a four year plan that runs through fiscal year 2026 great all everyone needed to do was to not have a crash on the crossing but we all know what the next chapter of this video is going to be the disaster the normally pretty quiet Porsche prairie avenue in June 2022 have become a hive of activity alongside the line near the crossing the army corps of engineers were undertaking repair works to a levy to facilitate this multiple trucks cross the line to deliver aggregate one such vehicle is a 2007 kenworth W900B dump truck it is owned by MS contracting and on the 27th of June it is carrying heavy rock heading northbound towards the crossing but we will quickly pause here just to briefly talk about the train that will also be approaching the crossing the line was pretty well used being double track and all one of the trains that funded along the south west chief an amtrak operated long distance service that covers a 2265 mile route between chicago and los angeles today the train is running four hours late and is extra busy it consists of from the front to rear two GE genesis p42 dc locomotives one view liner baggage car and seven superliner railcars at approximately 12.40pm the south west chief is running along the line heading northeast at roughly 89mph at around the same time the kenworth truck is heading towards the crossing and is about to climb the steep gradient up visibility is awful and is not being helped by the vegetation overgrowth along the berm the train engineer blows the horn roughly one quarter of a mile from the crossing the truck slowly chugs up the incline and onto the crossing the time is now roughly 12.42pm the front of the truck is over the running line and slowly crossing the train strikes the truck as it still fails the line the train is travelling at roughly 87mph and the emergency brakes are applied but it wouldn't stop what would happen next the impact of the train striking the truck was enough to cause each locomotive and carriage to do rail 7 of the 8 carriages tipped over onto their side throwing passengers around within the truck was pushed down into a nearby ditch once the train came to stop many aboard made quick work of escaping the damaged carriages due to the site being pretty remote the first responders would take some time to arrive even though many emergency calls came in in a strange side effect of the time of year the route was often frequented by scouts who provided much needed first aid to the many wounded over 20 emergency crews would arrive to assist with first aid and emergency evacuations as well as body recovery locals assisted with evacuating wounded and debris removal using pickup trucks personal cars and farm equipment in total 2 would be dead on the train as well as a truck driver another passenger would die in hospital the next day of the 270 passengers and crew aboard the train 150 would be reported to have suffered some sort of injury as the disaster took place on a US railroad it would come under the jurisdiction of the NTSB to investigate the investigation so almost as soon as the dust had settled the NTSB sent a 16 person team to the crash site to pour over the wreckage the train's data recorder was pulled and it was found that the train was running as it should and they're also even to get some data from the truck as it had an onboard engine management system almost immediately the issues with the crossing were apparent and its history of concerns were dug up it would turn out that it was a tragedy just waiting to happen and the crossing was just rubbish sadly the accident was a victim of lack of a parent priority of the authorities to improve its protection controls investigators found out that just a few weeks before the disaster a farmer had posted to Facebook about the danger of the crossing that it posed and its overgrown state the crossing was blocked off to road traffic with a pile of railway sleepers the disaster in all is thought to have cost around four US million dollars in infrastructure damage but of course there would be a greater cost in lawsuits of which like BNSF and MS contracting all received cases against each other all of which so far have yet to be decided so it's really hard to rate this disaster on the legacy scale because its legacy is still yet to be understood but maybe it's something I'll come back to in a later video sorry for the slightly shorter video but normal this week I've been a little overworked because my minion army aka my family has increased basically I'm now the proud farmer of not just a toddler but also a newborn girl if you've had children, you know what it's like with the whole lack of sleep thing luckily I've got two weeks of paternity leave from my day job so hopefully I should be able to catch up with some work this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently very sunny and nice corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my patreon and youtube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week I have instagram twitter and a second channel so feel free to check them out all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it's just before noon on an august day in texas and people are carrying on with their normal day on Naguadalupe street building works are ongoing leading to banging sounds but a new sound rings out it's quickly followed by a pregnant woman falling to the ground soon enough more people also fall to the ground as the horror of what's unfolding sinks in the shots are coming from a tower in texas university the year is 1966 my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult the tragic university of texas tower shooting a sharp shooter our story to the texas tower begins and will ultimately end with this one person charles joseph wittman he was born in lake worth florida on the 24th of june 1941 he was known as an intelligent and calm child from a strict catholic family charles and his brothers were introduced to firearms at a young age this would lead them to become proficient in cleaning maintaining and shooting during his teenage years he joined the eagle scouts and took on a paper round over the years he managed to save up enough money to buy a motorcycle he was well liked in high school and charles had a career for himself in mind by the time of his graduation in june 1959 wittman enlisted in the marines on july the 6th 1959 his father didn't approve and he was also known to be violent with charles and the rest of the family however he still joined and within the first 18 months of his enlistment his experience in shooting would pay off when he achieved a sharp shooting badge he applied and was accepted into the naval enlisted science and education program this would pay for his studies initially starting with mathematics and physics eventually graduating to the university of texas in austin to study mechanical engineering his scores were initially really good making his superiors believe enrolling him was a good investment although his performance would drop when he actually started to attend uni he became known as the class joker albeit with a slightly darker sense of humour in 1962 he married cathleen france's a teaching student who was also attending the university and they had met just 6 months before his grades had a slight uptick but it wasn't enough eventually his scholarship was withdrawn and whitman was recalled to active duty and ordered to camp le june in north carolina to serve out the remainder of his 5 year enlistment he was promoted to lance corporal during his time there he was involved in an accident whilst in a jeep which had rolled over an embankment hospitalizing him for 4 days his career would take another dive when he was caught with a personal firearm on sight gambling and making threats to another marine over a $30 loan in which he was attempting to charge 50% interest on he was hit with a sentence of 30 days of confinement and 90 days of hard labour and on top of that he was demoted to the rank of private he would be honorably discharged in december 1964 after which he moved back to austin texas he re-enrolled at the university to study architectural engineering money was tight by now his wife was working as a teacher to try and help their financial situation charles took on multiple jobs he was a bill collector at some point as well as working for the texas highway department he also volunteered with the eagle scout charles and kathleen had a turbulent relationship with whitman hitting his wife on two known occasions although he had expressed concern for his behaviour of not wanting to turn out like his father speaking of parents, whitman's life would become particularly stressful when his mother announced her separation from his abusive father his mother and one of his brothers would move out to austin from florida with the assistance of charles his mother rented an apartment and secured herself a job the family break up put tremendous strain on charles and around the same time he started to experience severe headaches whitman between 1965 and 1966 saw help from several physicians but no one could get to the bottom of his severe and painful headaches he would even visit a psychiatrist in which they would later reveal that whitman had admitted to feeling hostile towards people without much provocation he felt like his headaches had worsened and his personality was changing during his time with the psychiatrist he would reference going up a tower with a deer rifle to shoot at people pressure was building up in whitman and he was only going to get worse until he could take no more on the 31st of july 1966 sat down as his typewriter to write the first of two notes attempting to explain the actions over the following day the first of august in the early hours of the first of august charles got in his car and drove to his mother's house at approximately 12 30 am he stabbed his mother to death after which he covered her body in bedsheets and left