My working area is aircraft maintenance, and more particularly the organizing and recording of it. If there is anything you can take away from this, than it is most certainly that for any known continuous hazard, which is often unavoidable,you need a maintenance program to bring it under control, a schedule of inspections and other maintenance actions ( like replacing filters and verifying the operation of valves) that have to be done at periodic intervals. The historic record of decreasing aircraft accidents demonstrate it pays off, despite an exponential increase of aircraft movements. The absence of an adequate maintenance program always leads to disasters. Some big oil corporations have not yet learned their lessons and will have to foot a huge bill for this, let alone the local people and the fauna and flora involved, who might have to pay with their lives. quite unacceptable. The incidents reported in the last few weeks certainly could be avoided, and the companies involved have the money to do what is necessary.
Hoffnung