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In a situation like that, you only have a choice between really bad options. If everyone ran for the door, people would likely have been hurt or killed due to t

by orev 6y ago

In a situation like that, you only have a choice between really bad options. If everyone ran for the door, people would likely have been hurt or killed due to trampling. If everyone panics, you are guaranteed to have a bad outcome. In your case, staying in place might have allowed the dust to (literally) settle by the time you left the building. Obviously the people in the 2nd tower had a different outcome.

smogcutter 6y ago
Like I said, I understand why they did what they did. That doesn’t make it the right call. The point is that they didn’t know what to do, so they defaulted to doing nothing. > In your case, staying in place might have allowed the dust to (literally) settle by the time you left the building. It didn’t.
- jabl 6y ago
  Sure, there are high-profile cases like 9/11 or the (discussed yesterday(?) on HN) Grenfell Towers fire where getting the hell out ASAP is your best option. But the usual instructions by the authorities for a fire in a high-rise is the correct action in the vast majority of cases. That is, close doors and windows, put some damp clothes under the door, stay put and wait for the fire department. Correctly designed and built high-rises are pretty well compartmentalized, and the probability of you succumbing to the heat and noxious fumes in the stairwell if you try to escape, is a lot higher than the probability that the fire department is not able to quickly bring the fire under control.
willyt 6y ago
Yes. The worst civilian loss of life in Britain in WW2 was a crush that occurred at Bethnal Green station on a stairway down to an air raid shelter. A woman tripped and fell on the stair and people above carried on pushing to get down and the bodies piled up. 173 people died. There wasn’t even a stampede. I think that’s why we have the shelter in place rule for fires in the U.K. In more modern buildings there is a staged evacuation which is done automatically by the fire alarm system where it sets off alarms to evacuate the fire floor, then the floor above, then floor below then all the floors above the fire at intervals followed by all the floors below. In an office block with 5000 people in it you wouldn’t need much to recreate the Bethnal Green disaster no matter how much stair capacity you have. In Grenfel the staged evacuation was meant to be done manually by the fire brigade as it was a 1960’s building with no whole building alarm system but for some reason this happened too slowly. Possibly because the escape stair was not pressurised as would be required by modern regulations and the smoke seals on fire doors had been compromised during the refit and smoke got into the stair so the fire brigade felt they needed BA to evacuate people safely from the stairs, I’m not sure. So if everyone in the ship or the building or plane or whatever acts entirely in their own interests in almost all situations it ends up worse for everyone, but there has to be some leadership somewhere and the systems need to be checked and practiced regularly.
- bhickey 6y ago
  > There wasn’t even a stampede. Stampede is largely a misnomer. People die in crushes when the people in back don't know what's happening in front. This allows density increases until the people in the back become victims themselves. During the Station Fire[0] there was a choke point at the front door. People fell on their way to the exit and other evacuating people, unaware of the situation tried to get out of the building. Few people knew about an exit near the point of ignition. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire

by orev 6y ago

smogcutter 6y ago

Like I said, I understand why they did what they did. That doesn’t make it the right call. The point is that they didn’t know what to do, so they defaulted to doing nothing. > In your case, staying in place might have allowed the dust to (literally) settle by the time you left the building. It didn’t.

jabl 6y ago
Sure, there are high-profile cases like 9/11 or the (discussed yesterday(?) on HN) Grenfell Towers fire where getting the hell out ASAP is your best option. But the usual instructions by the authorities for a fire in a high-rise is the correct action in the vast majority of cases. That is, close doors and windows, put some damp clothes under the door, stay put and wait for the fire department. Correctly designed and built high-rises are pretty well compartmentalized, and the probability of you succumbing to the heat and noxious fumes in the stairwell if you try to escape, is a lot higher than the probability that the fire department is not able to quickly bring the fire under control.

willyt 6y ago

Yes. The worst civilian loss of life in Britain in WW2 was a crush that occurred at Bethnal Green station on a stairway down to an air raid shelter. A woman tripped and fell on the stair and people above carried on pushing to get down and the bodies piled up. 173 people died. There wasn’t even a stampede. I think that’s why we have the shelter in place rule for fires in the U.K. In more modern buildings there is a staged evacuation which is done automatically by the fire alarm system where it sets off alarms to evacuate the fire floor, then the floor above, then floor below then all the floors above the fire at intervals followed by all the floors below. In an office block with 5000 people in it you wouldn’t need much to recreate the Bethnal Green disaster no matter how much stair capacity you have. In Grenfel the staged evacuation was meant to be done manually by the fire brigade as it was a 1960’s building with no whole building alarm system but for some reason this happened too slowly. Possibly because the escape stair was not pressurised as would be required by modern regulations and the smoke seals on fire doors had been compromised during the refit and smoke got into the stair so the fire brigade felt they needed BA to evacuate people safely from the stairs, I’m not sure. So if everyone in the ship or the building or plane or whatever acts entirely in their own interests in almost all situations it ends up worse for everyone, but there has to be some leadership somewhere and the systems need to be checked and practiced regularly.

bhickey 6y ago
> There wasn’t even a stampede. Stampede is largely a misnomer. People die in crushes when the people in back don't know what's happening in front. This allows density increases until the people in the back become victims themselves. During the Station Fire[0] there was a choke point at the front door. People fell on their way to the exit and other evacuating people, unaware of the situation tried to get out of the building. Few people knew about an exit near the point of ignition. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire