Various articles and/or books that I have written, some of which describe some very puzzling and odd events that I have experienced. All of the stories are as close to the “truth” as I can get. They represent my best recollection of my experiences of actual events. It is up to the reader to decide whether or not they are feasible, possible or just my confusion about what I was experiencing at the time. For example, I don’t know if I talked to space aliens or not, but I DO know that my experience with people claiming to be space aliens IS true.
During a trip to China in 2006, my wife and I were visiting some “indigenous” villages in the southern part of the country. I am not sure which peoples these were, but they were probably Miao people, or possibly it was a Dong village in the province of Guizhou. It is my understanding that the Miao, and possible the Dong, people came to China from southeast Asia, and are related to the Hmong people in Vietnam and Laos. They make up a couple of the 55 or so recognized minority groups in China.
The village where we were staying was ancient looking, with the winding trails through town being just wide enough to let a water buffalo though on the way from its stall in the farmers’ homes to the fields. The houses in town were all hand hewn, hand made, two-story buildings that tend to lean in various directions – sometimes in several directions within one building. There were no automobiles, stores or other attributes of a modern town. These are deeply religious peoples, but mostly believing in “shaman” style religions, based upon ancient knowledges and practices.
One morning we were taking a walk through town with our wonderful guide, Xiao (pronounced like the first four letters in “shower”). We turned a corner and came upon a very old, hunched over shaman standing in the front of the doorway to a house, performing a healing ceremony for the lady of the house who was apparently quite sick. Since there is no access to modern medical attention in these remote villages, the shaman is the doctor of choice. My guess is that even if modern doctors are available, the shaman is still the doctor of choice.
He had some items in his hands that he was waving in prayer, and was chanting/singing a long prayer song. When he saw us, especially my video camera, he made it clear that we were welcome to watch, and to take videos of his service – so of course I did take footage of that interesting event. He stood in the doorway for a few minutes longer, until he apparently finished his work – and then rather abruptly packed up his things and left. It seemed a little odd to me that there was really no tapering off of the ceremony, one minute he was deep in prayer and the next he just stopped and walked away. Obviously he was finished with that healing
This was interesting at the time, but I discovered that something odd had happened when I was finally at home and editing my “travel video.” I had taken about 30 hours of video while on this trip. My practice is to take more video than I think I need and then edit it down to a manageable length video, in the case an hour “feature” of our trip through Asia. I copied all of that footage into my computer and began to work my way through it, selecting scenes that I felt were important, and adjusting their duration so that they create a better pace for the viewer.
I was anxious to include the shaman footage because it was so unusual and striking. I easily found the footage, but discovered to my dismay that while the visual part was perfect, it had no audio! Out of the 30 hours or so of raw footage, there was one two minute segment that had no audio – this segment. Not just no sound, but no sound track at all – just blank tape that hadn’t been recorded on, not even with a silent signal.
All the rest of the tape was perfect, just as I had expected. I was so perplexed that I got my camera out to see if there was a chance that I had accidentally turned off the audio recording feature. However, that camera is a “point and shoot” model that doesn’t have a way to turn off the audio – you get sound no matter what you want. You can’t adjust the volume, and can’t turn it off. So, as far as I am concerned it remains a mystery.
This morning I was sitting in the pre-dawn morning enjoying a cup of coffee and reading a little book about some of the Buddha’s teachings called the Abhidharma. (The Abihdarma is an ancient philosophy concerning the nature of mind.) I am not a “scholar” of Buddhism (or any other “ism” for that matter), but now and then I enjoy contemplating things along these lines, or perhaps modern physics – they are both just about as difficult to grasp.
The house had a bit of chill, so I decided to make a fire in the wood stove instead of just turning on the heater. I went out to the wood stack to get a firewood, gathered some kindling and preceded to make a fire – I thought. I laid the fire with care; positioned a bit of crumpled newspaper as an ignition source, carefully positioned the logs and kindling. I lit the fire, which flared up nicely and settled back down to read my book.
After a few minutes I noticed that my nice cheery fire was out! I got up and found that my newspaper had burned up nicely, but that was about all that happened. So I preceded to put more paper in, rearranged my kindling, and tried again. This time it got the point where I could hear the satisfying crackle of wood burning. I was sure of being successful – only to shortly discover that while the logs had ignited, that quickly died down to just being glowing embers. I had failed once again.
Not wanting to give up at this point I went back to the stove to see if I could find a better solution. While looking at my layout I recalled a lesson that my older brother had given me decades ago, “The logs need to be close to a partner log so the air flows briskly between them and the heat of the fire radiates to their partner log.” I realized that I positioned the logs too far from their “buddy” logs for this to occur. I moved one of the logs about a half inch closer to the other and went back to my chair to see what would happen. Within a very short amount of time I had a really pleasant fire – meeting my intention perfectly. About that time my wife came into room and complemented me on building such a “romantic” fire! I killed two birds with one stone that time around.
You might wonder what this has to do with System Safety, or my normal TBD offering.
I realized that the fire building exercise might be an almost perfect analogy to what I have been hoping to foster within the International System Safety Society (ISSS), the System Safety profession or anything else applicable to this journal. Let me try to explain the connection.
For the past few decades I have been hoping to do something to assist the ISSS grow to be an organization that is as important and influential as I know it should be. I am convinced that the SS process is highly effective and efficient at reducing risks while adding important fiscal and social value to products and systems of all kinds. I believe that it is the duty/role of the ISSS to foster that process and help expand it into all industries and processes, worldwide. The dual approach of integrating engineering and management practices into the process of designing, implementing and “fielding” products and systems holds the promise of a better, safer, more environmentally appropriate future. In short, I think it is BIG deal.
