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Flixborough disaster

The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant close to the village of Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, England, on Saturday, 1 June 1974. It killed 28 and seriously injured 36 of the 72 people on site at the time. The casualty figures could have been much higher if the explosion had occurred on a weekday, when the main office area would have been occupied. A contemporary campaigner on process safety wrote "the shock waves rattled the confidence of every chemical engineer in the country".

The disaster involved (and may well have been caused by) a hasty equipment modification. Although virtually all of the plant management personnel had chemical engineering qualifications, there was no on-site senior manager with mechanical engineering expertise. Mechanical engineering issues with the modification were overlooked by the managers who approved it, and the severity of potential consequences due to its failure were not taken into account.

Flixborough led to a widespread public outcry over process safety. Together with the passage of the UK Health and Safety at Work Act in the same year, it led to (and is often quoted in justification of) a more systematic approach to process safety in UK process industries. UK government regulation of plant processing or storing large inventories of hazardous materials is currently under the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 1999 (COMAH). In Europe, the Flixborough disaster and the Seveso disaster in 1976 led to development of the Seveso Directive in 1982 (currently Directive 2012/18/EU issued in 2012).

Overview
The chemical works, owned by Nypro UK (a joint venture between Dutch State Mines (DSM) and the British National Coal Board (NCB)) had originally produced fertiliser from by-products of the coke ovens of a nearby steelworks. Since 1967, it had instead produced caprolactam, a chemical used in the manufacture of nylon 6. The caprolactam was produced from cyclohexanone. This was originally produced by hydrogenation of phenol, but in 1972 additional capacity was added, built to a DSM design in which hot liquid cyclohexane was partially oxidised by compressed air. The plant was intended to produce 70,000 tons per annum (tpa) of caprolactam but was reaching a rate of only 47,000 tpa in early 1974. Government controls on the price of caprolactam put further financial pressure on the plant.

It was a failure of the cyclohexane plant that led to the disaster. A major leak of liquid from the reactor circuit caused the rapid formation of a large cloud of flammable hydrocarbon. When this met an ignition source (probably a furnace at a nearby hydrogen production plant) there was a massive fuel-air explosion. The plant control room collapsed, killing all 18 occupants. Nine other site workers were killed, and a delivery driver died of a heart attack in his cab. Fires started on-site which were still burning ten days later. Around 1,000 buildings within a 1 mile radius of the site (in Flixborough itself and in the neighbouring villages of Burton upon Stather and Amcotts) were damaged, as were nearly 800 in Scunthorpe 3 miles away; the blast was heard over 35 miles away in Grimsby, Hull and Saltfleet. Images of the disaster were soon shown on television, filmed by BBC and Yorkshire Television filmstock news crews who had been covering the Appleby-Frodingham Gala in Scunthorpe that afternoon.

The plant was re-built but cyclohexanone was now produced by hydrogenation of phenol (Nypro proposed to produce the hydrogen from LPG; in the absence of timely advice from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) planning permission for storage of 1,200 te LPG at Flixborough was initially granted subject to HSE approval, but HSE objected ); as a result of a subsequent collapse in the price of nylon it closed down a few years later. The site was demolished in 1981, although the administration block still remains. The site today is home to the Flixborough Industrial Estate, occupied by various businesses and Glanford Power Station.

The foundations of properties severely damaged by the blast and subsequently demolished can be found on land between the estate and the village, on the route known as Stather Road. A memorial to those who died was erected in front of offices at the rebuilt site in 1977. Cast in bronze, it showed mallards alighting on water. When the plant was closed, the statue was moved to the pond at the parish church in Flixborough. During the early hours of New Year's Day 1984, the sculpture was stolen. It has never been recovered but the plinth it stood on, with a plaque listing all those who died that day, can still be found outside the church.

The cyclohexane oxidation process is still operated in much the same plant design in the Far East.

The plant
In the DSM process, cyclohexane was heated to about 155 °C (311 °F) before passing into a series of six reactors. The reactors were constructed from mild steel with a stainless steel lining; when operating they held in total about 145 tonnes of flammable liquid at a working pressure of 8.6 bar gauge (0.86 MPa gauge; 125 psig). In each of the reactors, compressed air was passed through the cyclohexane, causing a small percentage of the cyclohexane to oxidise and produce cyclohexanone, some cyclohexanol also being produced. Each reactor was slightly (approximately 14 inches, 350 mm) lower than the previous one, so that the reaction mixture flowed from one to the next by gravity through nominal 28-inch bore (700mm DN) stub pipes with inset bellows. The inlet to each reactor was baffled so that liquid entered the reactors at a low level; the exiting liquid flowed over a weir whose crest was somewhat higher than the top of the outlet pipe. The mixture exiting reactor 6 was processed to remove reaction products, and the unreacted cyclohexane (only about 6% was reacted in each pass) then returned to the start of the reactor loop.

Although the operating pressure was maintained by an automatically controlled bleed valve once the plant had reached steady state, the valve could not be used during start-up, when there was no air feed, the plant being pressurised with nitrogen. During start-up the bleed valve was normally isolated and there was no route for excess pressure to escape; pressure was kept within acceptable limits (slightly wider than those achieved under automatic control) by operator intervention (manual operation of vent valves). A pressure-relief valve acting at 11. kgf/cm2 gauge was also fitted.

Reactor 5 leaks and is bypassed
Two months prior to the explosion, the number 5 reactor was discovered to be leaking. When lagging was stripped from it, a crack extending about 6 ft was visible in the mild steel shell of the reactor. It was decided to install a temporary pipe to bypass the leaking reactor to allow continued operation of the plant while repairs were made. In the absence of 28-inch nominal bore pipe (700mm DN), 20-inch nominal bore pipe (500mm DN) was used to fabricate the bypass pipe for linking reactor 4 outlet to reactor 6 inlet. The new configuration was tested for leak-tightness at working pressure by pressurisation with nitrogen. For two months after fitting the bypass was operated continuously at temperature and pressure and gave no trouble. At the end of May (by which time the bypass had been lagged) the reactors had to be depressurised and allowed to cool in order to deal with leaks elsewhere. The leaks having been dealt with, early on 1 June attempts began to bring the plant back up to pressure and temperature.

The explosion
At about 16:53 on 1 June 1974, there was a massive release of hot cyclohexane in the area of the missing reactor 5, followed shortly by ignition of the resulting huge cloud of flammable vapour and a massive explosion in the plant. The explosion virtually demolished the site. As it was a weekend there were relatively few people on site: of the 72 people on-site at the time, 28 were killed and 36 injured. Fires burned on-site for more than ten days. Off-site there were no fatalities, but 50 injuries were reported and about 2,000 properties damaged.

The occupants of the works laboratory had seen the release and evacuated the building before the release ignited; most survived. None of the 18 occupants of the plant control room survived, nor did any records of plant readings. The explosion appeared to have been in the general area of the reactors and after the accident only two possible sites for leaks before the explosion were identified: "the 20 inch bypass assembly with the bellows at both ends torn asunder was found jack-knifed on the plinth beneath" and there was a 50-inch long split in nearby 8-inch nominal bore stainless steel pipework".

Court of Inquiry
Immediately after the accident, New Scientist commented presciently on the normal official response to such events, but hoped that the opportunity would be taken to introduce effective government regulation of hazardous process plants. "Disasters on the scale of last Saturday's tragic explosion ... at Flixborough tend to provoke a brief wave of statements that such things must never happen again. With the passage of time these sentiments are diluted into bland reports about human error and everything being well under control – as happened with the Summerland fire. In the Flixborough case, there is a real chance that the death toll could trigger meaningful changes in a neglected aspect of industrial safety."

The Secretary of State for Employment set up a Court of Inquiry to establish the causes and circumstances of the disaster and identify any immediate lessons to be learned, and also an expert committee to identify major hazard sites and advise on appropriate measures of control for them. The inquiry, chaired by Roger Parker QC, sat for 70 days in the period September 1974 – February 1975, and took evidence from over 170 witnesses. In parallel, an Advisory Committee on Major Hazards was set up to look at the longer-term issues associated with hazardous process plants.

Circumstances of the disaster
The report of the court of inquiry was critical of the installation of the bypass pipework on a number of counts: although plant and senior management were chartered engineers (mostly chemical engineers), the post of Works Engineer which had been occupied by a chartered mechanical engineer had been vacant since January 1974, and at the time of the accident there were no professionally qualified engineers in the works engineering department. Nypro had recognised this to be a weakness and identified a senior mechanical engineer in an NCB subsidiary as available to provide advice and support if requested. At a meeting of plant and engineering managers to discuss the failure of reactor 5, the external mechanical engineer was not present. The emphasis was upon prompt restart and – the inquiry felt – although this did not lead to the deliberate acceptance of hazards, it led to the adoption of a course of action whose hazards (and indeed engineering practicalities) were not adequately considered or understood. The major problem was thought to be getting reactor 5 moved out of the way. Only the plant engineer was concerned about restarting before the reason for the failure was understood, and the other reactors inspected. The difference in elevation between reactor 4 outlet and reactor 6 inlet was not recognised at the meeting. At a working level the offset was accommodated by a dog-leg in the bypass assembly; a section sloping downwards inserted between (and joined with by mitre welds) two horizontal lengths of 20-inch pipe abutting the existing 28-inch stubs. This bypass was supported by scaffolding fitted with supports provided to prevent the bellows having to take the weight of the pipework between them, but with no provision against other loadings. The Inquiry noted on the design of the assembly: "No-one appreciated that the pressurised assembly would be subject to a turning moment imposing shear forces on the bellows for which they are not designed. Nor did anyone appreciate that the hydraulic thrust on the bellows (some 38 tonnes at working pressure) would tend to make the pipe buckle at the mitre joints. No calculations were done to ascertain whether the bellows or pipe would withstand these strains; no reference was made to the relevant British Standard, or any other accepted standard; no reference was made to the designer's guide issued by the manufacturers of the bellows; no drawing of the pipe was made, other than in chalk on the workshop floor; no pressure testing either of the pipe or the complete assembly was made before it was fitted."