a note he then headed home and at around 3 am stabbed his sleeping wife to death he killed the two people he loved the most in the world but this wouldn't be the end of the bloodshed that day he would when the shops opened in the morning make his way to a hardware store to rent a hand truck you know those things used to carry heavy cases anyways after that he went to his bank where he cashed in some bad checks from there he went to another store bought an m1 carbine 8 boxes of ammo and some magazines after that he went on to another gun store to purchase some more ammunition and magazines as well as a shotgun from a seers shop women returned home to saw off the shotgun stock and collect his weapons in his old marine footlocker he placed the m1 a rimmington 706mm bolt action hunting rifle a 35 calibre pump rifle a 9mm luga pistol a 25 calibre pistol a smith and wesson m19 357 magnum rover the shotgun as well as over 700 rounds of ammunition he also packed cans of food coffee, vitamins dexadrine dexadrine earplugs 3.5 gallons of water matches a machete, lighter fluid binoculars, 3 knives, a small channel master transistor radio toilet paper eraser and a boss of deodorant clearly he was planning to be out for quite a while he addressed in blue overalls in an effort to masquerade as a janitor and headed down to the university of texas at around 20 past 11 am he arrived at the university using a fake id he managed to get a parking permit under the story that he was delivering supplies to a professor he carried his footlucker on the hand truck and headed for the main building he entered the building around 11.35 am and headed towards the lift as a cruel sense of luck for wittman the lift had actually originally been switched off for the day a member of staff thinking he was a repairman had actually switched it back on for him he left the lift at the 26th floor hauled his box up to the final flight of stairs and headed for the tower's observation deck in the reception he encountered a staff member he beat her unconscious with the bus of his rifle moments after he'd hit the victim's body donald waldon and sherrill botts entered the room from the observation deck in a strange lull to the violence of the day the couple left the floor unharmed and wittman began making a barricade to the floor as he began to make his way back to the deck a family attempted to push past the barricade in response wittman fired his shotgun killing a 16 year old boy and his aunt the remaining family members fled for help charles re-secured his barrier and made his way back to the observation deck he placed his weapons around him and put on a white headband the observation tower had views all around it of traffic and people moving along the guadalupe street south, east and west malls and university drive as well as a view of even further wittman sighted a couple claire wilson james and her boyfriend tom ekman claire was 8 months pregnant they were just walking outside the main building a shot rang out and hit claire in the stomach killing her unborn child soon after another shot hit ekman killing him almost instantly initially the gunshots were not noticed but soon enough more people started hitting the ground wittman would continue to change points around the observation deck making it hard to pinpoint where the gunman was soon enough members of the public returned fire upon the tower forcing wittman to fire through the storm drains on each of the towers four walls at 11.52 am the austin police department received their first report of the shootings police both on and off duty scrambled to reach the university one of the first officers on the scene was billy speed he sought cover behind a stone wall but unfortunately he was not safe wittman shot speed through a 6 inch gap in the wall killing him instantly as the gunfight unfolded wittman continued to find targets including a funeral director who had driven his ambulance to assist in ferrying the wounded many found cover from the gunfire but not all the unlucky ones caught in wittman's sights out in the open became an easy target a light aircraft was employed with a sharp shooter on board but sadly due to turbulence on approach to the tower a clear shot couldn't be made and wittman returned fire the pilot rather bravely continued to circle the tower in an attempt to distract the gunman enter this stories mad lad alan crumb he was a manager at the university bookstore and an ex-air force tail gunner upon realising the events unfolding he offered his help to the police after assisting an injured student he was given a firearm and proceeded with the police into the tower public safety agent william cohen austin police officer jerry day and crumb went into the elevator to the 26th floor where they were shortly joined by off-duty officer remaro martinez the four men made their way to the 27th floor crumb asked are we playing for keeps essentially saying the gunman wouldn't be leaving the tower alive martinez responded you're damn right we are crumb replied well you better deputise me martinez replied back consider yourself deputised they reached the observation deck martinez and mccoy went left and crumb and day went right wittman was on the north west corner crumb thought he heard movement and opened fire there was nothing and his bullet hit the parapet of the southwest corner by now it was 1 24 p.m martinez and mccoy rounded the north eastern corner wittman was looking for the source of the shot fired by crumb mccoy fired his shotgun twice and martinez fired six rounds from his revolver some of the shots hit wittman who was now lying prone the body was approached by martinez who fired one shot at him point blank shots continued to rain in from the ground as the death of wittman was not known crumb waved a white flag making marking the end of the shootout in the confusion news outlets reported crumb to be the sniper but it would be quickly corrected between 12 30 in the morning and 1 24 in the afternoon Charles wittman had killed 16 individuals wounded at least 31 others and mostly scarred hundreds more and left an indelible mark on the American psyche by 3 p.m wittman had been identified and after a phone call to the police from his dad wittman and his mother's addresses were searched and the bodies of his first victims were found wittman's note left to explain his actions requested an autopsy and cremation the first was granted but the latter was not with his body being buried with a shared service with his mother at west palm beach florida rather disgustingly he was buried with military honours and he even had a US flag draped over his coffin but back to his autopsy his body was examined a day after the shooting and a pecan sized tumour which had some necrosis was discovered inside his brain John Connolly ironically someone who had actually been shot by an ex US Marine from a tool building and also the then governor of Texas commissioned a task force to examine the autopsy findings they concluded that the tumour had no evidence of causing any neurological condition they did also say however that organic brain diseases are known to cause aggressive behaviour said that the tumour conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions they also pointed the finger of blame on the stressors in his life his parents splitting up studying and working with financial issues university closed for one day and was reopened with its flags at half mast the event ingrained itself into the culture of the decade and beyond and much like the bath school bombing just shows how much damage just one person can make this is a plain different production all videos on the channel are created commons actuation share alike licensed plain different videos are produced by me John in a currently wet corner of southern London UK and also in a currently very echoey new study room I have instagram and youtube and a second youtube channel and I'd like to thank my patreon and youtube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please this is the aftermath of a fatal error a ship has capsized a few minutes earlier cars and lorries were driving onto a roll on roll off ferry in the port of Zabruk, Belgium as the passengers made themselves comfortable aboard the ship prior to departure little did they know that they would be victims in one of the worst peacetime British maritime tragedies in living history the disaster would kill just short of 200 people and cast a worrying light on the design of row row ferries today we're looking at the MS held a free enterprise called DASTER my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult free spirit class ferries we start our story today eight years before the tragic night in belgium with the ferry company european ferries plc ordering three new ferries for its dover to calle route the shipbuilders sheikow, unterwesser ag in germany were commissioned to design and construct the new vessels required their ships to be fast and be quick to load and unload an essential part of the highly competitive dover to calle route in a pre channel tunnel world the company's predecessor towns and car ferries had pioneered the use of roll on roll off ferries and this tradition of using such vessels would carry on to the free new ferries being commissioned in 1979 the free vessels would later be named the spirit class of ferries after the name of the first in the class the ms spirit of free enterprise all three would be very similar be brandies as townsend forson ferries and be registered in the port of dover united kingdom but this is where we will say goodbye to two of the ships in our story and instead i'll focus in on one of them the ms herald of free enterprise she began paying passenger service in may 1980 the ship was of all welded steel construction comprising of eight decks numbered a to h from top to bottom a deck was crew accommodation and a radio room there was a half deck between a and b decks