The number 1 most important factor in dealing with emergencies is recognizing that an emergency is happening in the first place.
It's easy to get mislead by movies and tv and the way things happen and the way people react. In reality things don't work that way. It can sometimes be difficult to tell when an emergency is happening, and a lot of people won't pay enough attention. How often do people ignore fire alarms, for example?
Do you know what the symptoms of a stroke look like? Most people don't. I certainly didn't when the elderly lady sitting one table over from me at a fast food restaurant had a stroke. She dropped her food tray on the floor and I was sitting the other way and just wrote it off as random clumsiness. But other people were paying closer attention. Some of the staff helped her clean up her mess and other people came to help sensing that something was a bit off, after asking a few leading questions and making a few observations they decided she was having a stroke and called 911. Today I have a lot more training and am far better able to spot things like symptoms of a stroke or a heart attack and so forth, but that's not true for everyone. A lot of people don't know how to spot a heart attack, even in themselves, and they waste a lot of time before going to the hospital.
But this extends to everything. If you look at the 9/11 WTC attacks there were a lot of people who could have gotten out of those buildings who instead stayed in their offices because they were lulled into a false sense of security. The fact is that when things are burning down, smoke is everywhere, you can see the flames, etc. it's often too late, the time to take action was minutes or hours ago when you still had a chance. The time to evacuate a flood zone is when the water is at your ankles or knees, not when it's up to your armpits.
But most people are so conditioned by the norms of ordinary society they find it difficult to break out of them. It takes a surprising amount of effort to make a conscious choice to break those norms and switch to emergency mode, which is why most people are forced to rely on some even more dramatic event triggering a panic/fear/fight-or-flight response to jump into that mode.
This in spades. Emergencies aren't announced as they are in Hollywood movies with dramatic music and leading actors. The most striking thing about many disasters is how mundane they are, and how slow people, even those aware of the situation and its gravity, are to respond. Spend some time watching videos of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and what I'm most struck with is how long people act as if things are normal. Granted it took several tens of minutes for the tsunami waves to reach shore after the earthquake, and even then several minutes for the tsunami to reach full strength.
Technological, fiscal, and other crises are similar. Often your first real sign of trouble isn't a sense of impending doom as just a very strong sense that things are wrong -- your perception of the world isn't adding up. I've trained myself (or tried) to recognize such situations and respond more quickly to them, but it's still easy to miss things. Especially as it's not clear until later (and often much, much later) just what has gone wrong and what's the best way to address it. In military it's called "fog of war", but a similar condition pervades most complex situations.
What the hell are you guys talking about? The people on the ground thought a nuclear war was beginning. People in their cars probably thought a plane was crashing--no need for the driver to react.
People trust authority. IIRC, the WTC building occupants were told to stay put initially. Many folks listened to that.
For better or for worse, I assume that incident management folks are full of shit when they say things like that, so I boogey asap. I've been in office buildings where the fire alarms didn't sound properly and announcements came over the PA saying something like: "The roof is on fire, do not be alarmed and do not evacuate at this time."
There's also the cry-wolf effect. Occupants of any building rapidly become used to ignoring the constant announcements of emergency drills and false alarms and real but meaningless incidents like burnt smoking popcorn. It's very difficult for a real crisis to pierce that armor of complacency.
If you want people to respond and evacuate faster to a real disaster, improve your incident reporting so it doesn't train folks into the habit of ignoring it.
Indeed. Also, when driving, what are your options? Unless you think you need to stop the car and seek shelter immediately the best option might just be to head home as soon as possible.
This was painfully obvious in the fire at The Station nightclub. The band kept playing for 30 seconds after the fire started right behind them and many people didn't start to try and get out before it was too late.
Part of it is what's called "commitment." People payed good money for a show and they're going to see one. It takes a long time to accept that the show is over.
This is so true. In fact, there's an excellent book by a journalist named Amanda Ripley that describes this phenomenon called The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes[0].
It's easy to get mislead by movies and tv and the way things happen and the way people react. In reality things don't work that way. It can sometimes be difficult to tell when an emergency is happening, and a lot of people won't pay enough attention. How often do people ignore fire alarms, for example?
Do you know what the symptoms of a stroke look like? Most people don't. I certainly didn't when the elderly lady sitting one table over from me at a fast food restaurant had a stroke. She dropped her food tray on the floor and I was sitting the other way and just wrote it off as random clumsiness. But other people were paying closer attention. Some of the staff helped her clean up her mess and other people came to help sensing that something was a bit off, after asking a few leading questions and making a few observations they decided she was having a stroke and called 911. Today I have a lot more training and am far better able to spot things like symptoms of a stroke or a heart attack and so forth, but that's not true for everyone. A lot of people don't know how to spot a heart attack, even in themselves, and they waste a lot of time before going to the hospital.
But this extends to everything. If you look at the 9/11 WTC attacks there were a lot of people who could have gotten out of those buildings who instead stayed in their offices because they were lulled into a false sense of security. The fact is that when things are burning down, smoke is everywhere, you can see the flames, etc. it's often too late, the time to take action was minutes or hours ago when you still had a chance. The time to evacuate a flood zone is when the water is at your ankles or knees, not when it's up to your armpits.
But most people are so conditioned by the norms of ordinary society they find it difficult to break out of them. It takes a surprising amount of effort to make a conscious choice to break those norms and switch to emergency mode, which is why most people are forced to rely on some even more dramatic event triggering a panic/fear/fight-or-flight response to jump into that mode.