The Inquiry noted further that "there was no overall control or planning of the design, construction, testing or fitting of the assembly nor was any check made that the operations had been properly carried out". After the assembly was fitted, the plant was tested for leak-tightness by pressurising with nitrogen to 9 kg/cm2; i.e. roughly operating pressure, but below the pressure at which the system relief valve would lift and below the 30% above design pressure called for by the relevant British Standard.

Cause of the disaster
The claim argued by experts retained by Nypro and their insurers was that the disaster's cause was that the 20-inch bypass was not what would have been produced or accepted by a more considered process. Controversy developed (and became acrimonious) as to whether its failure was the initiating fault in the disaster (the 20-inch hypothesis, argued by the plant designers (DSM) and the plant constructors; and favoured by the court's technical advisers ), or had been triggered by an external explosion resulting from a previous failure of the 8-inch line.

The 20-inch hypothesis
Tests on replica bypass assemblies showed that deformation of the bellows could occur at pressures below the safety valve setting, but that this deformation did not lead to a leak (either from damage to the bellows or from damage to the pipe at the mitre welds) until well above the safety valve setting. However theoretical modelling suggested that the expansion of the bellows as a result of this would lead to a significant amount of work being done on them by the reactor contents, and there would be considerable shock loading on the bellows when they reached the end of their travel. If the bellows were 'stiff' (resistant to deformation), the shock loading could cause the bellows to tear at pressures below the safety valve setting; it was not impossible that this could occur at pressures experienced during start-up, when pressure was less tightly controlled. (Plant pressures at the time of the accident were unknown since all relevant instruments and records had been destroyed, and all relevant operators killed). The Inquiry concluded that this ("the 20-inch hypothesis") was 'a probability' but one 'which would readily be displaced if some greater probability' could be found.

The 8-inch hypothesis
Detailed analysis suggested that the 8-inch pipe had failed due to "creep cavitation" at a high temperature while the pipe was under pressure. The metal of the pipe would have experienced hard-to-detect deformation, microscopic cracks, and structural weakness as a result, increasing the likelihood of failure. Failure had been accelerated by contact with molten zinc; there were indications that an elbow in the pipe had been at significantly higher temperature than the rest of the pipe. The hot elbow led to a non-return valve held between two pipe flanges by twelve bolts. After the disaster, two of the twelve bolts were found to be loose; the inquiry concluded that they were probably loose before the disaster. Nypro argued that the bolts had been loose, there had consequently been a slow leak of process fluid onto lagging leading eventually to a lagging fire, which had worsened the leak to the point where a flame had played undetected upon the elbow, burnt away its lagging and exposed the line to molten zinc, the line then failing with a bulk release of process fluid which extinguished the original fire, but subsequently ignited giving a small explosion which had caused failure of the bypass, a second larger release and a larger explosion. Tests failed to produce a lagging fire with leaked process fluid at process temperatures; one advocate of the 8-inch hypothesis then argued instead that there had been a gasket failure giving a leak with sufficient velocity to induce static charges whose discharge had then ignited the leak.

The inquiry conclusion
The 8-inch hypothesis was claimed to be supported by eyewitness accounts and by the apparently anomalous position of some debris post-disaster. The inquiry report took the view that explosions frequently throw debris in unexpected directions and eyewitnesses often have confused recollections. The inquiry identified difficulties at various stages of the accident development in the 8-inch hypothesis, their cumulative effect being considered to be such that the report concluded that overall the 20-inch hypothesis involving 'a single event of low probability' was more credible than the 8-inch hypothesis depending upon 'a succession of events, most of which are improbable'.

Lessons to be learned
The inquiry report identified 'lessons to be learned' which it presented under various headings; 'General observation' (relating to cultural issues underlying the disaster), 'specific lessons' (directly relevant to the disaster, but of general applicability) are reported below; there were also 'general' and 'miscellaneous lessons' of less relevance to the disaster. The report also commented on matters to be covered by the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards.

General observation

 * Plant – where possible – should be designed so that failure does not lead to disaster on a timescale too short to permit corrective action.
 * Plant should be designed and run to minimise the rate at which critical management decisions arise (particularly those in which production and safety conflict).
 * Feedback within the management structure should ensure that top management understand the responsibilities of individuals and can ensure that their workload, capacity and competence allow them to effectively deal with those responsibilities

Specific lessons
The disaster was caused by 'a well designed and constructed plant' undergoing a modification that destroyed its mechanical integrity.
 * Modifications should be designed, constructed, tested and maintained to the same standards as the original plant

When the bypass was installed, there was no works engineer in post and company senior personnel (all chemical engineers) were incapable of recognising the existence of a simple engineering problem, let alone solving it
 * When an important post is vacant, special care should be taken when decisions have to be taken which would normally be taken by or on the advice of the holder of the vacant post
 * All engineers should learn at least the elements of branches of engineering other than their own

Matters to be referred to the Advisory Committee
No one concerned in the design or construction of the plant envisaged the possibility of a major disaster happening instantaneously. It was now apparent that such a possibility exists where large amounts of potentially explosive material are processed or stored. It was 'of the greatest importance that plants at which there is a risk of instant as opposed to escalating disaster be identified. Once identified measures should be taken both to prevent such a disaster so far as is possible and to minimise its consequences should it occur despite all precautions.' There should be coordination between planning authorities and the Health and Safety Executive, so that planning authorities could be advised on safety issues before granting planning permission; similarly the emergency services should have information to draw up a disaster plan.

Conclusion
The inquiry summarised its findings as follows:

"We believe, however, that if the steps we recommend are carried out, the risk of any similar disaster, already remote, will be lessened. We use the phrase "already remote" advisedly for we wish to make it plain that we found nothing to suggest that the plant as originally designed and constructed created any unacceptable risk. The disaster was caused wholly by the coincidence of a number of unlikely errors in the design and installation of a modification. Such a combination of errors is very unlikely ever to be repeated. Our recommendations should ensure that no similar combination occurs again and that even if it should do so, the errors would be detected before any serious consequences ensued."

Controversy as to immediate cause
Nypro's advisers had put considerable effort into the 8-inch hypothesis, and the inquiry report put considerable effort into discounting it. The critique of the hypothesis spilled over into criticism of its advocates: 'the enthusiasm for the 8-inch hypothesis felt by its proponents has led them to overlook obvious defects which in other circumstances they would not have failed to realise'. Of one proponent the report noted gratuitously that his examination by the court 'was directed to ensuring that we had correctly appreciated the main steps in the hypothesis some of which appeared to us in conflict with facts which were beyond dispute'. The report thanked him for his work in assembling eyewitness evidence but said his use of it showed 'an approach to the evidence which is wholly unsound'.

The proponent of the 8-inch gasket failure hypothesis responded by arguing that the 20-inch hypothesis had its share of defects which the inquiry report had chosen to overlook, that the 8-inch hypothesis had more in its favour than the report suggested, and that there were important lessons that the inquiry had failed to identify:

"[T]he Court's commitment for the 20-inch hypothesis led them to present their conclusions in a way that does not help the reader to assess contrary evidence. The Court could still be right that a single unsatisfactory modification caused the disaster but this is no reason for complacency. There are many other lessons. It is to be hoped that the respect normally accorded to the findings of a Court of Inquiry will not inhibit chemical engineers in looking beyond the report in their endeavours to improve the already good safety record of the chemical industry."

The HSE website as of 2014 said that "During the late afternoon on 1 June 1974 a 20 inch bypass system ruptured, which may have been caused by a fire on a nearby 8-inch pipe". In the absence of a strong consensus for either hypothesis other possible immediate causes have been suggested.

Post-enquiry forensic engineering – two-stage rupture of bypass
The enquiry noted the existence of a small tear in a bellows fragment, and therefore considered the possibility of a small leak from the bypass having led to an explosion bringing the bypass down. It noted this to be not inconsistent with eyewitness evidence, but ruled out the scenario because pressure tests showed the bellows did not develop tears until well above the safety valve pressure. This hypothesis has however been revived, with the tears being caused by fatigue failure at the top of the reactor 4 outlet bellows because of flow-induced vibration of the unsupported bypass line. Finite element analysis has been carried out (and suitable eyewitness evidence adduced) to support this hypothesis.

Post-enquiry forensic engineering – the 'water hypothesis'
The reactors were normally mechanically stirred but reactor 4 had operated without a working stirrer since November 1973; free phase water could have settled out in unstirred reactor 4 and the bottom of reactor 4 would reach operating temperature more slowly than the stirred reactors. It was postulated that there had been bulk water in reactor 4 and a disruptive boiling event had occurred when the interface between it and the reaction mixture reached operating temperature. Abnormal pressures and liquor displacement resulting from this (it was argued) could have triggered failure of the 20-inch bypass.