which housed the wheelhouse also known as the bridge b deck passenger areas crew accommodation and the galley were found there c deck also had passenger areas and a galley d deck was a suspended vehicle deck within e deck and e deck was the upper vehicle deck f deck was crew accommodation at the port end and starboard end and g deck was the main vehicle deck and finally h deck which housed the engine room stores and passenger accommodation at the forward end and g deck was the level that housed the ship's bound stern watertight doors that allowed the fast loading and unloading of vehicles the doors were kept watertight when closed by tubular neoprene seals at dover and calley the ship was loaded via the use of double link spans basically a bridge like structure that allows cars and lorries to drive onto the vessel this allowed the loading of g deck and e deck at the same time the latter had weather tight doors at the bound stern she weighed a total of seven thousand nine hundred and fifty one gross tons and had a length of a hundred and thirty one point nine one meters or four hundred and thirty two feet nine inches and she accommodated a total of 1400 people now probably goes without saying that the ship's bound stern doors need to be closed before setting sail as you know water plus hole in the ship equals ship no longer floating in order to ensure the ship's doors were correctly closed and locked the MS held a free enterprise relies solely on a person physically verifying the door status by well looking at the door and the local control panel IE the person in charge of the door has to do their job properly with little oversight the bridge had no way of knowing if the doors were closed apart from getting the word from the crew member operating the doors and the way that the ship was arranged you couldn't physically see the doors from the wheelhouse or the bridge the issue of this arrangement would be highlighted in October 1983 when another spirit class ship the pride of free enterprise sailed from Dover to the bridge with the bow doors open the person in charge had fallen asleep another similar incident would also happen later on in the same year once again on the pride although the ship didn't sink it did open up some comments within European ferries group plc and some of the company's captains suggesting some safety modifications including a door indicator light on the bridge I would say a pretty sensible suggestion from the people who operate the ships day to day and have seen the instance that can unfold some comments were passed up to management this was their reply bearing in mind this is in response to some reasonable suggestions the deputy chief superintendent replied do they need an indicator to tell them whether the deck storekeeper is awake and sober my goodness and another from another manager nice but don't we already pay someone assume the guy who shuts the door tells the bridge if there is a problem and another manager just said nice the issue was brought up again in 1986 and yet again a rubbish reply came back from the company I cannot see the purpose or need for the stern door to be monitored on the bridge as the seaman in charge of closing the doors is standing by the control panel watching them close needless to say the indicator lights weren't instilled so the bow doors open incident happened on a Dover to Zibrug run remember when I said the ships were built for Dover to Calais well their operations had expanded but Zibrug offered a slightly unique challenge the birth that Zibrug couldn't properly accommodate to deck loading this was due to there only being one link span and to add insult to injury a high waters that same link span couldn't be raised up enough to reach the upper car deck E to allow for this the ship had to be trimmed by filling her ballast tanks to load a vessel in the water and this would be the same story that would unfold on the 6th of March 1987 the disaster it is the evening of the 6th of March 1987 and the MS Herald of Three Enterprise is in birth 12 Zibrug Harbour Captain David Lurie tonight is in charge tonight her voyage to Dover will carry a crew of 80 hands and 81 cars 47 freight vehicles and three other vehicles and this amounted to roughly 459 passengers usually the doors were closed before the moorings were dropped but today it is slightly different the task of closing the doors was down to assistant boats Wayne Mark Stanley but after clearing up the deck he went back to his quarters to take a break there he fell asleep and missed the harbour station's call Leslie Sable a first officer in lieu of Stanley was meant to wait at the bow doors however he left G deck when as he claimed to have seen Stanley approaching this would later be thought to be incorrect it is likely Sable left thinking that Stanley would be around after he heard the station's call boats Wayne Terrence Ailing was also in G deck but didn't go to close the doors even though no one knew where Stanley was he would later explain that it wasn't his duty Captain Lurie from his position on the bridge couldn't see the bow doors and assuming they were closed began to depart Zabruk the ship hadn't been re-trimmed after filling her ballast to dock at Zabruk this was at roughly 1905 or 705 in the evening by 724 she passed the outer moor now water had begun to enter the ferry via the open bow doors at 726 she started to list 30 degree support the ship briefly leveled off before listing again to port until she was fully on her side half submerged in the shallow water just one kilometre from the shore the water entered the engine room and electrical systems knocking out both her main and back up electricity plunging the ship into darkness the capsizing was witnessed by nearby dredger ship they quickly reported the sinking to port authorities helicopters and vessels from the Belgium Navy were dispatched at around 737 many were trapped inside the ship and although she had capsized in shallow water and thus had half of her ship still above the water the trapped would eventually succumb to hypothermia divers helped remove bodies and assist in helping survivors some were still stuck inside hours in the disaster and they were still alive but in a cruel turn of fate the tide rose killing anyone still within 194 people would die in the sinking aftermath the held would be required to be removed as such an impressively quick salvage operation would be kicked off Dutch company smith, tac, towage and salvage would be tasked with the job and cracked on just a few days after the disaster the ship was refloated using the salvage method once refloated the final bodies were recovered initially it was thought that she could be repaired and sold off but no buyer wanted her and as such she was sent to Taiwan to be scrapped a formal investigation was held by Mr Justice Sheen it would find that Captain David Leroy the master Mr Leslie Sable Victor Stanley were negligent in their duties Leroy the departing without checking the doors were shut Sable for leaving the doors open with no one to close them and Stanley for not being at his post the investigation would find the company was an environment ripe for disaster communication between crew aboard towns and forest and ships was abysmal and to add further fuel to the fire relations between the ships crews and the company was toxic I mean we saw that when the idea of door indicator lights was brought up the actual mechanics of the capsizing involved a thing called the squat effect this is a reduction in pressure that causes the ship to increase its draft and thus be drawn closer to the seabed this phenomenon is more prevalent in shallow water as the Herald accelerated she squatted bringing water line above the opening caused by the unclosed doors the water flowed across her car deck and as it sloshed around the deck the free surface effect came into play producing the stability of the ship causing her to turn over Townsend Forsen would be rebranded pretty quickly after the disaster to Piano Ferries and their fleet would be very quickly repainted and renamed Roro ship design would be improved because of the disaster but this is probably not much of a consolation for those who died just outside Zabrog this is a plain difficult video all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently very wet and windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos and listen to me talk I have Instagram, Twitter and a second YouTube channel so check them out if you want to see watch and listen more of stuff I do behind the scenes and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music place out please it is a snowy January evening and hundreds are piling into a theatre to watch a film the movie on show tonight is Get Rich Quick Wallingford a comedy starring Sam Hardy and Doris Kenyon and it is set to entertain the crowd no one knows that during the laughter that above them a disaster was about to unfold not only a disaster but the United States was the third most deadliest which would tie it with a building collapse nearly a hundred years later the theatre is the Nicarbaca welcome to Plainly Difficult my name is John and today we're looking at its 1922 collapse a new theatre it is the 17th of October 1917 and there is a buzz developing around the south west intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road Adams Morgan neighbourhood north downtown of Washington DC a modern and exciting building is now open to the public it's a photo playhouse not only that but it's brought to the ballroom, lounges and even parlours the lavish new building would be devoted to the burgeoning art of cinema but although flashy and new for owner Harry Crandall the Nicarbaca theatre today marks another notch in its cinematic empire Crandall a film fanatic by 1917 had four theatres under his belt and the opening of the Nicarbaca brings this number to five the theatre boasted seating for up to 1700 1000 