Failure Watch is a public-interest tracker documenting US industrial incidents — explosions, fires, spills, leaks, infrastructure failures, and attacks — at chemical plants, oil refineries, pipelines, rail lines, bridges, and power facilities from 2010 to present.
The purpose is transparency. Mainstream media covers only the most dramatic incidents. Federal agencies track some but not all. Activist organizations track incidents selectively to advance specific narratives. Failure Watch cross-references all of these and fills the gaps — presenting incidents factually, without political framing, with sourced articles rated for neutrality.
This is an Idaho Fidelity Foundation project. IFF is a conservative, Idaho-first public interest organization committed to government accountability, infrastructure transparency, and data-driven reporting.
The Idaho Fidelity Foundation (IFF) is a conservative public interest organization based in Idaho. IFF builds transparent, data-driven public resources to hold government and industry accountable — from homelessness tracking to infrastructure safety monitoring.
Failure Watch is one of several IFF public data projects. All data and source code are publicly available on GitHub.
Failure Watch pulls from federal agencies, news sources, and activist trackers. Each source is labeled so users know the origin and potential framing of data.
Each incident pin links to up to 5 news articles. Articles are pulled from GNews (which indexes 80,000+ sources including local papers) and rated for neutrality by AI before display.
Rating scale:
| Rating | What It Means | Typical Sources |
|---|---|---|
| ✓ Neutral | Factual reporting, minimal framing | AP, Reuters, NPR, local TV affiliates, government agencies |
| ~ Slight | Minor framing present but informative | Regional newspapers, trade publications |
| ⚠ Biased | Significant advocacy framing | Activist org sites, heavily partisan outlets |
| — Unscored | Not yet rated | Recently added articles |
Neutral-rated articles are shown first. Fallback articles (pre-researched by IFF staff) are used when live search returns no results.
| Visual Element | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pin Color | Cause: Accidental Intentional Under Investigation Natural Cause Unknown |
| Pin Shape | Facility type: ■ Refinery ◆ Chemical Plant ▲ Pipeline ⬠ Rail ⬡ Storage ★ Water ✚ Bridge ⚡ Power/Grid |
| Pin Size | Severity: Large = Catastrophic Medium = Major Small = Moderate |
| ⚡ Lightning bolt (at-risk layer) | Facility flagged for aging, inspection failure, violations, or planned repairs — no confirmed incident required |
| Faded/dashed lightning | Aging watch (30-35 years old) |
| Solid orange lightning | Aging moderate (35-50 years old) |
| Solid red lightning | Critical age (50+ years) or active violations |
The at-risk layer shows facilities that have NOT necessarily had an incident but are flagged based on federal criteria:
Age thresholds — Industry standard design life is 30-50 years for most process equipment. The American Petroleum Institute (API), ASME, and PHMSA all publish standards on inspection intervals and expected service life. Facilities approaching or exceeding these thresholds are flagged.
Inspection failures — OSHA citations, PHMSA corrective action orders, EPA enforcement actions, and NRC violation notices are all public record. Facilities with active orders are flagged.
Planned repairs — SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings by public companies disclose mandatory repair and upgrade programs. These are included where available.
⚠ Presence on the at-risk layer does not mean a facility is unsafe or will fail. It means it meets criteria that federal standards identify as warranting heightened scrutiny. All facilities on this layer are operating legally.
No single database captures all US industrial incidents. Failure Watch is more comprehensive than any single federal or activist source but is not exhaustive. Known limitations:
• Small incidents with no injuries, no evacuation, and no media coverage often go unreported in all databases. PHMSA and OSHA require reporting above certain thresholds — below-threshold incidents may not be captured.
• State-level incidents (regulated by state agencies rather than federal) vary significantly in reporting quality by state.
• The at-risk facility layer is limited to facilities with public federal data. Private companies with no EPA RMP filing, no SEC disclosure, and no PHMSA records may be absent.
• Historical data (2010-2018) relies more heavily on news sources and Wikipedia than the more recent data, which has fuller federal agency cross-referencing.
To report an incident or data error, contact IFF at info@idahofidelity.com.
All source code for Failure Watch is publicly available on GitHub under the Idaho Fidelity Foundation organization. The data files, scraper, and front-end code are all open for inspection and reuse.