(Source: Globe and Mail opinion column by Kevin Quigley, September 11, 2017)
TORONTO — In popular culture, different types of crises and disasters generate different types of narratives about accountability. Natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey and the B.C. wildfires tend to generate heroic accounts of emergency services; little is said about the town planners that exposed communities to such devastating natural dangers in the first place. Acts of God are understood to be no one’s fault. Industrial failures, in contrast, typically generate a ruthless and narrow hunt for accountability. The impulse is misleading, as we learn in the inquiries that follow; industrial systems exist in a complex technological and organizational context that prevents us from so easily finding one smoking gun.
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