However, over the years I have noticed a rather disappointing trend whereby we (the ISSS) continually go through waves of enthusiasm and discouragement. Our history seems to be littered with groups of people, and individuals, who take up the task of “reinvigorating” (or perhaps vigorating) the ISSS, of expanding the scope into many industries, or otherwise promoting and providing training that matches the potential importance of the process. Things get started, excitement builds to “do something”, meetings are met, papers are written – and then it dies down once again. Our membership grows to over a thousand individuals, and then decreases back to a few hundred. (It is my firm opinion that to properly reflect the importance of the approach the membership should be in the tens of thousands, rather than a few hundred.)
This brings me back to my experience with my wood stove. Like the stove, we work at gathering the fuel, laying the fire, putting in the starter and kindling that we think is necessary, light the process and watch it blossom for a little while – and then die out again. I have watched this happen three or four times in the past thirty years, it is a frustrating and disappointing cycle. We keep looking for better logs, better fire starting materials, better kindling – we get out the bellows in an attempt to blow fire into the society – but with little on-going success.
Perhaps we have gathered the correct materials, perhaps we have them ready to go, perhaps we haven’t been wrong in our overall approach – perhaps we just need to make a small adjustment so that we create a chimney between the forces of supply and demand. There is an obvious demand for the kinds of things that we do, hence the plethora of standards and guidelines based loosely upon the “system safety approach”. These are created in many industries around the world – but they keep getting it wrong because while they like the ideas – they don’t see the entire picture of what it is we do. They take pieces and parts of the process, but not the whole thing. There is a supply of people (our members and those in the profession who are no longer members of the Society) with the skills and knowledge to make it happen – but they are unable to find effective ways to work with the demand. We (the ISSS) are perfectly situated to provide training, expertise, mentoring leading to the skills and knowledge required to meet the demand. However, we have been unable to get past the “hump” of making that happen. Perhaps we just need to find the right thing(s) to shift a very small amount to get the fire burning vigorously – finally giving off the light and heat that we are offering to the world community.
I don’t know what that might be, it is not clear to me what “logs” need to be rearranged to bring this about – but that might be much more effective than our cycle of gathering the wood, laying the fire, and watching it dwindle. Maybe we have the fire already lit – we just need to find a way to let the air get to the fire, and for the fire to bridge the gap.
One fine day in 2006 my good friend Ramin decided that it was time to take a road trip to Mount Shasta in northern California. He had made a fresh batch of bio-diesel for his older diesel powered Mercedes and seemed to have an urge to burn a bit of it up, and to visit one of the spiritual centers of California at the same time. Ramin, Adriana, Eva and I piled into the tempura smelling car and headed north.
We settled in for the three and a half hour drive up Interstate Highway 5, talking, joking and generally having a good time. Once we got to the foot of the mountain, we started up its western flank to see how high we could drive. I think part of the purpose of this was to test out the new fuel made from deep-fry residue, which worked splendidly – with only a slight smell of tempura in the exhaust. We easily went to the end of the road, which is about 2/3 of the way up the mountain at around 10,000 feet elevation. We were not prepared for the long hike required to go the rest of the way, so we stopped at the parking lot at the trail head.
The first order of the day was to refuel the car using the five gallon containers of fuel Ramin had thoughtfully stowed in the trunk. We could have put regular diesel in the car, but that would have spoiled the adventure of traveling on used cooking oil.
We decided to follow the trail into the woods. We walked through beautiful old growth Douglas Fir trees, and came upon a wonderful high-mountain meadow. There were interpretive signs telling us to stay on the trail, and that the area was a special spiritual place used by the local Native Americans. It was understandable why they felt it was a powerful place, the meadow was full of bright green grass, tiny little yellow flowers, and rivulets of crystal clear water flowing under the mossy grass land. The colors, smells and sounds were transfixing.
We all felt the power and spirituality of the place and broke up to wander and sit by ourselves for a bit, soaking in the magic of the atmosphere. I found myself in a very meditative state, just sitting and feeling the breeze, while listening to the birds and sounds in the forest.
After awhile we gathered back together and started to follow Eva, who evidently wanted to lead us somewhere. She led us back down the trail a little ways, and then just turned off into the forest were there was no sign of a trail. As we followed her into the woods, I found myself wondering what was going to happen next – it was clear that Eva either had a plan, or was being led. In any case, it felt like we were going to do something extraordinary.
After walking a few hundred feet, we came to another small clearing located on the edge of the meadow. In the clearing were five large rocks, arranged in the four directions, forming a circle that was about 25 feet in diameter. A large, flat rock was in the center of the circle, additional large flat rocks were located at the four directions (north, east, south and west). Obviously, Eva had led us to a location that others had used for spiritual purposes. I was rather dumbfounded that she led us so directly to this spot, as if she were being drawn by the energy of the place. This was the first that any of us had visited this location.
