Word: inspector
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mary Schiavo, Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, was working at her home computer on Saturday, May 11, 1996, when she received a phone call that made her feel "queasy and sick." It was the kind of nightmare she had long feared: ValuJet Flight 592 had crashed in the Florida Everglades. A fire had broken out in the cargo hold of the jet, an ancient DC-9 en route to Atlanta from Miami, filling the cabin with smoke and probably asphyxiating the 110 passengers and crew members before they were swallowed by the swamp. Schiavo was disturbed not only...
...more than five years as Inspector General, Schiavo spent a lot of time refuting the FAA. Although her TV revelation seemed like the first act of a whistle blower, it was in fact the denouement of a personal crusade to make the agency more responsive to safety issues--and less responsive to the needs of the airlines. Stifled continually by the FAA's political prowess, Schiavo eventually decided that the best way to bring about reform at the agency was to resign and tell her story. In the following excerpts from her new book, Flying Blind, Flying Safe, she describes...
...bible may teach that human life is priceless, but in my early years as Inspector General, I heard rumors that a Federal Aviation Administration study assigned a worth to the average passenger who might die in a plane crash. In its cost-benefit analysis, the rumor went, the FAA easily determined that the value of those lives didn't amount to much compared with the hard, cold billions that saving them would cost in aircraft-safety devices, in beefed-up monitoring of planes, pilots and air traffic, and in airports hermetically sealed against bombs and hijacking...
...have gotten into a freshwater lagoon? Tuggerah Lake is connected to the Pacific Ocean through a tidal channel called The Entrance. It is 12 km long and 4 km. wide, with an average depth of 6-7 m, roughly 20 feet. "It's not a big lake," said Chief Inspector Winmill, "but it's a bloody big shark - if it's true...
...said it was bigger than his boat," reported local Chief Inspector Tim Winmill. "He's got an 18-ft. boat and he said it would have been 21 ft. (6.5 m.)." Winmill said police had no reason to doubt the fisherman's story: he was known to local authorities as a responsible member of the industry. As a result, police have issued a warning to anyone using Tuggerah and two smaller, connected lakes to take extreme care. Though the water at this time of year is numbingly cold, it's school holidays in New South Wales until...