seats on the orchestra floor 500 in the mezzanine tier and 200 lounges tier chairs as noted in the evening star of Washington DC at the time was designed, built and financed entirely by Washington people when you look at the pictures it was clearly luxurious for the day a far cry from the odians I used to go to as a teenager the building's design was penned by Reginald Wycliffe Gear he had already designed a number of theatres and would go on to design many more two of which are on the national historical landmark register today the theatre was three stories high with exterior bearing walls which facilitated the large open space for the cinema on top of the low bearing exterior wall was meant to be steel trusses and in the design spec was meant to be inserted into the walls for a seating of 8 inches the roof was concrete decked and interestingly for the time it was nice and flat now I've used a word meant to because that wasn't the actual case the year the theatre was built may explain this somewhat 1917 you see there was a little border dispute on the way called world war one and there were metal shortages notably in the need for steel as such some of the spec trusses were changed out for plate girders and beams this used less metalwork it was approved by the city but loads were not asked to be recalculated by the architect structural engineer fabricator this was due to most likely cost as Crandall had negotiated the lowest fee for the design of the theatre and if the city approved then why pay out any more money there was another significant change to the design of the building apparently undertaken by the contractor was that they only inserted the steels 2 inches into the low bearing walls a full 6 inches too short this fact would come out later and presumably it was to speed up construction and save cost however none of these issues seemed to be well an issue at least for the remaining years of the 1910s thousands poured through the theatre's doors to enjoy the wonders of the cinema Crandall's empire continued to grow and gear would design many more buildings including one still standing today the Lincoln theatre in Washington DC which is apparently next to Ben's chilli bowl which actually has quite a cool history in its own right anyways the Nicobocker theatre settled into the Washington landscape and must have felt like it would be there forever as films became more and more popular and it would until snow started to blanket the nation's capital a blizzard is coming 1922 in Washington DC had gotten off to a cult start it's the 23rd of January and the air is freezing hardly anything new but down in the Gulf of Mexico a cyclone was heading north snow started to form on its way towards the Carolinas Pennsylvania and finally Washington DC around lunchtime on the 28th of January the snow made its way to the nation's capital covering the region with a thin then thick layer of snow railway lines were enveloped houses and buildings became covered and disruptions across the city bit in. Congress was adjourned and some 28 inches of snow had fallen businesses tried to stay open but as the afternoon went on the city became increasingly more paralyzed but one business that remained open for patrons was one of the city's largest cinemas the Nicobocker theatre a popular comedy was to be shown in the evening as such the first showing crowds filled up the cinema leaving standing room only all afternoon a flat roof had accumulated heavy snow which as the sun went down turned to ice as more snow fell the strength of the roof was really being tested the second showing of the day began to welcome patrons there were markedly fewer people estimated between 400 and 1000 we can assume many had prioritised getting home for the evening due to the snow regardless the film began and the crowd enjoyed the comedy unfold on the big screen at roughly 9pm one of the trusses under the excessive weight of the snow failed and slipped off its meagre 2 inch footing on the building's walls the roof collapsed initially into the balcony then into the main floor of the cinema in mere seconds the theatre roof was gone and the cold winter air permeated into the building over 100 patrons were trapped underneath the rubble anyone nearby ran to the stricken building helping anyone who could escape one of the survivors called the telephone operator and emergency services were dispatched but the response would take a rather long time as the heavy snow hindered the early 20th century vehicles among those who rushed to begin rescuing victims was actually the building's architect some ambulances made their way to the theatre and volunteer taxis helped transport the injured a contingent of US marines were brought into assist under the command of George S. Patton yes that guy as the evening gave way to the early hours the numbers of people pulled from the rubble dwindled those stuck in the orchestral area remained trapped even into the afternoon next day a young boy was employed to run water to the victims to try and keep them alive a nearby church was used to make shift morgue and shops and houses nearby were used as emergency medical treatment areas in total 98 were perished in the collapse and over 100 would be injured architect Reginald Gear would be vital to the survival of many as his knowledge of the building helped rescuers search the rubble in the aftermath several committees were set up to try and find out the cause of the collapse the conclusions would contradict one another but one key point would run through the snow it was during these investigative committees that the improper truss seating of two inches came to light on top of that the modification of some of the truss to plate girder also came under scrutiny as such a grand jury indicted five including the architect the city's building inspector the steel fabricator the building's foreman and the mason for the bearing walls but not the contractor however all five men were acquitted at trial as reported in a contemporary story the new york times reported the snow was a concern to the staff at the theatre as a conversation about removal reportedly took place but clearly it didn't happen after the rubble was cleared the knickerbocker was pulled down a new theatre was constructed and was named the ambassador this building lasted until the 1960s when it was also demolished regional gear was hit pretty hard by guilt and financially ruined after the disaster due to no one wanting to hire the designer of a failed cinema in 1927 he would take his life and harry krandall the cinema's owner would follow the theatre in 1937 he would leave a note saying please don't be too hard on me boys not for my sake but for those I'm leaving behind me I'm despondent and I miss my theatre so much personally I believe the blame was across the board but the contractor building the seats for the truss to shallow is most likely the culprit and combined with weaker than initially designed steel work the roof just couldn't hold the weight of the snow as such I feel quite bad for the architect gear especially the disaster is joint third in the us collapse death history with another one of my videos the champion towers south collapse so the disaster I'm going to give it a rating of negligence due to the improper seating of the trusses and a six on the legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license videos produced by me John in the currently mild corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my YouTube members and my patrons for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week just to listen to me talk I have Instagram and Twitter so check them out if you want to see other random bits and bobs from behind the scenes and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please when a person goes to war what is the expectation that they may see danger there is a hole opposing side with the sole goal to beat your side after all being wounded or killed in battle is a tragedy but it is a possibility but to be killed or wounded in an accident in a war zone is catastrophic this would be the case for the USS forestal when she was in the Bay of Tonkin and a fire and then explosion ravaged her flight deck the disaster would highlight issues with corners being cut on the handling of munitions aboard US carrier ships my name is John and today we're looking at the USS forestal fire welcome to plainly difficult a super carrier ok so I won't go too deep into the forestals history as we have some background to cover in a few other places as well but the forestal was a bit of a trailblazer for the US Navy she was in the early 1950s for supporting jet aircraft and because of this it was one of the largest carriers of her time she was laid down in July 1952 and over her two years of construction her plans would change to incorporate the cutting edge of carrier technology she got steam catapults and an angled flight deck as well as an optical landing system she was the first super carrier in the US Navy when she was commissioned in 1955 she would parade around the seas to show off what the Americans can build in November 1963 she would be part of aviation history with the largest and heaviest airplane landing on a navy aircraft carrier when a C-130 Hercules made 21 full stop landings and takeoffs doesn't this photo just make the carrier seem kind of comically small and as she was 1067 feet long and 238 feet wide anywho the Vietnam War would get under the way and in 1967 she would be called up for service under the command of Captain John Kingsman Bealing and departed Norfolk in June of that year to head for the Gulf of Tonkin she was attached to the newly formed carrier air wing 17 1967 was a tough year for the Navy as a sustained bombing campaign was being undertaken from the fixed coordinate point of the Gulf of Tonkin called Yankee Station stores of bombs were running low putting strain on the demand to blow up as much of