She then had Adriana stand on the center rock, facing south. Ramin was on the western rock, I was on the eastern one and Eva stood at the south. We were all facing toward the center, facing Adriana. Eva then spontaneously began a ceremony of healing for Adriana. My energy was drawn by her words and actions. I felt that my role was to be a protector of the sacred spirit which was working within our circle. I can’t really describe what happened that day, except to say that we all fell into a sort of trance, we melded our energy with the energy of the forest and the meadow, using it to bring healing and personal power to Adriana. I felt like I was holding a very large ball of energy within our circle, and protecting us from intrusions from unfriendly outside energy if there was any around. While that is what I felt like I was doing, I was unaware of any hostile energy – it felt like the whole area was just full of positive, loving energy that day.
Afterward we did not talk about the experience, so I have no way of knowing what others experienced, other that I am sure that Eva was a very powerful and loving channel of energy for Adriana. I could see that Adriana was deeply moved and impacted by the ceremony and the power of the intent from us all. However, it did not seem appropriate, or necessary, to talk about it afterward.
We then headed back home. We felt energize, laughing and skipping down the trail to the car. The four hour trip home seemed to fly by because I was still in a state of bliss from the ceremony. I am sure that I witnessed, and was part of, a powerful healing associated with connecting our energy to the energy of the mountain. I don’t know exactly what happened, but for some reason that day, and that event in particular, seems to have somehow changed my view of the world. Its effects are very subtle, but nevertheless important. If nothing else, it was a moment of feeling connected to the others, to the mountain and to the universe. It was a melding of our energies that reminds me that we are not separate, but are all one.
I started working with another Toltec teacher during the summer of 2006. The reasons for this switch from my teacher, Ramin were two-fold. Probably the first and foremost is that Ramin was deeply involved with getting his PhD and therefore wasn’t available for Toltec classes or other Toltec “games”. If Ramin wasn’t available, it seemed reasonable to find another teacher. Not only that, but I liked the idea of getting someone else to work with that has a different point of view and approach. The second major reason for going to see the new person was that I am still interested in exploring some of the “impossible” aspects of the Toltec traditions. Ramin does not seem to be at all interested in what I refer to as the phantasmagorical aspects of the practices, while the new person claims to be knowledgeable about these things and was willing to help me explore these areas.
After several weeks of getting to know each other, my new teacher declared that it was time to begin practicing feeling people’s energy. The first thing he did was to have me rub his body with a chicken’s egg on the outside of his cloths (no naked rubbing). The idea is that the egg can act as a medium for picking up negative energy and afterward can be used as a kind of divining tool. This was an interesting thing to do, but I didn’t really get past the point of its being just interesting. I didn’t find much to get excited about. Maybe there is something to it, but not something that I felt connected to.
The next event of note was when he invited a young lady to practice with. He said that she was very in tuned with energy and auras, and would be an easy person to practice with. This introduction made me more than a little uneasy. Practice? Practice what? How? What was I in for this time?
He had the girl sit on a stool facing me and close her eyes. I was to bring my hands up toward her until I felt the edges of her energy and then work my way around her body feeling her energy. This seemed rather bizarre to me, but I could see no reason to object – except that it seemed like a silly thing to do. I got as serious as I could about this and began by moving my palms toward her face. I could imagine that I felt something kind of warm when I got within a foot or so of her face, so decided that must be a good distance. I then pretended to feel around the surface of this energy zone.
As I moved around to the side of her head I got an odd feeling that her energy was all tangled up. It wasn’t really something that I could distinctly feel; it was just a small thought. I found that I had an urge to run my fingers through the energy to untangle it, kind of like straightening out hair, but at a distance. This was pretty weird thing for me to do, but since I was already doing this weird thing I figured I might as well just let it go and do what came along. After a bit of this it feel like the energy was now wavy, but untangled. I went on around to her back side and found that there seemed to be a clearly identifiable boundary between the room and her energy. It almost felt like a soft wall that I could push against. I pretended to gently rub my hands over the surface as I continued to move around, and then down her body. During this whole time I never got my hands closer than about a foot or a little more from her. This was kind of an “air massage.”
By the time that I got back around to her front side for the second time I could see that her expression had changed to one of peace and quiet. If nothing else happened, she appeared to have been greatly relaxed by this whole thing.
Since I didn’t know what else to pretend that I was doing, I just stepped back and let my hands down to my side. He then asked her to open her eyes and tell me what she had felt. She said that when I started it felt like I was picking her skin up off of her face and head, and turning it over a little at a time– placing it back on differently than it had been. She said it was a very strong feeling, but not unpleasant. She liked it okay once she decided to let it happen. (I guess this is when I was straightening out her energy?)
She then said that it was a very good feeling, comfortable sensation as I moved around. She said that as she sat there talking to us it looked like she had just drunk a couple of shots of vodka or something. She said she felt giddy, drunk, and happy. She offered the use of herself for practice whenever we wanted; she said that she felt great and would be more than happy for another air massage.
During this whole event I found myself feeling like I was pretending to feel something, and pretending to know what it was that I was supposed to do. There was nothing obvious, but a very subtle urge seemed to guide me in what I was supposed to be pretending to do. I imagined that I felt an energy boundary, but it wasn’t the same as feeling a physical force – it was just an imagination of a force. If anything was actually happening, it was all happening below my normal senses like those of touch, sound, heat. The odd part to me was that she indicated that she felt things that I had just imagined, so maybe “imagined” was not the right way to look at it. Was I pretending, or was I actually experiencing something? I really have no way of knowing. If it involved sensing something real it was a type of sensing that I am not very familiar with. However, it did have the same kind of feeling of warmth flowing through my body, arms and hands as I have felt in the past when “healing” seemed to be happening. It was like a real feeling, but not one that I am normally in tuned with. Was this a hallucination, imagination or real? I have no way of knowing.
