By Richard T. Cartwright, PE, CHMM, (IHMM, AHMP and APICS) Fellow.
Richard died April 21, 2025; honoring the work he did with hazmat history is one small way to keep his memory alive.
The saying, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is more than a cliché. It is a reminder that we must constantly be learning from the past. Here’s a look back at major historical events that happened today in the world of hazardous materials.
September 11, 2001
Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial jets, killing nearly 3,000 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. America was suddenly under attack. Jet fuel tanks became hazardous material incendiary bombs upon impact. The collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in New York City spewed a plume of ash and dust into the air. A few days after the terrorist attacks, EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced that, “I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe, and their water is safe to drink.” When EPA scientists like Cate Jenkins objected to that assessment, they were initially told to shut up. Jenkins was eventually fired but then reinstated after a whistleblower investigation.
September 11, 2001
The 9/11 terrorist attacks catapulted drinking water security to the forefront. In 2002, U.S. Congress enacted the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act. With respect to water supplies, this legislation amended the Safe Drinking Water Act and specified actions that community water systems and EPA must take to improve security of the nation’s drinking-water infrastructure. The good news is that vulnerability assessments have since been conducted at hundreds of drinking water installations across the US.
September 11, 1999
A California beekeeper died after being stung by a swarm of Africanized killer bees. The victim was mowing his lawn in Los Angeles County when he was stung at least 50 times by the highly aggressive bees. He was not breathing when paramedics arrived, and then went into cardiac arrest. For two weeks he had been kept alive on a respirator. His three hives had been taken over by wild Africanized honeybees. There had been several prior deaths from bee attacks in other states as the killer bees continued migrating north, originally from Brazil.
September 11, 1978
Georgi Markov, Bulgarian dissident, died of blood poisoning four days after a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin was fired into his leg via an umbrella gun at a London bus stop. Because Markov’s writings exposed the communist party in his home country of Bulgaria, the incident was blamed on the Bulgarian equivalent of the KGB.
September 11, 1957
A plutonium fire occurred in a glovebox used to handle radioactive materials, igniting the combustible rubber gloves and the box’s Plexiglas windows. The incident occurred at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver. Metallic plutonium is a fire hazard and pyrophoric. Under the right conditions, it can ignite at room temperature. The accident resulted in the contamination of Building 771 and the release of plutonium into the atmosphere. An incinerator for plutonium-contaminated waste was installed in Building 771 in 1958.
September 11, 1916
While the final section of a cantilever bridge near Quebec City, Canada was being raised into position from pontoons in the river, it collapsed. The central bridge span was 15 feet up in mid-air when it plunged back into the Saint Lawrence River, killing 13 construction workers. The bad news is this was the second Quebec Bridge construction disaster. Previously in 1907, the south arm and part of the central section of the bridge collapsed; 75 construction workers died. Preliminary calculations were never properly checked when the design was finalized (in particular, they were not checked after the span was lengthened). The actual weight of the bridge was far in excess of its carrying capacity. During the summer of 1907, a local engineering team began noticing increasing distortions of key structural members already in place. Unfortunately, their message was not passed on before it was too late. After the second disaster, it was agreed that iron and steel from the collapsed bridge would not be reused for construction. Instead, it was used to forge the early Iron Rings worn by graduates of Canadian engineering schools starting in 1925.
September 11, 1884
Harvey Fletcher, American acoustical engineer who first demonstrated stereophonic sound, was born. He was a trail-blazing investigator of the nature of speech and hearing, noted for his contributions in acoustics, electrical engineering, speech, medicine, music, atomic physics, sound pictures and education.
September 11, 1881
Rock landslides buried Elm, Switzerland, where 115 people died. In the local quarry, for centuries, residents had been mining for schist-plates (used in building construction). After a month of heavy rainfall and the impact of preceding mining activity, the rock mass of the entire mountain slope finally lost its support. The bad news is that rock fall propagation is still poorly understood today and is one of the most intriguing features of hazardous material mass movements.
September 11, 1866
Matthew Ewing, American inventor, patented a method of vacuum distilling kerosene to produce lubricants. He founded the Vacuum Oil Company in Rochester, NY, which eventually became Standard Oil of New York (and later Mobil Oil).
September 11, 1822
The Catholic Church College of Cardinals announced that henceforth “the printing and publication of works treating of the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the opinion of modern astronomers, is permitted.” When Pope Pius VII ratified the Cardinals’ decree, the Catholic Church finally officially accepted the Copernican principle for which Italian scientist Galileo had been imprisoned in 1633 for championing. In 1835, the Vatican removed Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” from its list of banned books. In 1992, the Catholic Church finally admitted that Galileo had indeed been correct.
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