Five of Canada’s Most Horrific Man-Made Accidents

It’s a tragedy when 229 people lose their lives because of either cut backs to save on materials or lack of research of articles used to make airplanes.

Walkerton Water Contamination

Walkerton, Ontario is a small growing town that’s located 75 km southwest of Owen Sound. This little slice of heaven is an ideal place to raise children and grow old or well that’s what the residents thought until May 2000.

By May 15, 2000 hospital reports about half the residents started experiencing bloody diarrhea, gastrointestinal infections and other symptoms of E. coli infection. The local Public Utilities Commission insisted the water supply was fine although the Utilities Commission’s own test showed there was definitely E. coli contamination.

By the time it was all said and done, 7 people had died from E. coli infection and 2,500 more infected where fearing the same fate. No others died.

A little over 2 years after the deadly contamination, investigations into the matter showed 2 of the employee’s of the plant had neglected their duties and entered false details into the water reports. The report concluded one of the people was constantly drinking on the job and not adding the needed chlorine to kill the E. coli and the other person was guilty of falsifying documents to suggest the water was fine to drink even though E. coli was present.

The 2 men were finally sentenced in December 2004. One man received a year in jail, the other got 9 months house arrest. This could have become one of Canada’s worst disasters if it wasn’t caught in the time that it was.

Halifax Explosion

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 still remains to this date to be one of Canada’s worst man-made disasters.

The massive explosion occurred on Thursday December 6, 1917 when 2 ships ran into each other in Halifax Harbor.

One French ship named the “Mont-Blanc” was full loaded with wartime ammunitions and was leaving the harbor when it collided with another ship called “Imo” which was coming into dock and is in the above picture. 10 minutes after colliding with the “Imo” the “Mont-Blanc” caught fire and slowly drifted within the harbor while crew tried to fight the fire.

At 9:04 am only 25 minutes after starting on fire, the “Mont-Blanc” exploded with enough force to wipe out nearly the whole harbor and neighboring communities Dartmouth and Richmond.

After it was all said and done, the harbor had nearly been obliterated and 1,900 people had been killed instantly leaving another 10,000 injured. The blame for the accident could not be exactly pin pointed since barley anything survived but it was contributed to human error.

The Halifax Explosion was also the largest man made explosion in the world until the Hiroshima bomb.

Empress of Ireland Ocean Liner Disaster

The Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner built for Canadian Pacific Steamships in 1905-1906. The ship had 2 duties one of which was to transport mail between Hong Kong and Britain and the other was to transport passengers.

When delivering mail the ship was “RMS Empress of Ireland” and when carrying passengers it was known as the “SS Empress of Ireland”. This agreement was made between the Britain government and CPR a decade before.

On May 29, 1914 in the early morning hours the Empress of Ireland steamed down the channel in thick fog near Pointe-au-Pere, Quebec. Around 2 am a Norwegian collier called the “Storstad” crashed into the starboard side of the Empress causing massive damage.

The Storstad suffered major damage but did not sink where as the Empress of Ireland wasn’t so lucky. Only 14 minutes after the crash, the Empress of Ireland rolled over and sunk taking 1012 lives with it.

This disaster was to be found fault of the steamer Storstad which was order by the courts to pay damages and later had to sell there ships.

This has become Canada’s worst maritime disaster in history and again was caused simply by human error which is the real tragedy.