Dissatisfaction with other aspects of the Inquiry Report
The plant design had assumed that the worst consequence of a major leak would be a plant fire and to protect against this a fire detection system had been installed. Tests by the Fire Research Establishment had shown this to be less effective than intended. Moreover, fire detection only worked if the leak ignited at the leak site; it gave no protection against a major leak with delayed ignition, and the disaster had shown this could lead to multiple worker fatalities. The plant as designed therefore could be destroyed by a single failure and had a much greater risk of killing workers than the designers had intended. Critics of the inquiry report therefore found it hard to accept its characterisation of the plant as 'well-designed'. The HSE (through the Department of Employment) had come up with a 'shopping list' of about 30 recommendations on plant design, many of which had not been adopted (and a few explicitly rejected) by the Inquiry Report; the HSE inspector who acted as secretary to the inquiry spoke afterwards of making sure that the real lessons were acted upon. More fundamentally, Trevor Kletz saw the plant as symptomatic of a general failure to consider safety early enough in process plant design, so that designs were inherently safe – instead processes and plant were selected on other grounds then safety systems bolted on to a design with avoidable hazards and unnecessarily high inventory. 'We keep a lion and build a strong cage to keep it in. But before we do so we should ask if a lamb might do.'

If the UK public were largely reassured to be told the accident was a one-off and should never happen again, some UK process safety practitioners were less confident. Critics felt that the Flixborough explosion was not the result of multiple basic engineering design errors unlikely to coincide again; the errors were rather multiple instances of one underlying cause: a complete breakdown of plant safety procedures (exacerbated by a lack of relevant engineering expertise, but that lack was also a procedural shortcoming).

ICI Petrochemicals response
The Petrochemicals Division of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) operated many plants with large inventories of flammable chemicals at its Wilton site (including one in which cyclohexane was oxidised to cyclohexanone and cyclohexanol). Historically good process safety performance at Wilton had been marred in the late 1960s by a spate of fatal fires caused by faulty isolations/handovers for maintenance work. Their immediate cause was human error but ICI felt that saying that most accidents were caused by human error was no more useful than saying that most falls are caused by gravity. ICI had not simply reminded operators to be more careful, but issued explicit instructions on the required quality of isolations, and the required quality of its documentation. The more onerous requirements were justified as follows:

"Why do we need the [ICI Heavy Organic Chemicals Division] rules on the isolation and identification of equipment for maintenance? They were introduced about two years ago, but Billingham managed for 45 years without them. During those 45 years there were no doubt many occasions when fitters broke into equipment and found it had not been isolated, or broke into the wrong line because it had not been identified positively. But pipe-lines were mostly small, and the amount of flammable gas or liquid on the plant was not usually large. Now pipe-lines are much larger and the amount of gas or liquid that can leak out is much greater. Several serious incidents in the last three years have shown that we dare not risk breaking into lines that are not properly isolated. As plants have got larger we have moved ... into a new world where new methods are needed."

In accordance with this view, post-Flixborough (and without waiting for the Inquiry Report), ICI Petrochemicals instituted a review of how it controlled modifications. It found that major projects requiring financial sanction at a high level were generally well-controlled, but for more (financially) minor modifications there was less control and this had resulted in a past history of 'near-misses' and small-scale accidents, few of which could be blamed on chemical engineers. To remedy this, not only were employees reminded of the principal points to consider when making a modification (both on the quality/compliance of the modification itself and on the effect of the modification on the rest of the plant), but new procedures and documentation were introduced to ensure adequate scrutiny. These requirements applied not only to changes to equipment, but also to process changes. All modifications were to be supported by a formal safety assessment. For major modifications this would include an 'operability study'; for minor modifications a checklist-based safety assessment was to be used, indicating what aspects would be affected, and for each aspect giving a statement of the expected effect. The modification and its supporting safety assessment then had to be approved in writing by the plant manager and engineer. Where instruments or electrical equipment were involved signatures would also be needed from the relative specialist (instrument manager or electrical engineer). A Pipework Code of Practice was introduced specifying standards of design construction and maintenance for pipework – all pipework over 3"nb (DN 75 mm) handling hazardous material would have to be designed by pipework specialists in the design office. The approach was publicised outside ICI; while the Pipework Code of Practice on its own would have combatted the fault or faults that led to the Flixborough disaster, the adoption more generally of tighter controls on modifications (and the method by which this was done) were soon recognised to be prudent good practice. In the United Kingdom, the ICI approach became a de facto standard for high-risk plant (partly because the new (1974) Health and Safety at Work Act went beyond specific requirements on employers to state general duties to keep risks to workers as low as reasonably practicable and to avoid risk to the public so far as reasonably practicable; under this new regime the presumption was that recognised good practice would inherently be 'reasonably practicable' and hence should be adopted, partly because key passages in reports of the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards were clearly supportive).

Dissatisfaction with existing regulatory regime
The terms of reference of the Court of Inquiry did not include any requirement to comment on the regulatory regime under which the plant had been built and operated, but it was clear that it was not satisfactory. Construction of the plant had required planning permission approval by the local council; while "an interdepartmental procedure enabled planning authorities to call upon the advice of Her Majesty's Factory Inspectorate when considering applications for new developments which might involve a major hazard" (there was no requirement for them to do so), since the council had not recognised the hazardous nature of the plant they had not called for advice. As the New Scientist commented within a week of the disaster:

"There are now probably more than a dozen British petrochemical plants with a similar devastation-potential to the Nypro works at Flixborough. Neither when they were first built, nor now that they are in operation, has any local or government agency exercised effective control over their safety. To build a nuclear power plant, the electricity industry must provide a detailed safety evaluation to the Nuclear Inspectorate before it receives a licence. On the other hand, permission for highly hazardous process plants only involves satisfying a technically unqualified local planning committee, which lacks even the most rudimentary powers once the plant goes on stream. ... The Factory Inspectorate has standing only where it has promulgated specific regulations"

Terms of Reference and personnel
The ACMH's terms of reference were to identify types of (non-nuclear) installations posing a major hazard, and advise on appropriate controls on their establishment, siting, layout, design, operation, maintenance and development (including overall development in their vicinity). Unlike the Court of Inquiry, its personnel (and that of its associated working groups) had significant representation of safety professionals, drawn largely from the nuclear industry and ICI (or ex-ICI)

Suggested regulatory framework
In its first report (issued as a basis for consultation and comment in March 1976), the ACMH noted that hazard could not be quantified in the abstract, and that a precise definition of 'major hazard' was therefore impossible. Instead installations with an inventory of flammable fluids above a certain threshold or of toxic materials above a certain 'chlorine equivalent' threshold should be ' notifiable installations '. A company operating a notifiable installation should be required to survey its hazard potential, and inform HSE of the hazards identified and the procedures and methods adopted (or to be adopted) to deal with them.

HSE could then choose to – in some cases (generally involving high risk or novel technology) – require submission of a more elaborate assessment, covering (as appropriate) "design, manufacture, construction, commissioning, operation and maintenance, as well as subsequent modifications whether of the design or operational procedures or both". The company would have to show that "it possesses the appropriate management system, safety philosophy, and competent people, that it has effective methods of identifying and evaluating hazards, that it has designed and operates the installation in accordance with appropriate regulations, standards and codes of practice, that it has adequate procedures for dealing with emergencies, and that it makes use of independent checks where appropriate"

For most 'notifiable installations' no further explicit controls should be needed; HSE could advise and if need be enforce improvements under the general powers given it by the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA), but for a very few sites explicit licensing by HSE might be appropriate; responsibility for safety of the installation remaining however always and totally with the licensee.

Ensuring safety of 'major hazard' installations
HASAWA already required companies to have a safety policy, and a comprehensive plan to implement it. ACMH felt that for major hazard installations the plan should be formal and include
 * The regulation by company procedures of safety matters (such as: identification of hazards, control of maintenance (through clearance certificates, permits to work etc.), control of modifications which might affect plant integrity, emergency operating procedures, access control)
 * Clear safety roles (for e.g. the design and development team, production management, safety officers)
 * Training for safety, measures to foster awareness of safety, and feedback of information on safety matters

Safety documents were needed both for design and operation. The management of major hazard installations must show that it possessed and used a selection of appropriate hazard recognition techniques, had a proper system for audit of critical safety features, and used independent assessment where appropriate.

The ACMH also called for tight discipline in the operation of major hazard plants:

"The rarity of major disasters tends to breed complacency and even a contempt for written instructions. We believe that rules relevant to safety must be everyday working rules and be seen as an essential part of day-to-day work practice. Rules, designed to protect those who drew them up if something goes wrong, are readily ignored in day-to-day work. Where management lays down safety rules, it must also ensure that they are carried out. We believe that to this end considerable formality is essential in relation to such matters as permits to work and clearance certificates to enter vessels or plant areas. In order to keep strong control in the plant, the level of authority for authorisations must be clearly defined. Similarly the level of authority for technical approval for any plant modification must also be clearly defined. To avoid the danger of systems and procedures being disregarded, there should be a requirement for a periodic form of audit of them."

The ACMH's second report (1979) rejected criticisms that since accidents causing multiple fatalities were associated with extensive and expensive plant damage the operators of major hazard sites had every incentive to avoid such accidents and so it was excessive to require major hazard sites to demonstrate their safety to a government body in such detail:

"We would not contest that the best run companies achieve high standards of safety, but we believe this is because they have .... achieved what is perhaps best described as technical discipline in all that they do.

We believe that the best practices must be followed by all companies and that we have reached a state of technological development where it is not sufficient in areas of high risk for employers merely to demonstrate to themselves that all is well. They should now be required to demonstrate to the community as a whole that their plants are properly designed, well constructed and safely operated."

