How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
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What makes failure a great teacher?
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. I'm sure you've heard people say that failure is a great teacher, but how? How does that work? What do we learn from failure that prevents more of the same? How do we not let fear of failure keep us from trying things? We tried to answer those questions and many more in a series we first published in 2023. I thought it was worth publishing again. So today you will hear part one. We've updated facts and figures as necessary. As always, thanks for listening. In August of 2023, on a Monday morning, the National Weather Service issued a warning of high winds in Maui County, Hawaii. By the next morning, the wind was gusting at over 70 miles an hour. Here's how one resident described it.
What happened during the Lahaina wildfire?
Tiles are getting ripped off roofs, leaving exposed rooftops with bare wood everywhere. Power lines are like spaghetti strings everywhere.
The island started to lose electricity, and near the town of Lahaina, there was a brush fire. Firefighters arrived, and it was soon declared contained. But later that day, the high winds caused a flare-up.
We could see the smoke, and all of a sudden, oh my gosh, the quickness with which it happened was the craziest part. It was just so fast.
What happened next, you have probably read about or seen in horrifying videos and news coverage. The town of Lahaina was swallowed by fire. People tried to flee in their cars, but the roads were clogged. Some people jumped in the ocean to escape. Here is one survivor.
And we were in the ocean probably like eight hours, fighting the water, getting pulled out, flames were hitting you still. Things were falling from the palm tree on fire on you.
By the time the fire was out, 102 people had died. More than 2,000 buildings had been destroyed, most of them homes.
What are the consequences of the Lahaina fire?
We're mad. We're mad. We didn't just lose our homes. We lost our town. We lost history, you know? Our kids are traumatized. You guys messed up real bad.
Who messed up real bad? That is the kind of question that some people make it their business to find out. In my work, failure is fatal. Ed Gallia is director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich in London. He got his PhD in astrophysics.
I was modelling how stars are born and how they die, but it so happens that the mathematics that I use to develop these models of stars are very similar to the mathematics that we need to simulate how fire spreads in structures.
Gallia studies how people react to disasters.
For example, the World Trade Center evacuation in 9-11, the Dusseldorf Airport fire, the Grenfell Tower fire. It's not just fire where a lot of this is relevant. If we look at marauding armed shooters, we also study those situations. The event in South Korea where there were a number of young people crushed to death in a narrow street is another example. It's always distressing to look at a new event, especially events that were predictable and preventable.
Wait a minute. Events that were predictable and preventable? Like marauding armed shooters? or that crowd crush on Halloween in Seoul, South Korea, where more than 150 young people were killed? Don't events like these happen because they weren't predictable and preventable? We tend to use the word tragedy to describe all kinds of terrible events, but what do you call a tragedy that was predictable and preventable? You call that a failure. At least Ed Gallia does. Consider the 102 people who died by fire in Lahaina.
One of the key issues in managing wildfire situations is managing the evacuation. When do you start the evacuation? How do you inform the public as to the need to evacuate?
Hawaii has a robust emergency warning system, although it is most famous for having falsely notified the entire state of an impending missile strike in 2018. But the system appears to have failed during the wildfires. This is from an NBC News interview with a survivor.
How do failures lead to tragedies?
Did you hear any alarms? Did you get any kind of warning? No alarms, no warning, nothing, no sign, nothing that we had to evacuate.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What makes failure a great teacher?
0:04–0:55
2
What happened during the Lahaina wildfire?
0:55–2:03
3
What are the consequences of the Lahaina fire?
2:03–4:50
4
How do failures lead to tragedies?
4:50–8:23
5
Why do we struggle to learn from failures?
8:23–11:29
6
How does fear of failure affect decision-making?
11:29–15:18
7
What cultural differences exist in perceptions of failure?
15:18–19:15
8
How does love relate to failure?
19:15–55:26
Speakers
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