Vietnam as possible the forest tour was complimented with F-4B phantoms 4E skyhawks and RA-5C vigilantes all of which could be armed with general purpose bombs these dumb munitions i.e. unguided were dropped over a target and free fell to earth whilst we're here let's talk a little bit about bombs and rockets bombs bombs and rockets so as I mentioned there was a bit of a bomb shortage especially the 1,000 pound variants this was because the aircraft used by the Navy at the time had the ability to deploy either one 2,000 pound bomb or two 1,000 pound ones two bombs meant two separate targets could be hit during one flight offering greater operational flexibility as stockpiles dwindled the Navy was required to drag out older and older munitions as the at the time current Mark 83 bomb was being used quicker than it was being built the older bombs were in the form of the Mark 65 the exact weapons the Mark 83 had sought to replace a design hailing all the way back to 1939 albeit the ones available in the 1960s dated only back as far as the early 1950s these older bombs came with some unforeseen issues in that they were way more susceptible to cook off when exposed to fire that is exploding but the aircraft aboard for a stool also could be armed with rockets and that came in the form of the Zuni the Zuni rocket is an air to air or air to surface unguided 127mm or 5 inch wide system the Zunis were launched from a 4 tube LAU-10 rocket pod these were mounted to the underside of aircraft via a triple ejector rack both the launcher and rockets were known to be susceptible to electrical spikes causing it to launch prematurely no worries as that's what safety systems are for these came in the form of a safety pin which locked out the rocket both mechanically and electrically these by navy rules could only be removed once the aircraft was on the catapult as it's the last moment before the plane is launched and that if a missile was to be fired in theory it would just shoot off into the distance relatively safely the other way to prevent premature firing was that the launch pod wouldn't be electrically connected to the aircraft again only when on the catapult this connection was called colloquially the pigtail but it took some time to hook up as such launching was often delayed something not so good with the high-paced takeoff and landings when working from Yankee Station during the Vietnam War this would be modified after a meeting of the ship's safety committee they chose to bypass this and connect the pigtail whilst aircraft was still waiting on deck for their time for launch after all they must have thought there was still a safety pin however it was ignored by the fact that the pins could and did blow off in strong winds the idea for the modification was from operational experiences of other carriers that had been working in the Gulf Tonkin making the practice pretty widespread around the Navy but although the practice was common it didn't mean it was a good idea what the board also didn't consider was that ground crews had also been making modifications to the procedures themselves again to speed things up and get planes into the air quicker this was the ground crew removing the pins before placing the aircraft on the catapult which essentially with these two things combined left no safety system in place for disaster it is the 28th of July and the punishing level of bombing raids over North Vietnam has dwindled the ship's stockpile of Mark 83 bombs as such the forestall is being resupplied from the ammunition ship the USS Diamond Head amongst the munitions are 16 Mark 65 bombs the weapons handling crew aboard the forestall had never seen these older types of weapons before they had dates going back as early as 1953 the Korean War you'd think this isn't such a big deal but the explosive material in the Mark 65s deteriorates over time making them more susceptible to shock and heat were still the bombs received were covered in rust and were in rotten and mouldy packing cases and if that wasn't bad enough they were leaking liquid paraffin phlematising agent Captain John Bailing that the bombs were a hazard to the ship and all aboard Bailing contacted the Diamond Head demanding that they return the bombs and supply the requested Mark 83s but she had none in stock herself scarily earlier when the Diamond Head was being loaded itself at Subic Bay the audience officer refused to sign off the transfer of the dodgy bombs due to the risk that they posed he reluctantly signed off only after a written order absolving his team of any blame if anything was to go wrong was Telex to him any who's back on the forest still Captain Bailing begrudgingly accepted the bombs and they were stored on deck instead of the ship's magazine they would stay in a place called the Bomb Farm overnight to await delivery the next day to some unsuspecting North Vietnamese the morning of the 29th started off with the flights for sortie of the day at roughly 7am by around 10am the deck was packed with aircraft almost wing to wing though being armed for the day's second mission one of the planes armed to the teeth was an F-4 Phantom numbered 110 it was on the aft starboard corner of the ship's deck facing other aircraft it was armed to Rosuni rockets in their respective pods its pigtail was attached and its pin had been removed pilot, Jim, Vanguard was changing over power supplies placed to internal this had an issue it could cause power surges no points for guessing what would happen next a Zuni rocket was unintentionally fired it shot across the deck hitting an A4 Skyhawk's fuel tank which was piloted by future senator John McCain the rocket didn't detonate but it did rupture the tank spilling highly flammable jet fuel all over the deck it then erupted into flames it had severely burned and injured several crew members and this was at roughly 10.51am more fuel spilled out in turn igniting directly above it was mounted one of those very old 1000lb bombs several of the pilots including McCain managed to flee and escape the bomb fell into the fire Chief Gerald W. Farrier attempted to call it by smothering it with fire extinguisher foam 5 quarters and in general quarters were sounded at 10.52am just 1 minute and 36 seconds later the bomb cooked off the explosion instantly killed 5 men injuring scores more debris and super heated fragments were strewn across the deck creating even more fire within 5 minutes another 8 1000lb bombs had detonated some rockets had also cooked off and a couple of other size bombs had also exploded making multiple planes just a mere wreck the explosions had caused damage to quarters below the half-sex of the main deck killing many unsuspecting sailors at the same time fuel drained into the lower decks filled with night crewmen sleeping in their quarters fires erupted below the main deck causing even greater numbers of casualties fire suppression was hindered by the ongoing explosions munitions were thrown overboard and in the ensuing chaos many untrained men helped fight the fires but in doing so inadvertently they washed away the fire suppressing foam with seawater another ship came in to assist blasting the forest door with water and assisting in rescuing men who had jumped off the main deck by 11.47am the fire was under control on the main deck but below the inferno would be fought for several more hours in total after a lot of searching 134 men were accounted for as dead and 161 were injured as recovery efforts began multiple bombs were found amongst the debris luckily they hadn't exploded 21 aircraft were destroyed in the fire and explosions and searching for the dead and wounded would take all the way into the evening due to men being displaced onto other ships significant parts of the deck were heavily damaged and vast areas below deck were burnt to a crisp needless to say the ship wasn't any more fit for service a few days after the forest door limped back to the Philippines for temporary repairs after which she returned to the United States for several months of proper repairs but it's asked to cost the Navy $72 million in damages not including the cost of the expensive aircraft of course with such a colossal loss of men and material the cause had to be established and that would lead us onto the next section of this video the investigation whilst in the Philippines surviving crew members were interviewed by a team headed up by Rear Admiral Forsythe Massey quickly issues with the Zuni rockets and the aging bombs were discovered it also wouldn't take long to find out about the modifications to the safety precautions when the aircraft were on deck awaiting takeoff it was found that the meeting aboard the forest door, the safety committee didn't run their amendments of the pigtail procedure to the captain bailing leaving the guy in charge out of the loop however it was still known it was common practice across carriers operating around Vietnam the investigation panel concluded that the spike in electrical current was caused by the switchover of power source aboard the plane which set off the rockets and had their two safety processes bypassed captain bailing was absolved of all blame for the disaster however he did know of the zuni rocket issues and as such should have made greater effort to ensure procedures were followed well that was the gist of the investigation panel summary even though not to blame bailing was reassigned and would never command a ship again until his retirement in 1973 one of the glaring issues for crew safety was the lack of proper training for crew and that of the older bombs they had been told that during training the bombs would last at least 10 minutes before a potential cookoff sadly this time frame was for the newer and more stable mark 83 bombs the navy would learn from the disaster and train all crew as firefighters and also they attempted to better enforce regulations however another disaster involving a zuni rocket