The report confirms a chilling fact that was widely covered in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.
Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.
In fact, the people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene. While walking down the stairs, they answered their cell phones and glanced at their BlackBerries, learning from friends that there had been a terrorist attack and that the Pentagon had also been hit. News of what was happening passed by word of mouth, and fellow workers pressed hesitating colleagues to continue their exit.
This is good advice in general. Micro-managers and central planners usually ignore local knowledge because they see it as unruly. They're certain they can make the decisions from far away. The Soviets thought so too.
1 comment:
Nice, Tom.
When stuff is on fire, people don't need to be told to grab their keys and head for the exits. And the federally-mandated evacuation plan gives way to survival instinct and common sense.
I love that this appeared in Wired magazine and not The Journal of Some Such.
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