FATIGUE
DISASTERS

Topics: Busyness; Rest; Sabbath; Work

References: Exodus 20:8–11; Mark 6:31–32

Our most notorious industrial accidents in recent years—Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the fatal navigational error of Korean Air Lines Flight 007—all occurred in the middle of the night. This may indicate that fatigue, more than anything, was a contributing factor.

When the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian A300 airbus, killing all 290 people aboard, fatigue-stressed operators in the high-tech Combat Information Center on the carrier misinterpreted radar data and repeatedly told their captain the jet was descending as if to attack, when the airliner actually was remaining on a normal flight path.

In the Challenger space shuttle disaster, key NASA officials made the ill-fated decision to go ahead with the launch after working twenty hours straight and getting only two to three hours of sleep the night before. Their error in judgment cost the lives of seven astronauts and nearly killed the U.S. space program.

We ignore our need for rest at the peril of others and ourselves.

—Martin Moore-Ede, The Twenty-Four-Hour Society (Addison-Wesley, 1994)