would unfold during the vietnam war in 1969 this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike license plain default videos are produced by me john in the currently warm but windy corner of southern london uk i have instagram and a second youtube channel so check them out if you fancy seeing more stuff i would also like to thank my patreons and youtube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week listen to me talk and watch my poorly drawn cartoons and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please it is mid november 1985 and rescue workers are searching a town for survivors it has been hit by deadly mudflow caused by volcanic eruption the town's inhabitants were caught by the tragedy by surprise many were unaware of the danger they were in until the very last minute bizarrely the nearby volcanic eruption had been predicted and government officials knew of the town's potential for being wiped off the map however information to the people was sparse and evacuation was a bit of an afterthought as bodies are recovered and the true loss of life is calculated quickly it becomes apparent that november the 13th 1985 will go down in history as the second deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century today i'm looking at the armero columbia tragedy my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult columbia's white city our story starts in the town of armero built upon an alluvial fan the settlement over its history was a hub of significant portions of the country's rice and cotton production that's why it's called the white city i know you thought i was going to mention something a little bit more elicit the town owes its agricultural prosperity to the navado del ruiz volcano that sits above it as previous eruptions had made the soil fertile the town was also not a stranger to volcanic activity with two disasters occurring in 1595 and 1845 with the main cause of destruction was from la haas that is a violent mud or debris flow consisting of a slurry of pyroclastic material, mud and water these things are deadly and usually follow the flow of a river any hoos after the disaster in 1845 the volcano would erupt again some 71 years later in 1916 the ruiz would once again go quiet lulling the residents of armero into a false sense of security the town continued on but some warnings of ruiz awakening were upon the horizon it is December 1984 and scientists have been watching the 17,716 foot navada del ruiz she wait do we call a mountain she or do we even anthropomorphize volcanoes who knows and probably who cares well she is giving some hints of eruption seismic activity and steam releases were seen now this might sound worrying but it is apparently normal as said in a contemporary la times interview with us geological survey official David Norris but the activity would continue to increase higher sulfur deposits were found on the volcano's peak and minor phreatic eruptions were noted activity continued into 1985 and in September a large phreatic eruption occurred shooting a massive plume of steam into the air the government began to plan for an evacuation and started compiling a hazard map a mudflow between 60 and 70 feet wide traveled about 20 miles down the acufredo river valley it caused not a lot of damage but officials closed off parts of the mountain nevertheless a report for government officials was published by an Italian volcanologist team on the 22nd of October 1985 it was rather worrying that the scientists had determined that the risk of lahars was unusually high leading officials to predict a 67% chance that an eruption was imminent the hazard map by now was completed it was to be distributed to the areas most affected and highlighted the risks of rock debris pyroclastic flows and lahars but there was a bit of an issue the distribution wasn't great the idea was to print the hazard map in newspapers and magazines although printed they didn't reach most of the at-risk areas and the ones that did most notably the one in El Espectador newspaper in Bogota had some glaring flaws the scale was all messed up and parts of the map were cut off not properly showing the edges of the danger zones there was colour which was pretty good but the zones of blue, red and green and yellow ink had no key so made it virtually useless for working out what was expected where and as a spoiler, green and blue didn't actually mean the area was safe also the maps weren't particularly well distributed due to the fear of economic issues but you know, evacuating people in an area would create there was a reason for the poor distribution as the government was also fighting the guerrilla forces the government also wrongly thought that evacuation would have plenty of time because mud flows slowly right? as such, Armero went pretty unnoticed in terms of solid evacuation and warning plans because of this, most stayed put in Armero but Ruiz was screaming I'm going to blow by late October with multiple small earthquakes near the mountain and lava beginning to appear at the top but the people continued on as normal all the way into November seismic activity continued but to a lesser level than what was seen a couple of months earlier in September the eruption it is the morning of the 13th of November 1985 and it didn't seem too different for the people living under Ruiz at roughly 3 in the afternoon Nevado del Ruiz began to erupt shooting ash into the air the local civil defence conducted in Gio Aminas Columbia's geological survey and explained the situation local officials were advised to begin evacuation of the surrounding areas the Armero civil defence director was then told to contact the civil defence directors in Bogota and Tolima by now the ice cap on the mountain was melting from the heat of the eruption but down in Armero Mariquita and Honda the ash had slowed down this was around 5pm residents were instructed to stay home and stay calm in Armero a local emergency committee meeting was arranged it would last until 7pm after which the Red Cross was contacted a storm was building up as the evening drew in cutting Armero off from lines of communication civil defence officials from other areas tried to order an evacuation of Armero but in the heavy wind and rain the messages were not received electrical issues persisted hindering radio communications and lighting at around 9.45pm rumbling could be heard from up in the mountain pyroclastic flows melted more ice and gathered up ash, mud and water into a deadly slurry it began to run down the sides of the top of the volcano destroying a volcanic lake consisting of salty water which in turn melted even more snow and ice the overflow of mud and material rumbled down the mountains 11 flank valleys at speeds of up to 35km an hour the lahars engulfed in China killing an estimated 1000 people but the worst was yet to come the mudflow was speeding down the slopes to Armero reaching speeds up to 50km an hour the town was hit by lahars at approximately 11.30pm many residents were still inside obeying the orders from earlier on in the evening in an instant the lahar swept through Armero smashing into buildings sweeping up cars and pushing people along with the deadly mudflow there were roughly 28,700 people in Armero and 3 quarters would be gone after the first lahar would hit and last 30 minutes by now 85% of the town was under mud and debris another lahar followed yet again albeit slower but this time lasting for over 2 hours buildings collapsed trapping their occupants the lahars carried very small sharp pieces of rock and if caught in it would cause hundreds of cuts to the skin the mud also caused suffocation which pretty much is stuff of nightmares in total at least 23,000 people were killed approximately 5,000 were injured and 5,000 homes were destroyed throughout the 13 affected villages the region was decimated by the time rescue efforts began the next day Armero was a mix of eerie quiet interrupted with screaming and moaning from the trapped the aftermath relief workers struggled to help the trapped and this was hindered by the mud difficult terrain and limited working infrastructure and power the mud had a depth of over 4.5 meters or 15 feet in some places and those who ventured walking in it could sink several bridges had collapsed in the lahars rendering road travel almost impossible Armero's hospital had been destroyed as a result helicopter was the only viable method for extraction of the wounded as such many treatable injured people died before help could reach them even a week after the eruption relief workers were digging through the rubble but sadly they were only finding bodies there were many tragedies one world famous one was of Armero Sanchez Garzon a 13 year old girl trapped among the rubble the picture taken of her trapped would illustrate to the world the sadness the eruption had caused guerrilla fighters called off attacks and the government's presidential election was called off but the low in the bloodshed would remain forever the disaster caused economic hardship for the country with the cost running up as much as a fifth of Colombia's gross national product at roughly $1 billion and that was in 1985 the event generated a lot of anger towards the government with many blaming them more than the volcano I mean it's understandable local officials had on multiple occasions tried to warn their higher ups of issues of proper evacuation plans so Armero wouldn't be rebuilt the surviving residents were moved to Gaia Yabbo and Lirida leaving the remains of what would be a ghost town Navarro del Ruiz is still a risk to some 500,000 people in the region and that means Armero may repeat itself in the future this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel attribution share a light license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently very wet corner of southern London UK I have Instagram and what I'm still calling Twitter so