911 is a Fake Life Saver

Gary Wolf reviews a 298-page report from the National Institute on Standards and Technology, and concludes:

For nearly four years -- steadily, seriously, and with the unsentimental rigor for which we love them -- civil engineers have been studying the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, sifting the tragedy for its lessons. And it turns out that one of the lessons is: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do….

The report confirms a chilling fact that was widely covered in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.

Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives….In fact, the people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene. While walking down the stairs, they answered their cell phones and glanced at their BlackBerries, learning from friends that there had been a terrorist attack and that the Pentagon had also been hit….

Anybody who has been paying attention probably suspects that if we rely on orders from above to protect us, we'll be in terrible shape. But in a networked era, we have increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid.

Comments

[Steve Smith]

Wolf's article aside, it's probably not a good idea to follow a policy of ignoring reasonable suggestions from emergency lifesaving personnel, based solely on the anecdotal example of 9/11.

[Ruthless]

Dialing 911 is also a fake lifesaver, by the way.

[E. Steven]

Days after the attack I kept meeting people who survived and to a person, they all did so by hightailing it the f*ck out of there the minute the planes hit. I was working at Rockefeller Center at the time, at a law firm on the 34th floor, and our floor capt. instructed us that, in the case of a similar event, we should take the stairs in a slow, deliberate manner. As he was saying this we all looked at each other like, 'yeah, right, you do that... we'll be hotfooting it to the plaza.'

[joe]

I know a little bit about buildings. Taking the stairs and not the elevator is almost always the smart thing to do. The 110 story Twin Towers are an exception to what is a generally sound rule.

[crimethink]

joe,

You're absolutely right about stairs v. elevators; a bazillion things that could happen in an emergency (eg power outage) would leave you stuck in an elevator.

However, the point is that 911 operators are almost certainly merely reciting instructions for generic emergencies, and don't know as many details as the people on scene. In a common emergency, their advice is probably sound; in an uncommon one, however, it may not be so.

[Slippery Pete]

I'm certainly not going to take the advice of some "expert" and his high falutin' "report." That kind of authority does not impress me.

[Jason Ligon]

First it was a joke in my town ... now this.

[Gary Wolf]

I hope to compensate for the oversimplification in my story with a much large piece on network-based emergency response that should come out this summer in Wired. I did not mean to suggest that nobody should listen to a 911 operator. (I have recently spent time in a state-of-the-art 911 center listening in on calls, and I know very well how valuable these systems can be.) The point I was making was that a successful evacuation - and the Trade Center evacuation was very successful - depends upon a willingness to disobey, even a certain instinct for disobedience. Fortunately, this instinct seems to be widespread in humans, When given commands in an emergency, we tend to mill about for a bit, seeking confirmation of the reasonableness of these commands, and mixing the content of the commands with other information present in our environment. "Milling" is a problem, in one sense, as it slows down our response. But it is also an asset, as it allows other information and immediate environmental cues to rationally alter our behavior. Good emergency response depends upon taking this reasonable skepticism into account, and even encouraging it.

[matt]

"But in a networked era, we have increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid."

I completely agree Mr. Wolf. Very interesting piece.

[phocion]

First it was a joke in my town ... now this.

Good one.

[phocion]

Of course the title of the entry (which I missed) is a reference to the same thing.

[Pedro Bento]

Git, git, git, git down...

911's a joke in yo town...

[Don]

A 911 (not 9/11) ancidote:

A friend's wife, alone with two small children at night, in a rual house, saw an SUV attempt to drive through a neighbor's chain link fence. The SUV then stopped in her driveway. She had called 911, and had armed herself with their sole firearm (a single shot .22 rifle). The 911 operator advised her to put the gun away . . .

My friend's wife ignored the operator's advice, and when several men from the SUV walked up her driveway, she fired a warning shot into the air. They retired to the SUV, fired a shot into the air themselves, then drove away.

Next week, my friend was buying a Winchester pump action Defender 12 gage shotgun . . .

[Don]

911's a joke in yo town...

I dial 1911 . . .

[Don]

One of my thoughts on 9/11 has always been that the most effective response at the time was the passengers, and one of the most effective tools the cellphone. The .gov policies all failed. The "militia" was of much more value than the professional army or police or other security personel.

Too bad they didn't have access to handguns.

[911 Operator]

I work for 911. You not say 911 weak!

911 is game to you?! Howbout I take your little board and smash it!!

[Windypundit]

Here in Chicago a while ago we had a high-rise fire in which people decided not to wait for rescue and instead tried to take the stairs. The stairwell filled with smoke and several of them died.

On the one, it seems to me that a disaster plan that depends on people not leaving a burning building is not based on realistic assumptions about human nature. On the other hand, it's usually pretty good advice in a high-rise fire.

Firefighters have bottled air, equipment for getting through locked doors, training, years of experience in burning buildings, and accurate information about the spread of the fire. You don't.

Tall buildings are designed and constructed to contain a fire and keep it from spreading rapidly. If you're not in immediate danger, you'll be much better off staying put. It would be foolish to wander around a burning building when firefighters are on the way.