The approach advocated by the ACMH was largely followed in subsequent UK legislation and regulatory action, but following the release of chlordioxins by a runaway chemical reaction at Seveso in northern Italy in July 1976, 'major hazard plants' became an EU-wide issue and the UK approach became subsumed in EU-wide initiatives (the Seveso Directive in 1982, superseded by the Seveso II Directive in 1996). A third and final report was issued when the ACMH was disbanded in 1983.

Footage of the incident appeared in the film Days of Fury (1979), directed by Fred Warshofsky and hosted by Vincent Price.

Report of Court of Inquiry

 * The Flixborough Disaster, Report of the Court of Inquiry, 1975

title: Flixborough disaster


text:
Leir of Britain

Leir was a legendary king of the Britons whose story was recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain. According to Geoffrey's genealogy of the British dynasty, Leir reigned around the 8th century BC, around the time of the founding of Rome. The story was modified and retold by William Shakespeare in his Jacobean tragedy King Lear.

Name
Geoffrey of Monmouth identified Leir as the eponymous founder of the city of Leicester (Ligoraceastre in Old English; Cair Lerion, Caerlŷr), which he called (using the Old Welsh form of the city's name) Kaerleir ("City of Leir").

Leir, Lerion, and Ligora(ceastre) all derive from the old Brittonic name of the River Soar, *Ligera or *Ligora.

Reign
Leir's story was first recorded in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. In it, Leir is part of the dynasty of Brutus of Britain and succeeded to the throne after his father Bladud died while attempting to fly with artificial wings. The dating is inexact, but Geoffrey made Bladud a contemporary of the biblical prophet Elijah. Leir was given the longest reign of Geoffrey's kings, ruling for 60 years. Geoffrey claimed he was the eponymous founder of Leicester in England.

Abdication
Leir was said to have been the end of Brutus of Troy's male line of descent, siring three daughters: Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. As he neared his death, he divided his kingdom among them. Goneril and Regan flattered their father and, at the advice of Leir's nobles, were married off to the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall, respectively. Cordelia, despite being her father's favourite, refused to flatter him, feeling that she should not need to make special assurances of her love, and was given no land to rule. King Aganippus of the Franks courted and married Cordelia, despite Leir's refusal to pay a dowry. Leir then gave Goneril and Regan half his kingdom, planning to bequeath them the remainder at his death; instead, his sons-in-law rebelled and seized the whole of it. Duke Maglaurus of Albany, Goneril's husband, maintained Leir with a retinue of 60 knights, but his wife reduced this by half after two years. Leir then fled to Regan, who reduced his entourage to only five men. Returning to Albany and pleading with Goneril, Leir was left with a single knight for protection.

Restoration
At this point, Leir feared both his elder daughters and fled to France. He sent Cordelia a messenger when he was outside her court at Karitia. She had him bathed, royally clothed, and assigned a fittingly large band of retainers. He was then officially received by the king and made regent of France, with the Frankish nobles vowing to restore him to his former glory. Leir, Cordelia, and her husband invaded Britain and overthrew his other daughters and sons-in-law. Leir ruled three years and then died. Cordelia succeeded him and buried him in an underground shrine to the god Janus beneath the River Soar near Leicester—allegedly the current site of the city's Jewry Wall. An annual feast was held nearby in his honour.

In culture
Leir's life was dramatised on the Elizabethan stage in an anonymous play, King Leir, which was registered in 1594 and published in 1605 under the title The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella. This precursor to Shakespeare's tragedy was a comedy, repeating Geoffrey's story and ending happily with Leir's restoration to power. The story also appears in John Higgins's Mirror for Magistrates, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and other works.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Leir of Britain


text:
Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/VeryVerily

It is my opinion that there is no excuse for the kind of revert war that was demonstrated here, regardless of the conduct of the other user involved. Use RfC, ViP, Peer Review, IRC, or any number of means beyond mindless reverting. Snowspinner 02:46, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure you understand how long this has been going on for, and how many lesser remedies I have tried. VV 08:39, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

 * In his support, it is easy to be caught up in the heat of the moment, and when one see's an admin behavong in a certain way, it can seem to be more acceptable than it might otherwise have been. Sam [Spade] 03:06, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

 * 50 reverts, I think, is beyond defense, honestly. Snowspinner 03:29, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Passive aggression
I started off with Talk:Augusto Pinochet. I will soon chronicle all his slanders against me so that people stop falling for these attacks and finally let me get back to work. 172 07:36, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't get it. This just doesn't seem damning at all. VV 09:03, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Requests for comment/172

 * VV 05:50, 22 May 2004 (UTC) 172 is a singular menace who does not belong on a community-oriented, consensus-based, neutrality-driven Wiki project. See my summary at my RFC page.

Talk:Augusto Pinochet
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3666291&oldid=3663433 I'm not saying you're 172's friend. I'm saying his friends started swarming. As an intellectual you should recognize this as the affirming the consequent logical fallacy. I'm aware of your general feelings about 172 and me, although I still don't feel I understand them completely despite our first conversation. VV 20:48, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3659766&oldid=3659596 It doesn't. But he told Viajero that it did, and gently asked him to "facilitate the process of unprotecting the page and putting up the winning version of the intro". Viajero fell for it (because he wanted to?) and gave 172 his unprotection and new intro. Hence, sleaze. VV 14:52, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3659452&oldid=3659402 As now all can see, 172 has adopted a new form of utter sleaze to get his way. VV 14:37, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3658478&oldid=3658432 Re that last part: My impression is that Eloquence seems to basically agree with 172's interpretation of the Chile events, but is also aware of 172's obnoxious, recalcitrant, and anti-Wiki behavior, and does recognize the need for NPOV. VV 12:37, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3657890&oldid=3657054 VV I did not say this. I said that some were buddies of 172, and they were. You are falling for 172 smear tricks. VV 09:24, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3652870&oldid=3652852 Typical. Offer nothing and call it a "gesture of compromise". Who is 172 trying to fool? Well, my gesture of compromise is the wording I wrote. VV 00:46, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3652480&oldid=3651320 To recap, we the then-editors of this page did reach a delicate consensus before the swarming started (first 172, then his friends). And 172 is the king of personal attacks; just look around. VV 22:53, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3650115&oldid=3649955 The poll is utterly meaningless, which is why I did not even take part. 172 recruited his ideological allies to vote, and they did. (With similar canvassing we could garner votes of our own, but no matter.) There are only one or two users I find it sad to see caring so little about NPOV, but the results change nothing. I already know about Wikipedia's strong political bias and don't need a poll to remind me. As has been pointed out, a similar poll on whether to include Criticisms of Mother Teresa would also probably go the wrong way. And Cadr is quite correct that most of those people have not participated in the discussion; statements such as "I didn't even know this was disputed" indicate, uh..., unawareness of what is going on here. VV 21:21, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3642021&oldid=3637228 Who am I attacking? And saying I "should present more compelling arguments" supports my supposition that you were not aware of the talk of these issues, because if so you would have seen the thousands and thousands of words arguing these very points. - VV 23:20, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3628385&oldid=3628071 By "consensus" version I mean what we, several parties collaborating, had worked out together to come up with before 172 showed up and began attacking this article. That had basically reached a consensus. 172's subsequent attacks I suppose could be taken as anti-consensus, but of course he has dismissed that process utterly as "partisan bickering", so consensus does not seem on his mind anyway. At any rate, this is and remains a straightforward neutrality issue. - VV 06:40, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3625717&oldid=3625313 The second sandox is just 172's personal one. This sandbox process appears to be changing nothing. We already developed a consensus version on the article itself (which is not obviously worse to me than the sandbox v.), and 172 refused to accept a word of it. Now that we're working with sandboxes, the same is taking place on those. - VV 01:32, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3609500&oldid=3609087 172's characterization of himself as the only one to offer a compromise is absurd. At least five users worked through numerous drafts of the intro to find one which pleased (or at least didn't offend) everyone. This includes me; I made several edits and re-edits in hopes of accommodating all concerns raised. By contrast, 172 is not willing to alter so much as one word of his intro paragraph; his only compromise is to add a 1 to his deceptive intro, where a reader can follow a link to a (poorly worded) "footnote" at the bottom of the page. Of course, if anyone's been reading this far, they already know this to be true. - VV 22:02, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3602222&oldid=3599989 Is this lighthearted self-parody, or do you mean this seriously? - VV 05:41, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3575507&oldid=3574571 ??? How is anything I've said a "personal attack"? I have been summarizing 172's behavioral patterns using his own words. Curiously, no one seems interested when 172 calls me a "right-wing" "chauvinist U.S. nationalist" who acts on "emotional" whims and lives in a "fantasy world", or when he called me RickK's "little bitch" or said my edits were "bullshit" and "gibberish". I guess those aren't personal attacks, but instead the thoughtful reflections of a "professional historian". Sure, there are no double standards here. Anyway, what is there to disagree with in my analysis of 172's behavior? And, we are at consensus, not counting 172, who has essentially opted out of that process. As for your recent proposal, I don't like "US-backed government" for two reasons: (1) it implies somehow that the US was propping it up, and that it would have collapsed without it, and (2) mentioning the US, a foreign nation, however involved in the Chile issue they were, as the first and only modifier describing the government, gives it undue prominence; why mention this aspect among all of them? Anyway, we have a perfectly good intro already, which we both worked on to find an agreeable version. 172 has no substantive objection to it except for it was not written solely by his own hand. -- VV 09:32, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3570759&oldid=3570627 172 is correct that Michael's suggestion is where we were weeks ago before his involvement, which is why things were fine and 172 is the sole problem user on this page. We did go through the named process, and did come up with an intro that satisfied the various parties (172 dismisses this consensus-building as "partisan bickering" which he could "care less" about). But 172 will have none of it. His version must stand unaltered, and (to quote from above) if you don't like it "you'll just have to bear it", "take it or leave it". 172 is simply not interested in the Wiki process. It is because of people like him completely convinced that they are right and that there is no need to adjust to anyone else's concerns that Wikipedia has so many edit wars. There is no working with someone who insists on sole authorship; that is why the edit box warns "edited mercilessly". People like that should shape up or leave. 172 knows perfectly well he is adding "unproven" claims, but he just plays semantic games with everyone who takes time out to explain it to him. That is why I regard this as trolling, he's being inflammatory and provoking response. -- VV 01:16, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3528230&oldid=3523207 Of course it implies this. 172 knows this perfectly well. He just wants us to say it again and again in multiple forums (we even had this discussion in Requests for protection). -- VV 11:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3523207&oldid=3523164
 * A particularly comical example of this is in Talk:Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War/Archive_1 under the rule under section 6, where 172 declared "proof" that I was "trolling" because I did not respond to his comment within thirty-one minutes! Anyway, 172 is playing dumb here; if he really had reread the comments, he would have seen the extensive discussion on this point, the most reason one involving him, Cadr, and me. But what trolls do is post inflammatory content to provoke more and more responses. That's why he wants me to keep repeating myself. -- VV 11:29, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3518650&oldid=3518564 Incidentally, I forgot to mention that I'm happy (as I indicated before by not reverting) to accept your super-short intro as a stop-gap measure until 172 stops trolling we figure something out. -- VV 01:25, 10 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3491811&oldid=3491689 I had, you'll note, accepted this stop-gap measure, but 172 continued to revert to his version anyway, in fact reverted once just to revert. Thus, alas, I concluded this idea was DOA. -- VV 23:09, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3438458&oldid=3438392
 * Surely you've seen the weeks' worth of discussion, and how little fruit it's brought with 172, who dismisses all criticisms and says it's "too bad" if you don't like his version. I and several other users have worked out consensus versions of the intro, but 172 will only tolerate his own. I do consider this trolling; he is deliberately adding inflammatory misinformation over several users' wishes, knowing it will provoke a response; that is virtually the definition. -- VV 00:16, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3438327&oldid=3438283 I have never been uncivil, and I'm not denying engaging in revert wars. I will do so with people like 172 who would otherwise stomp on anyone who doesn't. I do not consider it childish to defend the encyclopedia against personally abusive, anti-consensus, uncivil pushers of misinformation. -- VV 00:08, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3438233&oldid=3437404 Getting 172 to be civil = getting pig to sing. -- VV 23:13, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't see the point of having a new poll; it will simply turn into another ideological head count, and I for one would not accept any result that the article should push a controversial POV. The neutrality guidelines are clear on this point. 172's trolling (pushing controversial, inflammatory content) should be seen for what it is and not taken seriously. You (Eloquence) have already put much effort into trying to explain the rules to 172 above; I doubt it will bear much more fruit than my efforts, but it's all we can really do for this dispute. -- VV 21:47, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3339678&oldid=3339412