As Lent approached in the winter of 2005, my teacher Ramin decided that it was time to do a bit more recapitulation. A couple of wonderful, powerful, women (Adriana and Eva) had joined us in our Toltec work, and they expressed interest in going through the process. Ramin’s suggestion was that we meet daily at 5:00 am (except for Sunday) during the period of Lent to perform an intensive recapitulation exercise. Since I live 25 miles north of the rest of the group, it meant that I had to start driving at 4:15 in the morning to get there in time to pick up Adriana and meet with the rest of the group at Eva’s apartment.
Ramin found four large cardboard boxes for us, which we could use as our recapitulation boxes. They could fold up out of the way during the day. There was just enough room in Eva’ small living room to fit our boxes once the furniture was moved out of the way. For forty days (excluding Sundays) we met in the dark of the morning to meditate, sat in our boxes and recapitulated, followed by a discussion of the things that came up for us during our recapitulations.
Since I had already gone through this process in a very organized and systematic way, it seemed that a new approach to finding significant events was in order. Ramin and I decided that my approach this time would be to just take whatever event came up rather than trying to identify them through a systematic searching. The idea was that whatever was important at the moment would become obvious, and it was no longer necessary to search for them. It turned out to be a great approach, everyday would bring some new significant event to light, and there was never a problem with having something important to work on.
Since I was focused on important events, rather than energetic connections with people, I found the sources of many more of my personal agreements with myself. Instead of accidentally finding them as I had previously done, these agreements were often the reason that the selected events were important. The importance seemed to be intrinsically connected to making decisions that were to become my agreements about life.
After about a week of this activity I started to feel an entirely new way of experiencing the world. I found myself falling totally and completely in love. It was as if I had just fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. However, the love wasn’t directed at anyone or anything, it was a strangely detached sort of feeling. I felt it with everything around me, and at all times. It was as if I had taken some sort of powerful drug that made me get out of my mind. I am certain that we all felt this way. We would finish our recapitulation for the morning and sit to talk about what had come up. We would talk, and sit to meditate, maybe listen to some music, read poetry or do exercises dreamt up by Ramin such as act out events, dance, sing or whatever came up. Some days Eva’s young son Danny would wake up and join us in a bit of wrestling and clowning around in a four year old way. Nearly every day we found that we had gone past our allotted time and were late for the schedules in our day. I would have been perfectly content to spend the entire day being in the glow of energy that we created. I was in total and complete bliss at these times.
At about the mid-point in time Ramin decided that we needed to work with water, so we went to the local gym and got passes to use their swimming pool. They opened their doors at 5:00 AM, which was just right for us to start swimming. We would be in the pool in the dark of the morning with the rain falling on us, meditating and recapitulating as we slowly swam back and forth. It was a magical experience. At one point we were blind folded and left to float in the deeper pool in our meditation. After some amount of time we could tell that others were in the pool with us, in fact a lot of others because it was an aqua-exercise class. The exercise teacher put on the music and started calling out exercises. As the students followed, the water waves jostled us around. We drifted in between the exercisers, or stayed along the edge of the pool. I am sure that we must have been quite a sight for them, drifting in our nirvana as they were working away, dancing in the water to the music. We would finally join in with them, and it seemed to be fun, and funny, for us all.
By the time we finished the 40 days I had been completed and totally shifted into a new place – which seems to be permanent. We spent our mornings somehow snuggling our energies together. It was as if all of our energy fields had expanded and were intertwined with each other. By the time that we were finished, it felt like that was a permanent way to relate to people and things, just enjoying the interactions of our energies.
Revisiting all of those experiences and re-evaluating my agreements seems to have changed my entire relationship to my understandings about the world. I find that when the old agreements come up I don’t believe them any longer. Even if they were not addressed during those mornings, I still don’t believe them because I learned that they are made from nothing. They are just beliefs and assumptions that were often wrong, or not even there. I take the position that they are interesting points of view, which I may or may not adhere to. I have a choice about how to react, rather than having to react based upon ghosts from the past. I have not lost that feeling of love; it is with me at all times, sometimes it gets so strong that it is difficult to do my day-to-day activities.
Most of the time I now feel strangely connected to the world (and the universe). I find that I feel a part of the earth, the trees, animals, people, even the air and water. It is as if I am a part of a whole, that there really isn’t a distinction between myself and others. It comes up sometimes as feelings of compassion, love, concern, or just being happy to relax in the presence of the world. Those days, and those wonderful friends, helped to shift me in ways that I will be forever grateful. It’s not that I don’t get frustrated, angry, frightened, sad or depressed – I still experience all of these emotions. However, now they do not have the same importance, they are not who I am – I am somehow stronger, freer and in love – even in the midst of these other emotions.
The September 2, 2021 addition of the New York Times “The Morning” that landed in my inbox had an interesting article concerning the collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condo that resulted in 98 people dead. While that event kept showing up on the daily news I couldn’t help but wonder what in the world went wrong? Is there an important “System Safety” lesson to be learned? If so, what might it be? The System Safety Society is supporting a NIOSH sponsored effort to explore ways to better implement “safety through design” for construction projects. The Times article provided a few enticing tidbits that might be worth mulling over a bit with regard to improving safety through design.
