Of all the little fictions that insulate us from cold reality, no sophistry is more dangerous than the notion that whatever the peril, we’ll deal with it. The jetliner may crash land, the high-rise may catch fire, the eye of the storm may collapse our roof–but we’ll respond with requisite heroism and prevail. If we have to dash from harm’s way, crawl through thick smoke or elbow past debris, well, we’re coiled.
Except … we’re not. Even in a city of vulnerable skyscrapers, a metropolis where air travel is so familiar that its risks are easy to scorn, a Midwest buffeted by severe weather, many of us react to sudden crises as do deer to headlights. And, like deer, we often pay with our lives.
The current issue of Time magazine reports on “the science of evacuation” from emergencies. This discussion of how to quickly move masses of people out of danger is more fascinating than macabre. Turns out the fight-or-flight instincts we expect to save us from catastrophe often fail us.
Instead, behavioral research suggests that, “Large groups of people facing death act in surprising ways. Most of us become incredibly docile. We are kinder to one another than normal. We panic only under certain rare conditions. Usually, we form groups and move slowly, as if sleepwalking in a nightmare.”
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, for example, most of the 2,600 World Trade Center occupants who died had no choice: They were trapped above the impact zones of the airplanes. But the 15,000 people who made it out alive waited, on average, six long minutes before heading downstairs. Many delayed until they could telephone relatives. About 1,000 stopped to log off their computers before they fled for their lives.
Our fight/flight instincts can betray us in part because we don’t anticipate how dramatically an emergency will challenge not just our bodies, but our minds. When we’re calm, we need eight to 10 seconds to process a new bit of complex information. Thus in a stressful situation, when we’re rapidly inundated with new data and most need to hurry, that processing can paralyze us. Our thinking can slow, our field of vision narrow.
We typically retreat into what behavioral scientists call “milling,” searching for information from newscasts, authority figures or friends. On Sept. 11, some 70 percent of survivors spoke with someone else before trying to leave, Time reports, citing research by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The smartest may have consulted women–who are quicker to evacuate than are men. Even then, World Trade Center occupants took about a minute to descend each flight of stairs–double what engineering standards would predict for that event.
A slow-mo response, of course, could be a defense mechanism–an inherited desire to regroup when we’re confronted by a predator.
But that delay can prove fatal. How to live?
Just over half of all passengers survived serious U.S. airplane accidents between 1983 and 2000. Many made it out simply because they had paid attention to the flight attendants’ pre-flight safety talk, or studied the evacuation cards each airline provides.
That’s because mental rehearsal of an emergency procedure–how would I reach the nearest exit?–diminishes the amount of data our brains need to process hurriedly if an emergency occurs. A Federal Aviation Administration evacuation expert, Mac McLean, says many passengers create no mental plans for escaping a plane. Should the worst occur, “people don’t have a clue. They want you to come by and say, `OK, hon, it’s time to go. Plane’s on fire.’ “
Similarly, in the World Trade Center, only 45 percent of a sample of workers knew each building had three stairwells–and fewer than half had ever stepped into one of them. Sound familiar? James Lee Witt Associates, a consulting firm that studied the 2003 fire at a Chicago Loop office building owned by Cook County, found that 48 percent of the building’s occupants didn’t know that, if they fled their floors, the stairwell doors would lock behind them. Six people died.
Yes, building owners and managers, like airline personnel, need to give the proper evacuation orders–which might be “stay” or “go”–as an emergency unfolds. That critical task was bungled both in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center and in the Loop fire.
The temptation is to rely on our employer, security officers, flight attendants, weather forecasters or firefighters to keep us safe. But in a city of tall buildings, a metropolis of frequent air travel and a region of harsh weather, each of us needs to rely primarily on ourselves and our own practice drills–especially the drills we conduct between our ears. The fewer decisions we leave to tumultuous circumstances, the better.
Each of us can rehearse escape routes, study airline safety cards and know where we’ll go if a storm threatens, or devastates, our dwellings. We can discuss these kinds of imperatives over a Sunday meal with those we love. In so doing, we can program our brains to escape calamity.