Is this comment directed at me? If so, I was referring to the earlier protection of this article (by Raul654), where it was frozen on 172's version, which he was pushing against several other users. Nobody cried foul about the choice of version then. I should note 172 has done this before, try to convince admins to revert to his version on protected pages (User talk:Flockmeal). -- VV 05:52, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3330054&oldid=3330011

The last time it was protected was on 172's version, which was opposed to nearly all other parties. I don't remember this being an issue then. -- VV 05:36, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3329897&oldid=3329856

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3329201&oldid=3329192 I see plenty of evidence here for discontent with your unilateral stance, which is to push the leftwing mythology with poor writing. -- VV 04:22, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3328091&oldid=3327937 Just in case anyone thinks there is a substantive dialog taking place here, this is the full extent of the changes to the intro which 172 has "accepted" during this entire affair. That's right, a single superscripted 1 at the end. Quite the compromise! -- VV

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3327937&oldid=3327740 There is absolutely nothing wrong with the intro before 172 started trolling. The "wordiness" was a red herring; an article this length can afford a few dozen words in the intro, in complete sentences (you know, with verbs). The only questionable part was that relating to the US and the coup; this already has a gigantic section, and we do not need to take sides in the intro. The footnote is particularly ridiculous, when there is an article which says the same thing. The version we'd worked out gives a clear, concise, neutral description of Pincohet's rise, rule, fall, and perceived legacy. A new version of the short note about the US has been put in; the reader can read more later about it in the extensive coverage. -- VV 02:05, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC) (This comment was added after edit conflict with Ruhrjung.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3317557&oldid=3317325 I think the situation is similar to before: Everyone is willing to discuss it and work constructively, except 172, who insists his intro and his alone is the only possible one. Otherwise, something close to a delicate consensus had been painstakingly reached between the partisans throughout several weeks. It's not clear whether 172 will bother to continue harassing (trolling?) this article against everyone else (his repeated promises to leave forever notwithstanding); he may have felt he "won" by gaining the protection. Anyway, see the discussion above for details. -- VV 06:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3295299&oldid=3259006 (de-indenting) You have not addressed the 172 behavior issue, still. I'm glad we agree on keeping this article on focus. Your opinions of the US's motives (and others') are your own and I assume you realize that; I have my own opinions, too (were we in a position to install a Japan-style gov't?), but I'm not putting them in the intro. These are complex subjects, and to fully elaborate requires lots of detail, including the documents you noted, which could be an article of its own, in fact its own encyclopedia. That's why almost anything stated in a short intro on, recall, the man Pinochet will be troublesome unless it leaves a lot of room for all POVs. My final note is that documents from 1970 may talk about the future, but they're written before it and so do not prove what policies actually came to pass. -- VV 23:41, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You seem to be dodging the question of the appropriateness of 172's unilateralness and abusiveness. Yes, I wholly concede that the CIA under orders of Nixon sought ways to overthrow Allende in 1970. There is nothing to indicate they wanted what happened in 1973 to occur, nor even less that they had anything to do with it. Indeed, they may have been happier waiting for the next election and trying to sink Allende then. Yes, I do take the CIA's word for it, and at any rate flatly contradicting them in the intro is a violation of NPOV. Next, when saying the US "supported" Pinochet after he came to power, we have to be very careful what we mean. It does not mean they supported everything he did or agreed with all of his actions. We arguably "support" Taiwan right now, but that does not mean we sign off on all their policies. By saying things like "the US supported the right-wing military dictator of Chile", one is deliberately blurring important distinctions as to what was and what was not supported and why and how and under what conditions, and thus painting the US as the evil boogeyman (obviously the goal). If we just stick to the undisputed facts, such as the CIA section of the article mostly does, we should be okay. -- VV 22:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3258140&oldid=3257916

The intelligence community surveyed the documents recently and concluded the US "did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency" (see ref in text). At any rate, it was an attempt to balance all sides; in fact that sentence was a revised version (not by me) of a compromise, as I feel the involvement or not of the US can be relegated to the gigantic discussion section below. If you have better wording you should try it out; at least we're talking about it. That doesn't mean 172's bully tactics and contempt and disrespect for consensus are A-okay. -- VV 19:28, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3257762&oldid=3256126

My last write of the intro was designed to balance all these concerns, and I think it does so fairly well. As Ed mentions, the CIA discussion is now the largest section in the article! This is just a case of 172 being out of control; I assume you've noted his contempt for consensus comments above. -- VV 02:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3247294&oldid=3247005

"US-backed" does not mean what 172 wants to claim, nor is it accurate even in a broad sense, nor could any sense it might claim to be accurate in justify putting a reference to the US in the intro. This has all been discussed, with the agreement to not have it, and 172 knows this. Of course, he is disrespecting process and neutrality because of personal vendettas and ideological warring. -- VV 01:07, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3220260&oldid=3220232

Translation: "I'm 172, only my opinion matters. The method of using the Talk pages to discuss an article, hash out an agreement, and reach a consensus doesn't apply to me. Neutrality is immaterial, as my opinion should be stated in the intro, no matter how many other POVs there are. Anyone who alters such edits or disagrees is a POV-pushing troll." -- VV 21:28, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3217074&oldid=3216805

I think you'll find 172 will be the only one involved who favors continued protection, as he is using it as a blunt tool to push his own POV with no respect for Wikipedia's policies. The reverts in recent history have all been by or because of him. -- VV 02:33, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3206479&oldid=3206414

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3206139&oldid=3206130 I have put in a request at Requests for protection. You can add your voice there. Basically, 172 got the page protected by lying. -- VV 02:07, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3206107&oldid=3205752 I see this page is protected now, on account of basically one user (172) who has no interest in neutrality and is trying to reinsert highly disputed assertions into the intro against a litany of users who are trying to actually work on the article and make it fair. 172 has not defended his actions here, nor shown awareness of the long conversation we've already had on this page. -- VV 01:36, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