My first reaction was that perhaps it was the after-effect of using a type of high early strength concrete that was popular in the late 60’s because it gains strength early, maximizing the probability of passing the required 28 strength test, enhancing the profits of contractors by reducing the risk of concrete failing the tests a month after it was placed. I researched this material for my father (who was a county road inspector) around 1968 because he had become concerned about its potential for long term deterioration in strength. Portland cement achieves substantial strength within the first few weeks, but takes many years to reach maximum strength. I found that the high early strength concrete peaks within weeks. However, this type of concrete has a nasty characteristic that it is prone to losing most of its unpredictably losing strength rapidly, resulting in a history of catastrophic collapses. The ancient Romans were aware of this failure mode and stopped using it thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, my cursory on-line search over the last weekend has failed to identify this particular material or it’s poor history and I can’t recall what it is called. So that line of reasoning is not likely to serve me well in my considerations about System Safety. However, if they happened to have used this material, and if my recollections of its structural properties over time are correct, it certainly could fit into something that perhaps would have been found and avoided by a system safety effort. For now I will leave that trail hang out as pure speculation.
The Times article brought up a number of other possibilities that are perhaps more germane to the subject. They reported on a number of problems and speculated that perhaps they either caused the collapse, or contributed to the magnitude of the problem. It appears that this event was most likely a chain of events that started with the failure of one structural element, transferring the load it was supporting to other elements, thereby overstressing them resulting in failure, which then transferred that load to other elements resulting in a kind of domino effect. The question of “cause” gets down to which element triggered the event and why, as well as why such an overload of one element could overload other elements to the point of failure of the entire structure? It is sometimes thought that many parallel structural elements provides safety through redundancy, perhaps they decrease safety by adding many additional failure opportunities.
The building has five main structural features in its design. The foundation (1) consisting of a grid of driven piles that are capped with (2) a below surface parking garage. (3) A grid of pillars support the next level that consists of (4) the multistory building and (5) a large ground level deck that featuring a large swimming pool.
The Times article listed a number of “findings” that have turned up so far. I have no way to just the veracity of the information, nor can I judge whether or not they even include the “cause” of the collapse. I offer them here by way of discussion of a much more general problem concerning the appropriate scope and depth of system safety efforts when applied to a building of this sort. A partial list of problems they discussed includes:
During a 2018 inspection it was noted that the piles had problems with water intrusion
During the 2018 inspection, abundant cracking and crumbling of the support columns, beams and walls were noted in the underground parking garage.
Large planters (weighing tens of thousands of pounds) were installed on the deck were not specified in the design drawings. The article speculated that these may have overstressed the design because they were not included in the designs.
Several beams supporting the deck in the vicinity of the planters shown in the original designs were not included in the building.
The deck was designed to be flat without a slope to ensure drainage.
The waterproofing material on the surface of the deck had deteriorated and been replaced in a manner that trapped moisture rather than repelling it.
One corner of the deck appeared to have little, or no, reinforcing steel.
Columns in the immediate vicinity of a cave-in may have started started of the collapse punched through the deck at the locations with little reinforcing steel.
The design of the columns called for splices being made at a particular height, creating regions within the columns that had too much steel for the amount of concrete. This resulted in sections of the columns that were weaker than the design calculations indicated.
The rebar in the slab was located very close to the surface of the slab (3/4”), perhaps resulting in less that optimal performance (some engineers contend that the second layer of concrete rectified this deficiency.
It appears that the number horizontal reinforcing rods that connected the deck to the columns was less than shown in the design.
There was an extra penthouse added to the top of the building that was not in the original design.
The 2018 inspection identified numerous locations on balconies with exposed reinforcing rods and crumbling concrete.
Water was leaking through the roof. Repairs on the roof were under way the day before the collapse.
Large amounts of water were observed pouring into the underground garage, along with chunks of debris, the day before the event.
Video footage indicated that the collapse appears to have started with a hole caving in on the deck, then the rest of the deck collapsing, rapidly progressing to the middle section of the building, followed by the other wings. The sections that remained standing appear to have been supported by the elevator shafts.
There was speculation that perhaps a vehicle ran into, and damaged, one of the support columns.
I have no idea which, if any, of these issues caused, or triggered, the collapse. However, this rather extensive list got me to wondering which of these fall under the purview of “system safety”, and therefore which would have been avoided given a strong “design for safety” (system safety) effort.
My experience has been that “design for safety” in the construction industry tends to be limited to designing for safety during construction, perhaps extending to operating and maintenance personnel during normal operational phases of the project. I have heard little about the safety of the design to meet its performance expectations (or safety requirements) especially under conditions of foreseeable change (such as installing landscaping features on a deck with a swimming pool). The assumption seems to be that the design engineers/architects and building contractors take care of the safety as a functioning system through following sound engineering practices, dedicated high quality contractors and expert building inspection services. Unfortunately, it seems that many problems during the “operational phase” of large structures such as the collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condo, can be tied directly back to problems in the design, construction and/or inspection.
I leave it up to you to make a judgment about which of the listed shortcomings, if any, could have contributed to the collapse, and which would likely have been avoided with a strong system safety effort. It appears that many of the issues had to do with incorrectly following the design and then not catching the deviations during inspections. Perhaps these are outside of the scope of system safety – or maybe they are within scope. There are other issues, such as the addition of large planter that changed loading above and beyond what was specified in the design documentation. Perhaps this is the kind of “change” that should result in calling the design team, including system safety, back in a “change review” process. There was probably a discussion about this change before it was made, I wonder if the knowledgeable people concerning the design were included in the decision.