check them out if you want to see extra odds and sods that I post up I also have a second channel called Made by John and I'd also like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos and all that's left to say is thank you Mr Music, place out please it's December the 21st 2022 and a new bridge is being opened for vehicular traffic this event marks the third bridge on this site usually a new bridge is due to the old one being put out to pasture as it's gotten a little bit too expensive or complicated to maintain however this time the previous bridge kind of forced the requirement of a new one by refusing to stay collapsed interestingly the previous bridge only fell apart 11 months before marking a pretty impressive rebuild time this video is a bit of a rare one for me as no one thankfully died a feat of brilliant luck when you look at this picture of the bridge post self dismantling well although disaster came in 2022 our story will start just over 50 years before in the magical bridge known as the 1970s background this point on the map has been a location of a bridge dating all the way back to 1901 it carries the Forbes avenue across Frink Park in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania the road allows a quicker cut through for traffic heading towards and away from Pittsburgh but in 1970s the original steel deck arch was getting a bit long in the tooth over 70 years it needed replacement this would come along in 1972 when the original Fern Hollow bridge closed to traffic and a new one started construction the new crossing was penned by Richardson Gordon and associates design firm it had a four lane undivided roadway which was two lanes in each direction the main structure had two steel girders running in parallel each side of the bridge held together with a k-frame running along the bridge under the roadway was rolled steel stringers at each end of the bridge concrete caps were placed on masonry abutments in which the steel structure was placed the steel structure was then supported by steel beams with X-bracing sighted on reinforced concrete the steel used wasn't planned to be painted over well that's madness what about rust you may be screaming at the screen but there was a neat feature of the particular steel employed on this bridge the bridge was built with a thing called weathering steel it was a particular alloy formulation that would in theory not corrode instead forming a layer of protecting rust on its surface it wasn't perfect though as it wasn't impervious to rust from standing water as such proper drainage is required on top of that worlds can be weak points in the structure like this and as such they need to weather at the same rate as the steel if not then failure can occur the 447 foot long bridge opened on the 1st of June 1973 and just the next year it won an award from the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1974 the bridge had a speed limit of 35 miles an hour for vehicles and a maximum posted vehicle weight of 26 short terms as the years went on the weathered steel would prove to be not completely safe as corrosion beyond the surface level patina started to set in as early as 2005 corrosion and deterioration was seen in the bridge's legs causing concern with inspectors block drains were allowing debris to form over the vital steel sections in order for the weathered steel to work it needs to form the patina during dry periods this can be hindered by material sitting in drainage areas keeping the steel damp you see parts of the bridge were rusting so much so that in 2009 the city installed steel cables to laterally support the bridge on its legs to help the original and rusting cross bracing over the coming years the bridge would continue to be inspected and issues would continue to be noted each inspection came with recommendations but were not performed by the city in 2014 the cables were retightened and in 2018 one rusted cross beams was photographed by a local resident the issue was reported and the beam was removed leaving just the cables in place the bridge was again inspected in 2021 and yet again issues were highlighted but soon enough disaster would strike the Fern Hollow bridge the disaster it's the snowy morning of the 28th of January 2022 and a port authority bus approaching the Fern Hollow bridge overnight snowfall had covered the bridge's structure it's heading eastbound and as it drives across the bridge it's bouncing and shaking along the roadway the time is roughly 6.35 in the morning and the western part of the bridge is seen on the bus's rear facing camera to have fallen off of its abutment at around the same time the eastern ends expansion joint opened as also seen on another camera on the bus residents around the same time heard loud banging and whooshing sounds emitting from the area of the bridge shortly after the structure plunged 100 feet down into the ravine 5 vehicles were on the bridge at the time and in a case of terrible luck another vehicle was approaching westbound it flew off the abutment and landed on its roof amazingly no one was killed in the collapse and some were injured emergency calls came in and first responders were dispatched the first on the scene had to repel down the hillside to reach the stranded victims and a jogger who was thankfully running by managed to assist in rescuing people from their cars a ladder was placed next to the bus helping in evacuating its driver and a couple of passengers aboard if a collapsed bridge wasn't enough then a burst gas main had to be installed into the wound it had been damaged as it ran along the underside of the structure this would require the evacuation of nearby residents until the gas line was shut off everyone was rescued by 8.30 in the morning although the wreckage would still be searched for several hours more but amazingly no one else was found to be trapped a crane was employed to remove the stricken vehicles with the bus finally being lifted to safety aftermath so due to it being a road bridge the NTSB would be in charge of the investigation NTSB officials were dispatched and began pouring over the wreckage the same day they discovered via the bus's cameras that the failure started on the western end of the bridge but initial inspections of vital welding joints showed no fractures what they did find however was a very rusty and poorly maintained structure a preliminary report was posted in February 2022 but a full report has yet to be released however the NTSB did release some recommendations for other bridges of similar design and construction to be inspected as there was a high risk of a similar failure unfolding quickly the need for a new crossing led to the third bridge over Frink Park which opened in December 2022 now hopefully we'll find out more soon about the definitive cause of the disaster but we will have to wait and see but in the meantime maybe check out one of my other videos of a bridge self deconstructing itself this is a plainly difficult video all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light licence plainly difficult videos are produced by me, John in the currently warm but rainy corner of southern London UK I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel if you want to see other stuff that I make and I'd like to thank my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please it is roughly 7.50 in the morning on the 24th of March 1972 and a school bus is driving collecting students for NIAC High School this morning although clear and sunny is a little bit different for the driver he has had to do his regular pickups in reverse due to a road closure as his bus makes his way along the Gilchrist Road he is heading for a railway crossing 20 minutes later than normal and due to having to do his pickups in reverse the bus is a whole lot fuller almost overloaded in fact with some students having to stand in the aisle instead of sit on their seats the bus seemingly unaware of the crossing storms over the railway tracks and a laugh of a freight train welcome to Plainly Difficult my name is John and today exploring Gilchrist Road Disaster Clarkstown Clarkstown is well a town in New York State in Rockwell County it's made up of several hamlets and has a population today of just under 90,000 residents and it is a pretty standard residential area nothing really out of the ordinary very nice homes, plenty of places to shop and eat not too far from the hustle and bustle of New York City and on the whole looks like a nice place to live the town also not unusually has a railway line that snakes its way through it it's a single track affair and predominantly is used for freight as such most of its crossings are at grade on the same level as the road traffic the line was ran by Penn Central this of course opens it up to conflict points where cars and trains might interface or on a more technical term go smashy smash along this line in 1972 roughly 8 trains run in each direction each day with one usually traversing the line between 7 and 8am the trains can run along the line at speeds up to 40mph and it probably goes without saying that freight trains take a lot of distance to stop so yielding at the crossings is the responsibility of road use because of the low frequency of trains and relatively minor roads they had very little in the form of crossing protection and warning systems pretty much boiling down to cross-bucks which is this sign and stop markings to tell cars to stop look then proceed across the line this was the case for the crossing at Gilcrest Road the one lane in each direction only had a couple hundred of cars use the road each day even today the road looks quiet and almost rural going west vehicles are limited to 15mph but eastbound have no restrictions as such they can approach the crossing at 30mph as far as known by the 1970s the crossing was incident free with no reported police action or reports from train crews of course that doesn't