This was even true at the World Trade Center, in a sense. The people who were below the impact sites weren't killed by smoke or fire. They were killed by the collapse of the buildings, and the buildings only collapsed because the aircraft impacts destroyed structural components and damaged fire insulation. Without that damage, the towers would not have collapsed. We know this because no other protected steel frame building had ever collapsed from fire anywhere in the world.

[thoreau]

Don-

I agree. The most important battle in the entire War on Terror was not won in Kabul or Baghdad or Guantanamo Bay or some secret location that can't be revealed to us. It was won on the morning of 9/11/2001 in the skies over Pennsylvania. The passengers fought back and thwarted the terrorists' plans. It is tragic that the passengers died, but they prevented the terrorists from reaching their target in DC.

And they proved that terrorists will never again succeed in hijacking an airplane in the US.

The second most important battle was won in December of 2001, when passengers stopped the shoe bomber from destroying an airplane. They once again proved that no terrorist will ever again succeed in pulling off an operation that requires him to do something in plain sight of Americans.

I don't mean to denigrate the service of our armed forces, but terrorists are enemies who blend in among us and then strike. Military victories are important, but the last line of defense will inevitably be on the home front. Those 2 victories won by We The People did more to protect air travel than any plan devised by Tom Ridge.

[Lowdog]

And dammit, thoreau, that brings a tear of joy to my eye!

Also, great piece.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Thow-Row, you are so right. There will never be another successful terrorist hijacking of a US airplane.

I actually fail to see how the technology of 911 is worth the cost. When I was a kid you picked up the phone, dialed "0", an actual person answered and then you said: 'I need a cop' or 'I need an ambulance' or 'my house is on fire'. Whereupon the operator summoned what you needed--and it didn't take the cops an average of 37 minutes to respond either.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

And I'm not done. It RARELY pays to listen to the authorities in any emergency. I am tempted to say it NEVER pays, but that isn't entirely true. Certainly there are anecdotal cases where people didn't listen and paid a terrible price for that choice, but by and large, specialized knowledge counts for more than generic by-the-numbers instructions from your betters.

[thoreau]

TWC-

The one indisputable benefit of listening to The Authorities is that following instructions shields you from liability.

[Jason Ligon]

How's the old saying go?

Call for a cop, call for a pizza, see which one gets there first.

[Gary Wolf]

I'll roil the waters - or rile the watchers - a bit here. I'm a fan of 911. 911 is great. The delay in cop response is seldom caused by 911 screw ups. Rather it is a very simple function of distance/number of responders/number of other calls/call priority. 911 is simply an information system. It won't increase your tax base, lower your per-cop cost, speed up your ambulances, or anything like that. 911 call takers are somewhat like journalists: where, what, who, when? It's just that, like with journalists, the fact that 911 is a good thing doesn't mean you should obey it uncritically.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Gary, I understand that response times are unrelated to the 911 call taker, I simply question the efficiency and cost of the service. I'm a fan of technology but I can't see how 911 service is better than the old fashioned manual way and it costs a lot of money. Plus it makes that old joke about calling the Suicide Prevention Hot Line and getting put on hold seem not so far fetched.

Interesting aside, in my county it is not possible to call the Sheriff after hours without using 911. That means every penny ante loud party complaint is routed through 911. Very efficient.

Thow-Row, another excellent point.

[Russ D]

Here in Chicago a while ago we had a high-rise fire in which people decided not to wait for rescue and instead tried to take the stairs. The stairwell filled with smoke and several of them died.

Nice going! Blame the victims!

The reason they died was because the stairwell was LOCKED, once you get in the stairwell you can only get out on the ground floor (where the flames were). Allegedly that design helps with security, except in case of emergency. Don't know why locking the stairwell is preferable to locking the office suites. And of course there were signs posted by every elevator that said "In case of fire, use stairwell."

My office building has the same stairwell set up. During our last fire drill, I happened to have a bottle of water in my hand when the alarm went off. After we were outside the fire pesonnel made some announcements.

FD: We noticed some people bringing beverages with them. Please don't do this, you could spill and cause people to slip.

ME: So the sprinkler system in the building, including the stairwell, won't actually go on during a real fire?

FD: It should. We inspect it twice a year to make sure it's functioning.

ME: So some special water comes out of it that extinguishes flames but keeps the floors dry?

They didn't reply.

I appreciate emergency personnel trying to be helpful. But when they're more concerned about being infantilizing authoritarians, they can go fuck themsleves. I'll save my ass first and worry about broken bones and bruises and proper procedure second. Severe burns may suck, but they're better than dying from smoke inhalation.

[Wiggum]

No, sorry, you got the wrong number. This is 9-1-, mmm, 2!

[Windypundit]

Nice going! Blame the victims!

Well, you certainly can't blame the firefighters and other emergency first responders, so this was a counterexample to the "authorities are always wrong" thread.

The reason they died was because the stairwell was LOCKED

True. I didn't want to make my comment any longer by bringing up the problem with the door locks, since that wasn't the fault of the firefighters.

The reasons the fire stairs were locked, and the reasons those people thought they should enter them anyway are worth looking into (I'm sure there's a court case). For one thing, how is it that these people didn't know about the locked doors? Was this not part of the fire drill training?

I certainly knew how the stairwell doors operated in the last tall building where I worked. Most of the doors to were not locked at all, because the individual offices were secured, and those doors that were locked all had alarmed emergency bars that would unlock them.