I found this disaster to be fertile grounds for considering when, or how, system safety expertise should be included in the process, and what sort of issues that effort is likely to uncover or identify. It is interesting to speculate which of these problems could have been identified and mitigated during the design process, and later during reviews of proposed changes. I think this is an important consideration if we are to positively impact the direction of the current attempts to introduce “safety through design” concepts into construction projects – safety through design has to reach much further than just the construction activities. It needs to include the users, public, long term structural integrity (including the effects of foreseeable modifications), and the environment. It is opinion that achieving safety throughout the life of a design requires an effective system safety effort.
It was a beautiful summer morning at our home near the town of Zamora. My wife was off doing something in town, so I was home by myself, making something in my wood shop. I had taken over the barn to become my “shop” when the kids moved out and we no longer had horses or 4-H projects. The big, sliding barn door was wide open as usual, so I could easily see and hear what was going on outside.
I heard someone loudly, calling my name as if looking for me. It is not unusual for people to call out for us when they come to visit because it is sometimes difficult to find us on our tree-covered five acres. I stopped what I was doing to try to figure out who was calling and where they were. I heard the call again and was surprised that it was my brother, Michael. He doesn’t get down from Eureka to visit very often, but since we live adjacent to the main north-south freeway in California people sometimes stop to say “hi” on the way by. I was excited and pleased to hear his voice. He is my best friend, and I miss having him nearby to talk to. I always enjoy our visits. I put down what I was doing and went to find him. However, I was startled to discover that his car wasn’t there. I checked around the house and property, but he wasn’t there at all. I was not only a bit disappointed that he wasn’t actually there, but also very perplexed about how he had managed to call me so clearly without being there.
I let it go as some kind of strange hallucination or dream since it made no other sense to me. However, the next morning it was still bugging me so I gave him a call (using the telephone this time) to see if he knew anything about it. He wasn’t aware of any long distance communications, but he was very upset because a mutual friend of ours had just been murdered by his son (the friend’s son) over an argument concerning drugs. I believe our friend was stabbed to death. This had happened the day before I heard Mike calling me, and Mike had found out about it just about the time that I heard the calling. He said he wasn’t aware of trying to contact me. I was glad that I had called so that he could talk about it.
That is the only time that I recall “hearing voices” in a way that sounded exactly like someone talking.
This is a story about a dream that I had a few years ago. I was doing dreaming work, trying to get some control over my lucid dreams. I had been reading one of Carlos Castaneda’s books and was attempting to follow don Juan’s instructions for Carlos to look at his hands in his dreams. Looking at your hands in a dream is a practice that helps to open the possibility of lucid dreaming where it is possible to “wake up” in a dream, fully aware and able to take action and create whatever is desired.
I found myself “waking up” in a dream where I was in a spring-fresh, grassy field on green rolling hills, with a blue sky with puffy clouds floating overhead. I stood there for a little while just breathing in the beauty of the place. I then remembered to look at my hands, which I found I could do easily. The action of shifting my attention to looking at my hands seemed to ground the whole event so that it became so real that I found it impossible to determine if it was a dream, or if I was actually standing in the field. I could hear, smell and see normally – but I still knew that it must be a dream because I had no knowledge of how I got there, or where “there” was.
I then had the thought that if it was a dream, I should be able to do anything that I wanted. I decided to see if I could “create” a butterfly. I held my hands out in front of me, closed up as if cupping a small, precious animal within my closed hands. I then “intended” that a butterfly be in my hands. I felt it move, and opened my hands so that I was holding it on cupped hands. It was a very beautiful, rather large, and brightly colored butterfly that spread it wings – holding its wings open for me to see clearly for a few seconds. Then it flew off across the field.
I continued exploring the field for awhile, and finally just woke up into my awake dream with the feeling of having spent a nice afternoon in a warm, comfortable field.
I visited my good friend Gary in the “down under” during the spring of 2004. Gary is an old college buddy from Humboldt State College in Eureka, California. He got a degree in Natural Resources from Humboldt State, then a Masters degree in the same subject from the University of Nevada, Reno. Unfortunately, getting a masters degree didn’t translate into getting a job, so he took his family and moved to Australia. He found a government job that took him far out into the “outback” for months at a time, over a period of many years. As a result, he has become one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this little known and little visited part of the world.
Gary called me over to go on a bird watching trip with him. He has one of those incredible, photographic memories and a great interest in birds. He takes very long traveling surveys of the interior every five years or so making an inventory of the types, numbers and locations of the birds. I was lucky enough to get invited to join him on this trip. Our trip was scheduled to be for about a month in the heart of the country – the great desert roughly centered on the city of Alice Springs.
On one of our excursions we headed south-east from Alice Springs, along the ridges of the Macdonnel Ranges. I am not positive how far we drove, or exactly where we ended up – all that I recall is that it was a very long drive down a dirt road in the Simpson Desert. Our goal was a camp ground in a wash a hundred or so miles from Alice Springs. Gary knew that there were birds to be found, and a lot of ancient petroglyphs. Gary likes birds; we both like petroglyphs, and they were all in the middle of the wonderful desert, we had the best of all worlds.
We arrived at the campground in the late afternoon, tired after a long day’s dusty driving and ready for a nice cold beer. As we sat and drank our beer, we noticed that another car was in the camp ground which rather surprised me because of its remoteness. There was a nice hike up the dry creek bed where you could see the countryside, and find petroglyphs engraved into the rocks along the side of the path. We decided to take the hike but found very few petroglyphs. There were a few scattered along the trail, but hardly the profusion of rock art promised by the sign in the camp ground. It was a nice enough walk, but not a great rock art find. Along the trail we met the other folks, who appeared to be equally less than impressed.
