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The Burning of the US Capitol Building, 1814. From the very beginnings of its contruction, the US Capitol Building was plagued by conflict between the chief engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who desired a durable and fireproof design, and Congress, which pushed for rapid completion of the building with limited expense. The result was a mixed contruction, with parts of the building constructed to withstand a major fire and others constructed with lumber. Following the fire, Latrobe conducted a relatively thorough investigation, revealing the various points of failure and recontructing the timeline of the disaster. However, as far as the public was concerned, the disaster was the result of diplomatic and military failures, rather than any engineering failures. 

The Hague Street Explosion, 1850. Steam power was widely used in the United States, but safety protocols and standards were not widespread nor maintained by any particular agency. The exact nature and cause of the boiler explosion at Hague Street was widely debated by various experts, engineers, and laypersons. The federal government scrambled to enact new laws regarding boiler inspection and safety with little effect in reducing boiler-related disasters, while city officials instead chose to remember the disaster through a fund-raising campaign for the victims' families. 

The Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago, 1903. The disaster called into question the integrity of the building code system in the city of Chicago and caused widespread debate regarding who should be responsible for enforcing building codes. The disaster resulted in a rapid expansion of fire code and fire safety standards and the creation of a network of investigators, comprised of engineers, insurance agencies, testing labs, and fire officials. However, the pressure for such action and progress soon declined as the government, press, and public moved on from the disaster. 

The author primarily discusses the disaster investigation surrounding the aftermath of the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. Dr. Knowles presents the investigation as having been marred by jurisdictional conflicts, clashes of authority among powerful institutions, competition among experts, and political pressure from both the public and the government. He argues that this phenomenon is not unique to the World Trade Center collapse but has occurred throughout every major disaster investigation in the United States, including the burning of the US Capitol Building in 1814, the Hague Street boiler explosion and building collapse in New York in 1850, and the Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago in 1903. He argues that disaster investigation is not the "dispassionate, scientific verdict of causality and blame" but is instead a "hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture."

FEMA/ASCE World Trade Center Building Performance Study

NIST World Trade Center reports (various)

National Board of Fire Underwriters and Underwriters' Laboratories (UL)

This article was created by Dr. Scott Gabriel Knowles, PhD, an associate professor and department head of the Department of History, Center for Science, Technoloy, and Society at Drexel University. Dr. Knowles earned both his Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Philosophy and his Master of Arts degree in History from The University of Texas at Austin. He later earned his Doctorate degree in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Johns Hopkins University. 

His research is focused primarily on risk and disaster with interests in modern cities, technology, and policies. He has authored several publications. He also currently serves as a faculty research fellow of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware and is a member of the Fukushima Forum collaborative research community. 

The article does not focus on the immediate emergency response (law, fire, rescue, EMS), and instead focuses on the follow-up investigative response to major disasters, though this does often include fire investigation teams.

Dr. Knowles uses various historical reports and accounts, both official and third-party, to chart the development of disaster investigation in the United States. He cites various agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Underwriters' Laboratory or UL, LLC. 

"Moreover, in any mumber of disasters over the past two centuries, the 'disaster investigation,' far from proving itself the dispassionate, scientific verdict on causality and blame, actually emerges as a hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture."

"And, no investigation he could provide would change the fact that most Americans viewed the burning of the Capitol in 1814 as a diplomatic and military, not an engineering, disaster."

"Certainly the move to NIST places a great premium on the power of "investigation" as not only a technical, but also a moral tool, a sacred act, assigning a higher meaning to the tests and calculations that must ultimately assign causes and fix blame--but this is nothing new in American history. While the investigator's tools may have sharpened since Latrobe's study of the Capitol, the Hague Street inquest, or the Iroquois Fire, disaster investigation still pits expert against expert, the demand for patient study against the will to rebuild and forget."