Salmo,

In my experience with the design of storage systems built to contain millions of dollars worth of perishables such a mistake would have been unthinkable. Double redundancy was always my guideline in the design of safety systems.

In this case a backup pump probably would have been installed if a naturally pressurized alternative supply were unavailable.

The outlet pressure of the pump and the pressure at the supply manifold would have been monitored, float valves or flow monitoring devices would have assured that running water was present and that the outlet was unplugged.

Any failure of the primary supply would have triggered an alarm and activated the backups.

That would have been done because the hindsight from failures over the many years has led to the adoption of procedures to assure dependability where life and money are at stake.

Whoever designed that system failed to adopt basic engineering principles due to ignorance of what has been learned from the hindsight of the past.

As I said:
"Anyone who designs equipment to care for perishable or living products should have enough sense to realize that support systems fail and put a simple pressure switch at the pumps outlet or better yet at the incubators supply line to trigger an alarm or backup."

And:
"Whoever is in charge there should be replaced and whoever designed the system should be held responsible."

The ability to learn from the past is a necessary qualification for anyone in the positions of systems design or management.

I maintain that this loss was due to incompetence.