User talk:Snowspinner
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Snowspinner&dummy=1&diff=0&oldid=3684534 Hey Snowspinner, I understand your concerns about the three-revert rule, but you may not know my history with it. I did stick to the rule for a while in my dealings with 172, and he never did. The quickpoll system in force, I tried to use that to bring up one of 172's more egregious revert attacks (five in ~one hour against two users, trying to erase a week's worth of edits) - and the community shrugged it off. 172 does not consider himself bound by this rule - or any rule - and my edits and efforts will simply be destroyed if I do not do battle. I hope you realize I really have tried everything I can think of - RfC pages, 3rd party interventions, long, long, long attempts to talk to him on Talk and User talk pages - and nothing but reverting back has worked. 172 lacks basic respect for others and the Wiki process, and the community lacks the will and coherence to control him. VV 06:17, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

User talk:Eloquence
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=0&oldid=3694570 Well, I saw no indication 172 was getting the discussion on track, and time has borne this out. To me attacking 172's behavior is not a personal attack (e.g., saying "172 keeps inappropriately reverting the article"). Calling me a "little bitch" or an "ignorant fuck" is. Anyway, you might have noticed there are RfC pages on us now, and the threat of arbitration. Perhaps you will chime in; I hope at least you can validate my claims about 172's conduct, whatever your other sentiments. VV 23:39, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3652079&oldid=3651397 I'd still like to know what you meant by that, in particular singling me out given the context. Whatever else I've done (in desperation from community inaction), I have not stooped to 172's level or even near in this regard. VV 22:59, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3482266&oldid=3481155 I'll try to be brief. First, you are wrong about what I "subconsciously" know; I disagree very strongly with your perspective on the coup, but I don't want to dwell on that here, as that's what the Talk page discussion was for. (I should perhaps note that 172 himself once conceded that the U.S. could not have prevented the coup if they wanted to.) I do not desire to "avoid the Wikipedia bureaucracy"; I tried it out, over and over in many ways, and have little to show for it. By not "adopting 172's methods", I would have been doomed to eternal capitulation, watching my efforts reverted away because I nobly refused to "play his game", and thus became "the victim". No thanks. I don't write on Wikipedia so I can watch my work disappear into the page history. I tried the high road on Red Scare, and I will not be fooled again. It seems silly I should need an alliance to enforce clear NPOV standards, but I do have a good rapport with several users who understand what's going on. But alliances are tricky matters, and many don't have time to rescue others. As for whether 172 is trolling or just a bully, I can't say for sure, but given his past stalking behavior, the fact that he showed up at this article suggests he's here to make trouble. -- VV 05:09, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

At the risk of spreading the debate here, US-backed is not very ambiguous, and even if it's tolerated as a "catch-all", then UK-backed or whatever would also be appropriate. Putting it in the beginning of the intro is POV-pushing, as it gives the US prominence in an article on a Chilean politician when many feel the US is barely relevant. Anyway, moving on, you've missed the point of the rapist/victim example; I didn't say "accused rapist". But at any rate, I'll give a concrete example rather than pursue the made-up one: I quickpolled 172 for five reverts on Red Scare some time ago, he made a retaliatory quickpoll, cutting and pasting my language in another spurt of I'm-copying-you adolescence, even though I'd only made three reverts. He broke the rule, I didn't, yet people in the name of "impartiality" were voting the same way on both polls. You see my point? Re Pinochet, 172 was not being reasonable; he was erasing the product of weeks of delicate negotiations just because he could, and refusing to change even one word, allowing only a superscripted 1 to muddy his God-given intro. You know; you were there. I'm starting to think that Adam Carr's characterization of him as a sophisticated vandal may be right on. -- VV 23:55, 6 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3480841&oldid=3478500

I know you agree with 172's POV, but it is a POV, and there are others. You know the policy. Anyway, 172's intransigence would be unacceptable even if he were right. The footnote approach is a joke; why use it when you can simply say what you have to say, unless of course it's to make sure not word of 172's godly intro is changed? And it still pushes a POV. Polls are problematic for the reasons noted, and a judge would have to be "impartial", but what would that mean? Protesting having no opinion initially, but then issuing one later? (Though I concede its value, impartiality is a suspect notion; should one be "impartial" between a rapist and his victim?) Compromise is also tricky notion when it's compromise that got the intro the rest of us developed but 172 refuses to allow. We'd be stuck with an infinite regress of compromises, with anyone sufficiently obnoxious being able to hold the community hostage. I guess I'm at a loss to know what to do; Wikipedia simply does not have the "legal" structure to deal with the likes of 172. -- VV 20:50, 4 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3450200&oldid=3450142

Not to sound cynical, but being the innocent party has never helped me before, but direct action has. I've basically given up on not being equal revert-wise (though I don't see myself as rude), although I held off on the Civil War war so as to not be the first to make a fourth revert. There's not really anything to vote on in the intro; his version pushes a POV, while mine does not. Your analogy with Mother Teresa suits this case. -- VV 05:55, 4 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3441840&oldid=3441431

Will nothing be done about this rogue? He's back at it again, trolling Pinochet, an article in which you also have a stake and have tried to deal with him on. -- VV 00:11, 4 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3438773&oldid=3438338

You mentioned before about being willing to intervene vis-a-vis 172's abuses. I think you can see this is such a case, whatever opinions you may have. Refer also to Requests for page protection for more on this case. -- VV 21:34, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Eloquence&diff=3226478&oldid=3216878

User talk:Ed Poor
Hey Ed Poor, you might want to refer to the extensive discussion about this meaningless and irrelevant "poll" if you haven't been checked lately. And anyway, as you and Michael Snow both pointed out, the poll binds nothing, and, of course, it is tainted by 172's campaigning. VV 12:34, 20 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Ed_Poor&diff=3692513&oldid=3658414

Requests for review of administrative actions
One major difference between my "rollback" and 172's is that his last one was done after the page was protected, which I as a non-admin could not equal. If this was intentional, it would be his fourth violation of protection policy (that I know of!), but I conjecture it was not, since for one it was before the msg:protected went up. (I think reverting would be appropriate since admins should not have extra personal dispute power.) Since "admin rollback" is marked as minor it seems it should not be used for run of the mill content disputes, but this may not be policy. Also, Snowspinner, you missed the edit war at Joseph Stalin! I urge users to see for themselves the nature of the edits which 172 felt he should use ~50 reverts, without comment, to prevent me from making. VV 08:26, 22 May 2004 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_review_of_administrative_actions&diff=3688876&oldid=3685326

VeryVandalism
VeryVerily reappeared after an absence for a day, and right away upon return he reverted work mostly by Eloquence, who made progress toward unprotecting Augusto Pinochet and expanding the intro without my involvement even, for the most part. He also provoked an edit war on My Lai Massacre, which I had been trying to prevent by linking both the VC and NLF to the article. He even reverted an entire section I had added to History of Chile, an article he had never even touched before, without comment, thus provoking an edit war. And watch him turn around after I make these comments and play the victim. The only thing this user does on Wikipedia is pick fights with me (likely because of severe psychological problems, I am beginning to believe). I mean, just look at his user history. He hardly does anything else. 172 07:35, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * As I have said several times, I think both you and VeryVerily engage in terrible editing practices, and that neither one of those justifies the other one editing the same way (As the examples of Wik and Cantus should be showing you). Frankly, as bad as everything you've just said makes VV look, accusing him of having severe psychological problems on top of it just makes you look bad too. Snowspinner 14:07, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree my editing practices have not shown Zen-like patience, but I'm asking people to consider them in the context of several months of 172's attacks on me. VV 21:18, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

(Copied from User talk:Michael Snow:) 172 cut and pasted this note several places (with variations); I'll post a short defense here. Eloquence's work built off on 172's version and incorporated nearly everything I found objectionable; I attempted a new rewrite based on the sandbox, created for this purpose. The My Lai Massacre battle is over the same "common names" policy issue which was discussed and resolved months ago when "HectorRodriguez" was pushing it. The new section in History of Chile was laced with large-scale, emotive POV (e.g., "perhaps the most brutal and large-scale repression in Latin American history") with no balance, and was anyway long and out of scope for this article. It is true I've responded to 172's escalation with escalation of my own (e.g., reverting with no/little comment), which perhaps reflects less well on me. But, like I've said, being the "victim" hasn't done much to help me, whereas 172 has gotten off scot-free with his tactics for a long time, and now, thus, I'm in some cases willing to match them. (I don't know how much faith to put in this arbitration process, either, although I should perhaps give it a chance to work.) VV 08:23, 28 May 2004 (UTC)


text:
User:Tofor

My name is Ian, and I joined Wikipedia May 19, 2004.

 * Articles that I have started include creeping crud, zip-line.

 * As you can see, not many yet, but a good start.

 * Feel free to check out my website at My home. Especially the trashapult section is very good, and watch the videos on the pictures page.  The thing was Big.

title: User:Tofor


text:
Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount

Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount (previously known as Lōʻihi) is an active submarine volcano about 35 km off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii. The top of the seamount is about 975 m below sea level. This seamount is on the flank of Mauna Loa, the largest active subaerial shield volcano on Earth. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the newest volcano in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, a string of volcanoes that stretches about 6200 km northwest of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Unlike most active volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that make up the active plate margins on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Kamaʻehuakanaloa and the other volcanoes of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain are hotspot volcanoes and formed well away from the nearest plate boundary. Volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands arise from the Hawaii hotspot, and as the youngest volcano in the chain, Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the only Hawaiian volcano in the deep submarine preshield stage of development.