When we got to the end of the creek, the canyon became a box canyon where the trail ended. The petroglyphs at this location were worth the hike. There was an amazing pair of human figures sporting extremely long hair radiating out like a wild Einstein. They are in the photo included in this story. The figures were small, maybe six inches tall, with “hair” (or whatever it represents) at least double the size of the figure. While these figures appear pretty tame in the photo, in real life they made MY hair stand on end. I have seen thousands of petroglyphs in my life, but these two are the most powerful and full of spirit that I have encountered. I felt that they were more than mere drawings; it seemed that they were actually the carriers of the powers that they represented. I felt like some people might feel when they are in the presence of the Pope, or upon entering a splendid cathedral. They literally took my breath away and made me want to fall to my knees in worship. I didn’t do that for fear of looking silly, but maybe I should have. To me, we were obviously in a place of great power and great spiritual importance. I also felt that the “hair” didn’t represent hair at all, it was energy emanating from the figures. Both Gary and I became pretty subdued as we walked back down the canyon to our camp.
When we got back to our camp, we found that the other car had gone and we were once more all alone in the middle of the most incredible country that I have ever encountered. When you are all alone out there, you are REALLY all alone.
We gathered fire wood and started a small fire to cook our steaks and potatoes (steaks put directly on the burning coals, potatoes snuggled down into the coals to cook). The sunset that night was amazing. The sky was ablaze with bright reds and yellows, lighting up the thin clouds drifting in front of the deep blue sky. As the light show in the sky died down, darkness came quite quickly.
We were sitting next to the fire chatting, watching the coals, and enjoying our dinner when Gary jumped up excitedly and starting pointing at a yellow light that appeared to be dancing in the trees a couple of a hundred yards away. He said that it was a Min Min light and that it was the first that he had seen. Apparently, this part of the Simpson Desert is famous for these mysterious lights.
As we watched the light, it broke up into several lights that danced and flew slowly among the trees, and up the wash toward the energy headed petroglyphs. They went along the ground, and then would sail up high into the trees. Bobbing, floating as they joined together and slit apart. We took our flashlights to follow them up the canyon to see what we might find, but when we walked toward them they went out. There was nothing to see. When we went back to camp, they started again – and finally just sort of faded away. I don’t know how long this show went on, but it might have been an hour or more. Gary said that the old aborigines consider the lights to be benign to watch, but dangerous to approach.
In the morning I decided to walk in the general direction of where they were coming from to see if I could learn anything more. As I walked across the rocky and brush filled creek bed I suddenly realized that someone was camped in the creek bed! Someone had apparently been there to see (or maybe make?) the show. I started to go over to talk to them, but was rather mysteriously stopped in my tracks. I just couldn’t go any more in that direction, it felt like I was not welcome and that whoever was there intended to be out in the desert alone. I never even got close enough to tell anything about them. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female, white or aborigine. It seemed like it was just one person, but I am not even sure about that. I told Gary that there was a person over there. Maybe they had a small camp, but there was no tent, fire or anything else “camp like” – just a person sitting next to a tree. Gary expressed no interest at all, he didn’t seem to have any inclination to go visit (which is unusual for him because he is quite gregarious). Gary’s response seemed to agree with my feelings, so we just left the person alone. He told me that sometimes the old ones go to places like that, and if so they should be left alone.
We decided to take another walk up the canyon to see if we could find more petroglyphs. About a third of the way up the creek we took a side creek into a steep and very rugged canyon. What a site it turned out to be! There were thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of petroglyphs. Almost every rock had art on it, and many had dozens of drawings. The canyon was filled to the brim with art of a wildly extravagant and amazing variety.
We hiked far up the canyon which also turned into a box canyon. We decided to climb out of the canyon, which seemed simple enough because by then it had become smooth sided with gentle slopes. We started up the right hand wall to get to the top of the bluff, and as we continued the climbing kept getting steeper and harder. The solid rock started to get crumbly, and I began to worry about slipping into the by now deep gorge. It became clear that we had gotten in a bit over our heads with this climb. A false step could start a slide toward a cliff below us, the rock was too slippery and steep to go back down, and the climbing kept getting harder as we went up. With great relief we finally made it to the top, where it was flat and easy walking through an area covered with Spinifex plants, with their long needle-like leaves that easily puncture through the sides of boots and pants if you were careless enough to brush against it.
The relief of getting to the top was short lived once I realized that we had been concentrating so hard on getting up the cliff that we had neglected to keep track of direction. We found ourselves on top of a wide plain, with no signs of recognizable landmarks. We wandered around for awhile and finally spotted a dry creek, which we assumed was the one we were camping in. I decided that if we could find a way down off of the mesa, we could walk back up the creek and hopefully find our camp. All of this was of course to be done without water because we had planned on just a few minutes of an easy walk up the canyon, but got lead from petroglyph to petroglyph and finally up the side of the cliff. I was getting thirsty, but couldn’t do much about it at this point.
We hiked for a long time on top looking for a way back down. We finally found a winding, and very steep, trail down and eventually came to the creek bed. We walked around the first bush that we came to – directly into our camp! We ended up returning within a hundred feet or so of our camp – heading right toward it. We both just looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders – mysterious things happen in that desert.
