What truly grips us in these accounts is not so much the numbers as the spectacle of suddenly vanishing competence, of men utterly routed by technology, of fail-safe systems failing with a logic as inexorable as it was once unforeseeable.
That's a tragic but classic example of multiple backup systems failing.
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"With monitoring systems failing to raise the necessary 'red flags,' the Regents' ability to provide critical oversight and require compliance with policies and internal controls was crippled," it said.
The outcome is overflowing sewer systems, failing roads and ruined cultural resources.
A fire could have taken out part of the plane, or led to some systems failing, but left the plane intact.
"Think of the nightmare people went through with data warehousing, with systems failing at such high percentages it's very difficult to get information from the source to the data warehouse," notes Peter Urban, senior research analyst at AMR Research.
The odds against all three hydraulic systems failing simultaneously had previously been calculated as high as a billion to one.