Kamaʻehuakanaloa began forming around 400,000 years ago and is expected to begin emerging above sea level about 10,000–100,000 years from now. At its summit, Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount stands more than 3000 m above the seafloor, making it taller than Mount St. Helens was before its catastrophic 1980 eruption. A diverse microbial community resides around Kamaʻehuakanaloa many hydrothermal vents.

In the summer of 1996, a swarm of 4,070 earthquakes was recorded at Kamaʻehuakanaloa. At the time this was the most energetic earthquake swarm in Hawaii recorded history. The swarm altered 10 to 13 km2 of the seamount's summit; one section, Pele's Vents, collapsed entirely upon itself and formed the renamed Pele's Pit. The volcano has remained relatively active since the 1996 swarm and is monitored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The Hawaii Undersea Geological Observatory (HUGO) provided real-time data on Kamaʻehuakanaloa between 1997 and 1998. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's last known eruption was in 1996, before the earthquake swarm of that summer.

Naming
The name Kamaʻehuakanaloa is a Hawaiian language word for "glowing child of Kanaloa", the god of the ocean. This name was found in two Hawaiian mele from the 19th and early twentieth centuries based on research at the Bishop Museum and was assigned by the Hawaiʻi Board on Geographic Names in 2021 and adopted by the U.S. Geological Survey. From 1955 to 2021 the seamount was called "Lōʻihi", the Hawaiian word for "long", describing its shape. The change to Kamaʻehuakanaloa was made in an effort to be more culturally appropriate given native Hawaiian traditions for naming.

Geology
Kamaʻehuakanaloa is a seamount, or underwater volcano, on the flank of Mauna Loa, the Earth's tallest shield volcano. It is the newest volcano produced by the Hawaiʻi hotspot in the extensive Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. The distance between the summit of the older Mauna Loa and the summit of Kamaʻehuakanaloa is about 80 km, which is, coincidentally, also the approximate diameter of the Hawaiʻi hotspot. Kamaʻehuakanaloa consists of a summit area with three pit craters, a 11 km long rift zone extending north from the summit, and a 19 km long rift zone extending south-southeast from the summit.

The summit's pit craters are named West Pit, East Pit, and Pele's Pit. Pele's Pit is the youngest of this group and is located at the southern part of the summit. The walls of Pele's Pit stand 200 m high and were formed in July 1996 when its predecessor, Pele's Vent, a hydrothermal field near Kamaʻehuakanaloa summit, collapsed into a large depression. The thick crater walls of Pele's Pit – averaging 20 m in width, unusually thick for Hawaiian volcanic craters – suggest its craters have filled with lava multiple times in the past.

Kamaʻehuakanaloa's north–south trending rift zones form a distinctive elongated shape, from which the volcano's earlier Hawaiian name "Lōʻihi," meaning "long", derives. The north rift zone consists of a longer western portion and a shorter eastern rift zone. Observations show that both the north and south rift zones lack sediment cover, indicating recent activity. A bulge in the western part of the north rift zone contains three 60 - 80 m cone-shaped prominences.

Until 1970, Kamaʻehuakanaloa was thought to be an inactive volcano that had been transported to its current location by sea-floor spreading. The seafloor under Hawaii is 80–100 million years old and was produced at the East Pacific Rise, an oceanic spreading center where new sea floor forms from magma that erupts from the mantle. New oceanic crust moves away from the spreading center. Over a period of 80–100 million years, the sea floor under Hawaii moved from the East Pacific Rise to its present location 6000 km west, carrying ancient seamounts with it. When scientists investigated a series of earthquakes off Hawaii in 1970, they discovered that Kamaʻehuakanaloa was an active member of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain.

Kamaʻehuakanaloa is built on the seafloor with a slope of about five degrees. Its northern base on the flank of Mauna Loa is 1900 m below sea level, but its southern base is a more substantial 4755 m below the surface. Thus, the summit is 931 m above the seafloor as measured from the base of its north flank, but 3786 m high when measured from the base of its southern flank. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is following the pattern of development that is characteristic of all Hawaiian volcanoes. Geochemical evidence from Kamaʻehuakanaloa's lavas indicates that Kamaʻehuakanaloa is in transition between the preshield and shield volcano stage, providing valuable clues to the early development of Hawaiian volcanoes. In the preshield stage, Hawaiian volcanoes have steeper sides and a lower level of activity, producing an alkali basalt lava. Continued volcanism is expected to eventually give birth to an island at Kamaʻehuakanaloa. It experiences frequent landslides; the growth of the volcano has destabilized its slopes, and extensive areas of debris inhabit the steep southeastern face. Similar deposits from other Hawaiian volcanoes indicate that landslide debris is an important product of the early development of Hawaiian volcanoes. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is predicted to rise above the surface in 10,000 to 100,000 years.

Age and growth
Radiometric dating was used to determine the age of rock samples from Kamaʻehuakanaloa. The Hawaii Center for Volcanology tested samples recovered by various expeditions, notably the 1978 expedition, which provided 17 dredge samples. Most of the samples were found to be of recent origin; the oldest dated rock is around 300,000 years old. Following the 1996 event, some young breccia was also collected. Based on the samples, scientists estimate Kamaʻehuakanaloa is about 400,000 years old. The rock accumulates at an average rate of 3.5 mm per year near the base, and 7.8 mm near the summit. If the data model from other volcanoes such as Kīlauea holds true for Kamaʻehuakanaloa, 40% of the volcano's mass formed within the last 100,000 years. Assuming a linear growth rate, Kamaʻehuakanaloa is 250,000 years old. However, as with all hotspot volcanoes, Kamaʻehuakanaloa's level of activity has increased with time; therefore, it would take at least 400,000 years for such a volcano to reach Kamaʻehuakanaloa's mass. As Hawaiian volcanoes drift northwest at a rate of about 10 cm a year, Kamaʻehuakanaloa was 40 km southeast of its current position at the time of its initial eruption.

Activity
Kamaʻehuakanaloa is a young and fairly active volcano, although less active than nearby Kīlauea. In the past few decades, several earthquake swarms have been attributed to Kamaʻehuakanaloa, the largest of which are summarized in the table below. The volcano's activity is now known to predate scientific record keeping of its activity, which commenced in 1959. Most earthquake swarms at Kamaʻehuakanaloa have lasted less than two days; the two exceptions are the 1990-1991 earthquake, lasting several months, and the 1996 event, which was shorter but much more pronounced. The 1996 event was directly observed by an ocean bottom seismometer (OBS), allowing scientists to calculate the depth of the earthquakes as 6 km to 8 km below the summit, approximating to the position of Kamaʻehuakanaloa's extremely shallow magma chamber. This is evidence that Kamaʻehuakanaloa's seismicity is volcanic in origin.

The low-level seismic activity documented on Kamaʻehuakanaloa since 1959 has shown that between two and ten earthquakes per month are traceable to the summit. Earthquake swarm data have been used to analyze how well Kamaʻehuakanaloa's rocks propagate seismic waves and to investigate the relationship between earthquakes and eruptions. This low level activity is periodically punctuated by large swarms of earthquakes, each swarm composed of up to hundreds of earthquakes. The majority of the earthquakes are not distributed close to the summit, though they follow a north–south trend. Rather, most of the earthquakes occur in the southwest portion of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. The largest recorded swarms took place on Kamaʻehuakanaloa in 1971, 1972, 1975, 1991–92 and 1996. The nearest seismic station is around 30 km from Kamaʻehuakanaloa, on the south coast of Hawaii. Seismic events that have a magnitude under 2 are recorded often, but their location cannot be determined as precisely as it can for larger events. In fact, HUGO (Hawaii Undersea Geological Observatory), positioned on Kamaʻehuakanaloa's flank, detected ten times as many earthquakes as were recorded by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) seismic network.

1996 earthquake swarm
The largest amount of activity recorded for the Kamaʻehuakanaloa seamount was a swarm of 4,070 earthquakes between July 16 and August 9, 1996. This series of earthquakes was the largest recorded for any Hawaiian volcano to date in both amount and intensity. Most of the earthquakes had moment magnitudes of less than 3.0. "Several hundred" had a magnitude greater than 3.0, including more than 40 greater than 4.0 and a 5.0 tremor.

The final two weeks of the earthquake swarm were observed by a rapid response cruise launched in August 1996. The National Science Foundation funded an expedition by University of Hawaiʻi scientists, led by Frederick Duennebier, that began investigating the swarm and its origin in August 1996. The scientists' assessment laid the groundwork for many of the expeditions that followed. Follow-up expeditions to Kamaʻehuakanaloa took place, including a series of crewed submersible dives in August and September. These were supplemented by a great deal of shore-based research. Fresh rock collected during the expedition revealed that an eruption occurred before the earthquake swarm.

Submersible dives in August were followed by NOAA-funded research in September and October 1996. These more detailed studies showed the southern portion of Kamaʻehuakanaloa's summit had collapsed, a result of a swarm of earthquakes and the rapid withdrawal of magma from the volcano. A crater 1 km across and 300 m deep formed out of the rubble. The event involved the movement of 100 million cubic meters of volcanic material. A region of 10 to 13 km2 of the summit was altered and populated by bus-sized pillow lava blocks, precariously perched along the outer rim of the newly formed crater. "Pele's Vents", an area on the southern side, previously considered stable, collapsed completely into a giant pit, renamed "Pele's Pit". Strong currents make submersible diving hazardous in the region.