One evening in the summer of 2004 I got a call from my friend, Rocke. I had mentioned some of the strange “healing” things that had happened with me in the past so he was aware of my experiences. He called to tell me that I had a “job” to do with these “powers.”
A mutual friend, Sara, from old college days had been in a serious automobile accident and needed some help. She had been airlifted from northern California to the UCD trauma center in Sacramento. Her husband, James, was there with her. Rocke suggested that I should go to the hospital and see what I could do. Not knowing how to turn him down, I went to the hospital in Sacramento first thing in the morning to see if there was anything that I could do.
As I drove to the hospital I tried to recall these old friends, but since they were casual friends, not best of friends, I was having a difficult time recalling their appearances or much else about them for that matter. I hoped that once I came face-to-face, I would remember more. I also wondered what I would be able to do to help. Not having any idea at all along these lines, I just asked my inner being to be awake and act however was most appropriate. I didn’t know how to plan anything; it was an experience of walking into the unknown.
I got there and found the ward where Sara was located, but found the doors closed. I decided to sit in the waiting area and see what might happen. There were a couple of other people sitting there, but I had no idea who they were. It turned out that they were waiting for Sara also. After an hour or two, James finally showed up and luckily I recognized him, and he recognized me.
He told me the story about Sara’s accident. They have a cabin in the woods of northern California, and a house in town near their business. She had stayed at the cabin while he went to town to run the business. She had decided to go for a drive along the dirt roads through the forest. Somehow, she managed to turn the jeep over, it landed on her shoulder, crushing it and pinning her so that she couldn’t get out. Then gasoline started to leak on her and soaked her in fuel. She had no option except to hope that someone would come along and find her. A day or so later James got back and found that she was gone, and realized that she had been gone for some time. He understood that since the jeep was not there, she must have driven off someplace and gotten into trouble. He set off looking for her and finally found her. By this time she was in pretty bad shape from her wounds and the chemical burns/poisoning from the gasoline. Somehow or another he managed to get her out of there, got a life-flight helicopter for her, and she was transferred to UCD a few days before I found out about it.
During her stay they had to amputate her arm at the shoulder, and performed a number of other operations. She had been in a coma the entire time, and her internal organs were shutting down from the stress and from the chemicals. They were finally optimistic that she would probably live, but they didn’t expect her to come out of her coma for another week or two. After she did awake, they estimated another couple of weeks before she would be good enough to go home. At that time they were cautiously optimistic, but were still very worried that her kidneys or some other organ would shut down and she would die. This wasn’t looking good. James had to go back to Eureka that night to look after their animals and business.
I couldn’t figure out what I could do, so I was kind of sidestepping out of the door when James asked me to go look at her. I didn’t really have any desire to look at a person laying in a bed in a coma, but decided that it was the thing to do. We went into her room and it was as bad looking as I imaged. She looked Sarable! Bloated and bruised, with tubes and wires running all over the place. Not a pretty sight. However, as I stood there I noticed that her big toe was sticking out from under the blanket near where I was standing. I had a very strong urge to hold onto her toe, so I did. As soon as I made contact, I could feel that by now familiar feeling of warmth flowing through me and my hands and arms. It wasn’t just from me to her, it was both ways. It felt like “love” flowing between us (whatever that might mean). It was warm, soft, flowing, and very comfortable. After a couple of minutes, the feeling died away and I knew that I was done there. There was nothing more that I could do, so I said goodbye to James and the family members I had been sitting with in the lobby, and went home. I didn’t know if I had accomplished anything of value, but knew that I had done what Rocke had asked me to do.
Early next morning I got a call from my friend Rocke. He started off by saying, “Charlie, what in the world did you do?”
I told him that I had no idea what I had done. I told him I visited with James, went in to see Sara, and held her toe. I mentioned the warm feeling, but said that I didn’t know what else to do so I went home. I asked him why he was asking that question.
The answer surprised the heck out of me. He said he had called James at their home near Eureka to see how things were going. But instead of getting James, Sara answered the phone! He asked her what she was doing (meaning, what was she doing home since he expected her to be in the hospital). She answered that she was cooking breakfast for James!!! After getting back off of the floor after falling off of his chair, Rocke asked to talk to James to find out what had happened and how could that possibly be.
James said that a little while after I left Sara woke up. She not only woke up, but she looked wide awake. In an hour or so she sat up, took the tubes out of her nose and started talking to James and the nurses. The nurses were shocked and amazed, not expecting to see her move, more or less talk, for a couple of more weeks. After another half hour or so Sara asked for her clothes, got up and got dressed, and said she was ready to go home. After checking her, they agreed and signed her out. They asked her to return in a week for a checkup, and sent her on her way.
A week later James and Sara stopped by our house on the way to the hospital for her checkup. Other than the fact that she was missing an arm, she looked and sounded great. She seemed to be in high spirits, and was chatting along about the accident and other things – including her work – as if nothing special had happened. I haven’t talked to them, or heard more about them since but assume that all is going well with them. I didn’t mention anything to them about what I did or felt because it just doesn’t seem like the thing to do – it would somehow be taking away from her strength and energy. She is the one that pulled herself through an amazing and dangerous ordeal. I was just there as a witness. I got to be close to a very powerful healing that she did for herself and feel blessed by that. If my touching her toe helped her in some mysterious way, I am glad I could be of assistance. If it is just a coincidence, then I was glad to have had a chance to witness this amazing transformation.
