More than 35 years later, the post-mortem on one of the country's worst engineering disasters appears to be simple. A contractor asked for a change in an original design. The change was approved by ...

A jetliner crashes with 228 people on board; an oil refinery erupts in Utah; manhole covers explode around the country; a coal-filled freight train derails; and an elevator ride turns deadly.

We call them engineering disasters. But is that a misnomer? Certainly tons of the “engineering disasters” of the 20 th Century had nothing to do with the engineer. Many of those calamities came from ...