I thought some of you engineering types might appreciate (identify with?) this.

Field Engineer's Experiment Triggered Florida Blackout

"Florida's coast-to-coast blackout Tuesday might have been nothing....
But one man tried to figure out what was broken and left roughly
2-million people from Miami to Jacksonville in the dark.
The unnamed engineer, who had 'significant tenure' at the utility,
has been suspended with pay pending a full investigation...."

That's one hell of an "oops!", all right....ouch, I feel for the guy.

My worst: I opened two circuit breakers on an A-10 more than 20 years ago while troubleshooting a problem, and forgot to write them up in the aircraft status log; unfortunately, they were also located under a panel inacessible to the pilot during flight. The CBs powered the engine temp control amplifiers, and upon takeoff both engines exceeded their safe operating temperatures; the pilot declared an emergency & landed immediately. I personally apologized to the guy, of course, and took my lumps from supervision.

Moral of the story: There's no such thing as too careful when doing technical work, and be sure to follow all documentation procedures!!!

"Oops" is better than "Uhoh", or "OhShit"

Of course "Oops" is my interpretation. I have seen
no reporting on what the engineer actually said at
the time he realized his mistake.

History is replete with examples of small groups of people (and sometimes just solitary individuals) who fail to comprehend the consequences of their decisions -- until you hit the OSM (which, for want of a swear jar, I'll simply translate as the "Ooops Moment").

For example, Chernobyl literally exploded because a test engineer decided to see what would happen if they let the core coolng water draw down without replenishment... *sigh*...

-the other Doug