Sometimes bad accidents happen. When a fatal accident happens, your organization will find itself at a terrible crossroads.

The choices your organization must make will set the course for the eventual recovery from this horrible event. The need to understand and explain how the awful event happened is paramount to bouncing forward to a better and more stable future. How you investigate this event is directly connected to whether your organization wants to blame and punish or learn and improve. How your organization will respond is a deliberate act.

This book is not a discussion on how to prevent fatalities or serious events in your organization. This book is a discussion on what to do when the worst accident happens – when prevention fails and people get killed. Having a horrible event is a difficult time for any organization – having a horrible event is an extremely difficult if the organization that has the event is yours.

When the Worst Accident Happens is not a book written about fatality response theory. This book is based upon real experience in responding to catastrophic accidents that have happened all over the world. This book's ideas are not simply good ideas for fatality response - these ideas are real practices based upon actual events by organizations that have suffered a fatal event. I hope you don’t read this book. I hope you never have to use the information contained on these pages. But if you do need this information, I hope this book helps your organization learn and improve. I hope your organization bounces forward – well beyond the place where the accident happened.