In Brief
- In disasters, people are more likely to be killed by compassion than competition. They often tarry to help friends or family members.
- When a crisis hits in a crowded place, people often undergo a shift, identifying themselves more as group members than individuals.
- Emergency planners can help ordinary people act as “first responders” by giving them practical information as the situation unfolds.
September 11, 2001. In the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center, intense fires are burning in and above the impact zones struck by hijacked airliners. People evacuating from the 110-story towers realize they are in danger, but they are not in a blind panic. They are not screaming and trampling one another. As they descend the densely packed stairwells, they are waiting in line, taking turns and assisting those who need help. A few office workers hold doors open and direct traffic. Thanks to the orderly evacuation and unofficial rescue efforts, the vast majority of people below the impact zones get out of the buildings alive.
Not everyone was an angel on 9/11. But accounts of the Twin Towers evacuation show that there was none of the “mass panic” that many emergency planners expect to see in a disaster. In fact, when researchers look closely at almost any major disaster, they find little to support the assumption that ordinary people lose their heads in these extraordinary situations. Instead they find that individuals not only behave sensibly in emergencies but also display a solidarity that can be a valuable asset.
This article was originally published with the title Crowd Control.
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5 Comments
Add CommentI've read accounts of Jews being unloaded from train cars, undressed and lead into gas chambers, and even in those circumstances few panicked. Sometimes circumstances can be overwhelming and there is little one can do to avoid the inevitable. It seems to me panic arises from the sudden onset of a threat, the immediacy of the threat, the inability to form a coherent response and the state of others around you. As with soldiers, the best thing to do is keep people's minds occupied. Helping others during a time of crisis is not only the right thing to do but it is a good way to keep yourself occupied.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't read the whole article but know approximately what it says. In the fall of 1979, an energy alternatives specialist, I wrote a federal government disaster planning manual and the adjunct audio-visual, etc., for expected home heating emergencies--which would have occurred had that winter been as hideously cold as those of '67 and '68. I had a short timeline, but managed to get 4 weeks training at U of Colorado and Ohio State and make phone advisor contacts. The book was so well received that a large church denomination purchased thousands of them from GPO for their congregations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The one thing most emphasized at these colleges, and in the many books and booklets they furnished me, was that ordinary folk without panic will do their level best to take care of others in emergency need--and secondarily themselves. The only known exceptions are rushing river-gully floods, tsunamis, and other no-survival situations. Otherwise courtesy and cooperation are the fundamental delights of human beings. Only right wing spin doctors, mean bullies and fraidy-cat paranoids are convinced that emergencies create violent, self-serving panic--because that's how they think they'd react. Maybe not, but by preaching their own anomie through media propaganda they create false urban legends to promote social fear, because it helps them keep people in control. Does that make me sound paranoid? Probably. I've had too much experience with the destruction of our country caused by right-wingers. It still goes on, worse than ever.
Quote: "......but they are not in a blind panic. They are not screaming and trampling one another. As they descend the densely packed stairwells, they are waiting in line, taking turns and assisting those who need help."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps some basic civic training and in-built assurance of confidence in the local civil governance are sina qua non in such a reaction. But in societies where there is apathy in the administration and favoritism ruling the roost, such decency in behaviors is not the usual outcome. How do you explain the large scale deaths in the mass-fests held in India at religious occasions or political melas of distributing goods to the poor when a pandal crashes or a bridge collapses? What happened in the trammeling of people killing nearly 350 on a narrow bridge in Cambodia the other day?
Brief addendum to my comment, above: '67 and '68 should have read '77 and '78. Apologies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a fair question to ask why so many people often die in disasters. It is not easy to answer this question in the case of the events you have studied since so little research has been carried out in this area. However from what I know of many mass pilgrimages there is sometimes a failure of design, planning or management. In a huge crowd, those within the crowd will have no idea that they are walking into an area which is already overcrowded. How can they? The only ones with the overall view are those monitoring events as managers and organizers, who will know when an area is becoming dangerously crowded. When people try to escape from a crush it is sometimes called a 'stampede', and they are characterized as acting selfishly. But looking closely it would sometimes appear that sometimes the density is so great that there is nowhere to go but on or across other people. We have seen such crushes due to mismanagement at Hillsborough (1989) and only this year at Duisberg's Love Parade. To describe those in the crowd as selfish or to otherwise pathologise them has the consequence of letting those off the hook who might otherwise be held responsible for poor management or planning. This is not to say that people in mass emergencies and disasters never act selfishly. But it is to suggest that we need to look more closely at the information that people have in such events, how they get this information, and the important role of crowd event managers in general, in our explanation for how large events go well - or end in tragedy.
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