The researchers were continually met by clouds of sulfide and sulfate. The sudden collapse of Pele's Vents caused a large discharge of hydrothermal material. The presence of certain indicator minerals in the mixture suggested temperatures exceeded 250 °C, a record for an underwater volcano. The composition of the materials was similar to that of black smokers, the hydrothermal vent plumes located along mid-ocean ridges. Samples from mounds built by discharges from the hydrothermal plumes resembled white smokers.

The studies demonstrated that the most volcanically and hydrothermally active area was along the southern rift. Dives on the less active northern rim indicated that the terrain was more stable there, and high lava columns were still standing upright. A new hydrothermal vent field (Naha Vents) was located in the upper-south rift zone, at a depth of 1325 m.

Recent activity
Kamaʻehuakanaloa has remained largely quiet since the 1996 event; no activity was recorded from 2002 to 2004. The seamount showed signs of life again in 2005 by generating an earthquake bigger than any previously recorded there. USGS-ANSS (Advanced National Seismic System) reported two earthquakes, magnitudes 5.1 and 5.4, on May 13 and July 17. Both originated from a depth of 44 km. On April 23, a magnitude 4.3 earthquake was recorded at a depth of approximately 33 km. Between December 7, 2005, and January 18, 2006, a swarm of around 100 earthquakes occurred, the largest measuring 4 on the Moment magnitude scale and 12 to 28 km deep. Another earthquake measuring 4.7 was later recorded approximately midway between Kamaʻehuakanaloa and Pāhala (on the south coast of the island of Hawaii).

Early work
Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount's first depiction on a map was on Survey Chart 4115, a bathymetric rendering of part of Hawaiʻi compiled by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1940. At the time, the seamount was non-notable, being one of many in the region. A large earthquake swarm first brought attention to it in 1952. That same year, geologist Gordon A. Macdonald hypothesized that the seamount was actually an active submarine shield volcano, similar to the two active Hawaiian volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kīlauea. Macdonald's hypothesis placed the seamount as the newest volcano in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, created by the Hawaiʻi hotspot. However, because the earthquakes were oriented east–west (the direction of the volcanic fault) and there was no volcanic tremor in seismometers distant from the seamount, Macdonald attributed the earthquake to faulting rather than a volcanic eruption.

Geologists suspected the seamount could be an active undersea volcano, but without evidence the idea remained speculative. The volcano was largely ignored after the 1952 event, and was often mislabeled as an "older volcanic feature" in subsequent charts. Geologist Kenneth O. Emery is credited with naming the seamount in 1955, describing the long and narrow shape of the volcano as Kamaʻehuakanaloa. In 1978, an expedition studied intense, repeated seismic activity known as earthquake swarms in and around the Kamaʻehuakanaloa area. Rather than finding an old, extinct seamount, data collected revealed Kamaʻehuakanaloa to be a young, possibly active volcano. Observations showed the volcano to be encrusted with young and old lava flows. Fluids erupting from active hydrothermal vents were also found.

In 1978, a US Geological Survey research ship collected dredge samples and photographed Kamaʻehuakanaloa's summit with the goal of studying whether Kamaʻehuakanaloa is active. Analysis of the photos and testing of pillow lava rock samples appeared to show that the material was "fresh", yielding more evidence that Kamaʻehuakanaloa is still active. An expedition from October 1980 to January 1981 collected further dredge samples and photographs, providing additional confirmation. Studies indicated that the eruptions came from the southern part of the rift crater. This area is closest to the Hawaiʻi hotspot, which supplies Kamaʻehuakanaloa with magma. Following a 1986 seismic event, a network of five ocean bottom observatories (OBOs) were deployed on Kamaʻehuakanaloa for a month. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's frequent seismicity makes it an ideal candidate for seismic study through OBOs. In 1987, the submersible DSV Alvin was used to survey Kamaʻehuakanaloa Another autonomous observatory was positioned on Kamaʻehuakanaloa in 1991 to track earthquake swarms.

1996 to present
The bulk of information about Kamaʻehuakanaloa comes from dives made in response to the 1996 eruption. In a dive conducted almost immediately after seismic activity was reported, visibility was greatly reduced by high concentrations of displaced minerals and large floating mats of bacteria in the water. The bacteria that feed on the dissolved nutrients had already begun colonizing the new hydrothermal vents at Pele's Pit (formed from the collapse of the old ones), and may be indicators of the kinds of material ejected from the newly formed vents. They were carefully sampled for further analysis in a laboratory. An OBO briefly sat on the summit before a more permanent probe could be installed.

Repeated multibeam bathymetric mapping was used to measure the changes in the summit following the 1996 collapse. Hydrothermal plume surveys confirmed changes in the energy, and dissolved minerals emanating from Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory, HURL's 2000 m submersible Pisces V allowed scientists to sample the vent waters, microorganisms and hydrothermal mineral deposits.

Since 2006, the Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory (FeMO), funded by the National Science Foundation and Microbial Observatory Program, has led cruises to Kamaʻehuakanaloa investigate its microbiology every October. The first cruise, on the ship R/V Melville and exploiting the submersible JASON2, lasted from September 22 to October 9. These cruises study the large number of Fe-oxidizing bacteria that have colonized Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Kamaʻehuakanaloa's extensive vent system is characterized by a high concentration of CO2 and iron, while being low in sulfide. These characteristics make a perfect environment for iron-oxidizing bacteria, called FeOB, to thrive in.

HUGO (Hawaii Undersea Geological Observatory)
In 1997, scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi installed an ocean bottom observatory on the summit of Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount. The submarine observatory was nicknamed HUGO (Hawaiʻi Undersea Geological Observatory). HUGO was connected to the shore, 34 km away, by a fiber optic cable. It was designed to give scientists real-time seismic, chemical and visual data about the state of Kamaʻehuakanaloa, which had by then become an international laboratory for the study of undersea volcanism. The cable that provided HUGO with power and communications broke in April 1998, effectively shutting it down. The observatory was recovered from the seafloor in 2002.

Hydrothermal vent geochemistry
Kamaʻehuakanaloa's mid-Pacific location and its well-sustained hydrothermal system contribute to a rich oasis for a microbial ecosystem. Areas of extensive hydrothermal venting are found on Kamaʻehuakanaloa's crater floor and north slope, and along the summit of Kamaʻehuakanaloa itself. Active hydrothermal vents were first discovered at Kamaʻehuakanaloa in the late 1980s. These vents are remarkably similar to those found at the mid-ocean ridges, with similar composition and thermal differences. The two most prominent vent fields are at the summit: Pele's Pit (formally Pele's Vents) and Kapo's Vents. They are named after the Hawaiian deity Pele and her sister Kapo. These vents were considered "low temperature vents" because their waters were only about 30 °C. The volcanic eruption of 1996 and the creation of Pele's Pit changed this, and initiated high temperature venting; exit temperatures were measured at 77 °C in 1996.

Microorganisms
The vents lie 1100 to 1325 m below the surface, and range in temperature from 10 to over 200 °C. The vent fluids are characterized by a high concentration of (up to 17 mM) and Fe (Iron), but low in sulfide. Low oxygen and pH levels are important factors in supporting the high amounts of Fe (iron), one of the hallmark features of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. These characteristics make a perfect environment for iron-oxidizing bacteria, called FeOB, to thrive in. An example of these species is Mariprofundus ferrooxydans, sole member of the class Zetaproteobacteria. The composition of the materials was similar to that of black smokers, that are a habitat of archaea extremophiles. Dissolution and oxidation of the mineral observed over the next two years suggests the sulfate is not easily preserved.

A diverse community of microbial mats surround the vents and virtually cover Pele's Pit. The Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL), NOAA's Research Center for Hawaiʻi and the Western Pacific, monitors and researches the hydrothermal systems and studies the local community. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded an extremophile sampling expedition to Kamaʻehuakanaloa in 1999. Microbial mats surrounded the 160 °C vents, and included a novel jelly-like organism. Samples were collected for study at NSF's Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center (MarBEC). In 2001, Pisces V collected samples of the organisms and brought them to the surface for study.

NOAA's National Undersea Research Center and NSF's Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center are cooperating to sample and research the local bacteria and archaea extremophiles. The fourth FeMO (Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory) cruise occurred during October 2009.

Macroorganisms
Marine life inhabiting the waters around Kamaʻehuakanaloa is not as diverse as life at other, less active seamounts. Fish found living near Kamaʻehuakanaloa include the Celebes monkfish (Sladenia remiger), and members of the cutthroat eel family, Synaphobranchidae. Invertebrates identified in the area include two species endemic to the hydrothermal vents, a bresiliid shrimp (Opaepele loihi) of the family Alvinocarididae (described in 1995), and a tube or pogonophoran worm. Dives conducted after the 1996 earthquake swarms were unable to find either the shrimp or the worm, and it is not known if there are lasting effects on these species.

From 1982 to 1992, researchers in Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles photographed the fish of Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount, Johnston Atoll, and Cross Seamount at depths between 40 and 2000 m. A small number of species identified at Kamaʻehuakanaloa were newly recorded sightings in Hawaiʻi, including the tasseled coffinfish (Chaunax fimbriatus), and the Celebes monkfish.

title: Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount


text:
Talk:Bank of the West

Author
Author is copyright holder, emailed me. - Hephaestos|§ 02:52, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Bank size
Out of curiousity, is Bank of the West the 5th largest in California, or is the fifth largest overall? Tekknofieber 06:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Stanford.jpg
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If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 07:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Bear logo
Bank of the West has a pretty notable bear logo that used to be their primary branding before the BNP Paribas Open in 2017. Can somebody please add it? --Geopgeop (talk) 22:27, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bank of the West