make it immune to future disasters the morning of the 24th of March 1972 it is 7.30am and a school bus driver aged 37 is preparing his bus to depart the garage he is a fireman by day and moonlights as a bus driver some days of the week his bus is a GM derived chassis vehicle and has 66 seats he has been driving buses for around 6 years he usually departs around 7.30am and returns at 8.25am from there he speeds off to New York City to start his shift as a fireman which is around 9am shortly after departing he comes across a diversion this morning this required him to do his route and pickups in reverse of normal this would take longer not good when you've got another job to go off to by the time the bus reaches Gilcrest Road it's full with children some 48 in number and some are even having to stand in the aisle normally the bus approaches the railway crossing heading westbound but today he is going east 20 minutes later than normal this was around 7.54am and the bus was chugging along the Gilcrest Road roughly around the same time freight train WV1 was heading north the train consists of 3 GE UB 25B diesel electric locomotives and 83 wagons and a caboose it weighed around 4200t the lead loco was painted very dark green and the train was crewed with 5 an engineer, breakman and fireman in the lead loco and a conductor and flagman in the caboose the time is now 7.55am train WV1 is travelling at around 25mph and it is approaching the Gilcrest Road as per instructions and the whistle post the train blows on the horn its bell is also ringing and its headlight is on roughly 500ft south of the crossing the train emerges from a row of trees and the crew in the cab spot a yellow school bus travelling eastbound roughly 480ft west of the crossing the bus doesn't appear to be slowing down but continuing on an even pace children aboard the bus at this time see the train and start shouting at the driver at roughly 220ft from the crossing the school bus momentarily slows down but picks up speed yet again we can guess that the driver maybe thought he could beat the train as being stuck at the crossing would take too much time a few more seconds passed and the train was roughly 150ft from the crossing seeing the bus wasn't looking like it would stop the engineer slammed on the train's brakes the impact was inevitable by now as both vehicles reached the crossing the train slammed into the school bus's side this was slap bang in the middle and on its right hand side of the vehicle the rear section of the bus was torn away pushing it towards the western side of the crossing landing upside down the main section was pushed along the track a further 1100ft some students in the impact were thrown from the bus in the initial impact three students jimmy mcginnis age 17 richard mackalo age 18 and bobby meltiere age 14 were killed instantly 45 students were rushed to hospital with varying levels of injuries some would require amputation of limbs and life-saving treatment the bus driver was also rushed to hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries two more would die 14-year-old thomas gross and 16-year-old steven ward luckily no one aboard the train was injured likely due to the bus taking the brunt of the impact needed to say such an event would spark outrage rightfully aimed at the bus driver and the design of the level crossing it's also then unsurprising that the ntsb would be the ones to undertake the investigation the agency would examine the accident site the bus wreckage and the train as well as the drivers actions and sadly it would dig up some worrying driving habits of the bus driver aftermath the ntsb poured over the bus wreckage and the barely damaged train and they found that nothing was mechanically defective interviews with passengers the bus driver had previously driven gave a rather worrying picture his drive style was described as sometimes dangerous and he often took risks this was likely due to his need to get to his day job after driving a bus there had been a complaint even made by a parent about his driving the way the school buses were run in the area was via contractors and as such the driver wasn't hired directly by the school district instead by a bus company the company also selected the routes and it didn't consider the risk of including the crossing on the scheduled journey the driver had to make but the driver did have the relevant licence at the time a class 2 chauffeur ticket although the driver clearly was the cause of the disaster the crossing also played its part by not having barriers you see with just a stop marking crossbucks and the warning horns of the train they also opened the opportunity of someone trying to beat it before it gets to the crossing potentially if there was a physical barrier then the bus may have stopped but the NTSB found that the crossing was missing one of its crossbucks the advance warning sign was also too close the NTSB advised implementing better crossing controls as well as better training to school bus drivers they also noted that better school bus route selection should be undertaken to avoid as much using unprotected level crossings the driver of the school bus refused to speak to the NTSB during the investigation this was on the advice of his lawyer because he had a criminal case to answer to the driver would be taken to trial and would be found guilty of negligent homicide and he was given 5 years probation this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons actuation share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john and the currently very nice and sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my youtube and patreon members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to listen to me talk I have instagram, twitter and a second youtube channel so check them out if you want to see photographs and random odds and sods as well as behind the scenes photographs and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and mr music play us out please recently a new story came on my tv and although I'd heard of it before I hadn't actually really taken too much notice please excuse my ignorance this time round the story picked my interest it's a worldwide scandal that has spanned decades and turned what was sold as a wonder treatment into a nightmare that has affected hundreds of thousands of people reducing the life expectancy of many making others seriously ill and in some cases would even kill its victims scarily those affected wouldn't necessarily be aware until it was too late all whilst government officials and pharmaceutical companies failed to even admit there was a problem our blood is a vital component in all of us to be dealt a hand in life in which there is a genetic issue with it is bad enough let alone then becoming infected with HIV or hepatitis by accident today we'll be looking at the infected blood scandal and welcome to Plainly Difficult part 1 blood clots this is blood well not really it's actually proper blood that I bought from ebay but for the purpose of this video it will stand in for the real stuff when the human body is cut blood vessels beneath the skin are damaged and we bleed this is all pretty basic biology assuming you are still alive your heart continues to pump and it pushes out of that blood the vessel linings trigger the release of clotting factors your blood which is now escaping your body start clumping together to form a barrier or a clot so this works by these things called platelets and they clump around the gap the platelets have thrombin receptors on their surfaces that grab serine thrombin molecules which then converts soluble fibrigen into fibrin at the wound site fibrin is vital as it creates long strands of insoluble protein which creates a mesh that holds everything together and stops you from bleeding to death to help link the fibrin bonds a pro-enzyme called factor 8 is needed this is what links the fibrin making that vital mesh above the platelet plug the complex world of a blood clot in stopping a bleed is pretty much reliant on factor 8 working or that the body is able to create the factor in the first place not having factor 8 can cause extensive bleeding from even minor cuts to easily bruising all the way to severe bleeding inside joints and a pretty nightmare scenario of bleeds on the brain low factor 8 production is called hemophilia A there is also B and C which is efficiencies in other clotting factors it's a genetically inherited condition with no cure thus treatment is an ongoing process that requires replacing the missing blood clotting factors with disease have been described throughout history as a cause of someone dying from a minor trauma but it's scientific study wouldn't really start until the 19th century for a long time treatment was ineffective or outright dangerous as during the early 1900s aspirin was recommended not good as we know that also prevents clots part 2 an effective treatment treatment in the 1950s and 1960s was in the form of frozen plasma the creamy yellow fluid part of blood after platelets and red cells are separated off plasma does contain the vital factor 8 this is all well and good but the concentration of the factor is so low that a large amount of blood is needed it was a really inefficient way to treat hemophilia which would require a lot of time in hospital and came with the risk of vascular overload if only there was a better way well, Dr. Judith Graham-Paul a researcher at Stanford University would publish a major breakthrough she discovered that the precipitate left from thawing plasma was rich in that vital factor 8 the breakthrough meant the greater concentration of factor 8 could be administered to patients this had massive benefits for hemophiliacs they could be administered with the concentrate in emergencies of heavy bleeding during elective surgery and even stealth administered factor products alleviating the need to attend lengthy hospital i