When options narrow to surviving, or not

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sociology, disasters

I am very thankful that I have not been through any disasters. Maybe I came close a time or two; I do recall almost driving into a tornado a couple decades back. But I've had no experiences frightening enough to make me freeze, or wet myself, or faint, or whatever else it is I might do in, say, a plane crash.

Even in more mildly unsettling events, however, the way different people react can be fascinating. Once we got lost in the woods, my son and I, while walking with two other fathers and their children. The youngsters were all about ten. We'd taken a wrong turn on a path, and succumbed to the "It must be right around the bend" fallacy that keeps you going on instead of going back. I tend to be a natural leader, but once the gentleman who thought he'd been showing us where to go acknowledged he was lost, my son took over. He made the decisions, saying, "Let's try this way" and so forth. We wandered about three hours until, well after dark, we found our way to an open area someone recognized. One of the fathers remarked on how cool my son was, because the other kids couldn't keep themselves from saying things like, "Will we ever get out?". He hadn't really led us out, but the fact that he was leading meant we were kept from getting panicky.

When real disaster looms, as I read in The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—And Why by Amanda Ripley, the body count is usually reduced if someone takes the lead. Even an inept leader is better than none, because most people in a disaster spend too much time milling about, trying to figure out what is happening. Once they realize something bad really is happening, they waste more time deciding what to gather to take with them.

Ms Ripley tells us that any shocking and frightening circumstance causes a three-step response: Denial, Deliberation, and the Decisive Moment (when any Action that one may take finally gets taken). Those who shift quickly through the first two steps are those most likely to survive, and often are those who help others to survive. Thus, most air crews have been trained, if an airplane crash-lands, to shout instructions to the passengers and hound them out of the cabin. Since most people go into a kind of passive shock that can last a long time, the no-Mr-nice-guy approach is designed to re-shock them into action, but also to give them something and someone decisive to follow so they don't just stampede.

Time and again the author marvels that in story after story told by survivors, people typically behaved very decently and quietly. Panic is actually rather rare. Sometimes that very decency makes things worse; people may try to defer to one another when they ought to be quickly making their way through the exit. The key word here is "quickly"; it doesn't have anything to do with stampeding an exit and blocking it with smashed bodies.

A key lesson about surviving is Rehearsal. It is one thing to buy those cool wire ladders you can hook to a windowsill of your second-story bedroom. It is quite another to actually use it a time or two. Only if you have done it before, will you be able to smoothly get out of your burning house. Otherwise you're likely to find that you can't figure out how to use it, and you either collapse in mid-thought, or jump out the window and crash to the ground, possibly carrying the ladder that was supposed to carry you (it is amazing what people bring with them; nobody likes to flee empty-handed!).

A large section of the concluding chapter is devoted to Rick Rescorla, the security chief who guided all but five of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's 3,000 employees out of the WTC on 9/11. He was the only security chief who was able to persuade his company to practice evacuation. Every other company lost substantial numbers. Rehearsal was the key. I am glad my company engages in evacuation drills. Though this site is nearly all 2- and 3-storey office buildings, being trapped by fire on the second or third floor is just as deadly as on the fortieth.

It takes only a few minutes to empty the building where I work, and it usually takes less than two minutes to empty an airplane. Even in the best of circumstances, it takes hours to empty a city. When the city leaders spend a few days dithering, then finally make limp-wristed declarations of imminent disaster, we wind up with a New Orleans that will never be the same (I am of the opinion that it ought to be abandoned, and should never have become a large city in the first place, but that's for another rant).

Some people seem to naturally perform better under stress. All of us can learn to do better. I live in one of the less disaster-prone areas of the U.S., but it is well for me to pre-think what I will do if we get a direct hit by a hurricane; how I might respond to being trapped by rising floodwaters if I am at a low-lying area at the wrong moment (this was particularly relevant when I lived in Houston); or how I'll react when I am awakened by a smoke alarm (yes, I do replace the batteries twice yearly). When I lived in California, my preparations had more to do with earthquakes. Those who think ahead live to think again.