For the most part, all engineering failures can be attributed to a combination of causes: human (including ethical) failures, design flaws, materials failures, and extreme conditions. One can add pure accidents to the list, as well, but often those accidents can be, in part, attributed to the above causes with further analysis. In teaching using engineering disasters, I have found it valuable to provide background information and concepts about each area, so I plan to add a page on this blog for each area. In that way, when I (or you) find an interesting link or resource which can provide some elucidation in one of these causal areas, it will have a place to go. I will try to also have resources of this nature on my website on learning from disaster, so those of you who are educators can make use of it.