Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why (39 page)

The Need for Leadership

Ian’s quote about the need for leadership during a disaster comes from volume 3 of the report of the 7 July Review Committee into the London transit bombings.

The Cranfield study was conducted by Muir and Cobbett in 1996.

Group Resilience

The tale of Jantang and Langi comes from my interview of Lori Dengler as well as her article on the subject: Brian G. McAdoo, Lori Dengler, Gegar Prasetya, and Vasily Titov, “Smong: How an Oral History Saved Thousands on Indonesia’s Simeulue Island During the December 2004 and March 2005 Tsunamis,”
Earthquake Spectra
.

For more about how companionship boosts our resilience, even on the cellular level, see Lisa F. Berkman, “The Role of Social Relations in Health Promotion,”
Psychosomatic Medicine.

CHAPTER
6:
PANIC

Hajj Deaths

Mortality figures were compiled from newspaper clips. Because the media must rely upon imperfect reporting from the Saudi government, the numbers are far from exact.

Ali Hussain and Belquis Sadiq

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was not able to locate Ali Hussain, whose wife perished in a hajj stampede. The details of her death are drawn from the following articles: Neil Atkinson, “‘I Was Down for Only Seconds but When I Got Back Up She Had Gone,’”
Huddersfield Daily Examiner
, Jan. 21, 2006, 5; and Robert Sutcliffe, “Yorkshire Man Relives Horror of Wife’s Death in Hajj Stampede,”
Yorkshire Post,
Jan. 21, 2006.

The Physics of Crowds

The “undisciplined pilgrims” quote is from Salah Nasrawi, “Dropped Baggage was Catalyst for Stampede That Killed 345 Pilgrims in Hajj Stoning Ritual,” Associated Press, Jan. 13, 2006.

For more on crowd physics, see the excellent website developed by crowd expert G. Keith Still,
www.crowddynamics.com
, as well as the
Physical Review
article by Dirk Helbing and colleagues.

Historical Panic (and the Lack Thereof)

For more on Londoners’ reaction to the Blitz, see Mollie Panter-Downes,
London War Notes
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971).

The Three Mile Island information comes from Robert Stallings’s article, “Evacuation Behavior at Three Mile Island.”

Quarantelli’s article is “The Nature and Conditions of Panic,” Nov. 1954.

The details of the Manchester crash come from Air Investigations Accident Branch, Incident Report No 8/88.

The survey of passengers involved in serious evacuations comes from the National Transportation Safety Board’s
Emergency Evacuation of Commercial Airplanes
.

Details of the 1991 crash at Los Angeles International Airport come from the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation and survival factors report.

The research study in which money was used to create a stampede during an aircraft evacuation drill was conducted by Helen Muir and her colleagues at the Cranfield Institute of Technology.

The Panic of One

The story of the mysterious death of Scott Stich is compiled from the autopsy report from the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner, as well as his obituary (“Obituary for Mr. Scott Stich”) and news articles (“Diver Dies”) in the
Sun-Sentinel
.

For more on predictions of panic behavior in individuals, see W. P. Morgan, J. S. Raglin, and P. J. O’Connor, “Trait Anxiety Predicts Panic Behavior in Beginning Scuba Students.”

CHAPTER
7:
PARALYSIS

The Hypnotized Chicken

For more on the history of animal paralysis, see F. A. Volgyesi,
Hypnosis of Man and Animals
and the work of Gordon G. Gallup and John P. Forsyth.

Livingstone’s Lion

See David Livingstone,
Travels and Researches in South Africa.

Sexual Assault Victims

See the forthcoming article by B. Marx (and Forsyth and Gallup) in
Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice
.

The Sinking of the
MV Estonia

The details of this section are drawn from articles, interviews, and the official report of the sinking:
Final Report on the Capsizing on 28 September 1994 in the Baltic Sea of the Ro-Ro Passenger Vessel MV Estonia
.

Tenerife Crash

Details of this crash come from newspaper accounts of the time, the official investigation report released by the Subsecretaría de Aviación Civil, Spain, and Dan Johnson’s excellent book,
Just in Case
.

CHAPTER
8:
HEROISM

The Body in Extreme Cold

For a good explanation on how the body reacts to cold, see Alan C. Burton,
Man in a Cold Environment
.

For more on this, check out
www.coolantarctica.com
, a website about Antarctica put together by a marine biologist named Paul Ward who lived there for a time.

The Oliners

For the Oliners’ investigations into heroism, see
The Altruistic Personality
and
Do Unto Others
.

Andrew Carnegie and the Heroism Fund

See Joseph Frazier Wall,
Andrew Carnegie
.

Ronald Johnson’s study of the Carnegie Heroes comes from
IPT Journal
.

Lenny Skutnik

The
Washington Times
story was written by Cathryn Donohoe.

Columbine High School Massacre

The findings of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s investigation into the Columbine shootings come from the official report. It can be ordered from the sheriff’s office or found in various places online, including
Salon
: archive.
salon.com/news/special/columbine_report/index.htm
. The relevant section is the “Findings of the Library Team.”

A remarkably similar narrative captured the public imagination after 9/11. Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Flight 93, was heard to have yelled, “Let’s roll!” before he and a group of fellow passengers confronted the terrorists. Soon afterward, the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. (Of the four hijacked planes, it was the only one not to hit a target.) “Let’s roll” became a chorus for a stricken nation. Neil Young released “Let’s Roll,” the song, Todd’s widow wrote
Let’s Roll!
the bestselling book, and President Bush ended a speech to the nation with the words, “My fellow Americans, let’s roll.” Later, the 9/11 Commission quietly concluded on page 14 of its report that the more likely statement was, “Roll it,” a decidedly less inspiring but perhaps more pragmatic command—possibly in reference to a food cart, which the passengers may or may not have used as a battering ram. As is so often the case in disasters, no one will ever really know for sure.

Paying for Interviews

Legitimate reporters, especially of the print variety, do not pay for interviews. The theory is that paying for information increases the chances of getting bad information. Money distorts the relationship between the reporter and the source—a relationship that is already fraught with complications. Or, as the
New York Times
’s ethics policy explains it, “We do not pay for interviews or unpublished documents: to do so would create an incentive for sources to falsify material and would cast into doubt the genuineness of much that we publish.”

Of course, even without payment, all sources have an agenda, even if it is to spread the truth or prevent inaccuracies. But money is particularly toxic, even among people with the best of intentions, as anyone who has done battle over a family estate can tell you. Whether this is a perfect policy, I don’t know. Certainly, many reporters have violated it. But I think if you asked most readers whether they wanted journalists to pay for information, they would say no.

For all these reasons, I am profoundly grateful to the many hundreds of people who have allowed me to interview them for this book. They have donated endless hours of time, indulging me in all manner of inane conversations and then taking follow-up calls for months afterward—all for free.

CONCLUSION: MAKING NEW INSTINCTS

Rick Rescorla

The story of Rescorla is based on interviews with his widow and his colleagues, as well as news clippings and the wonderfully written portrait of Rescorla by James B. Stewart,
Heart of a Soldier.

Robert Edwards’s documentary was never completed, but as of the printing of this book, you could watch it here:
http://www.atomfilms.com/film/voice_prophet.jsp
.

The ratio of Trade Center employees who did not know the roof doors would be locked comes from Gershon’s survey.

Major Robert L. Bateman’s tribute to Rescorla comes from the magazine
Vietnam
.

Fear of Litigation

The comments from fire-safety officials about New York City’s new rules were made at a September 15, 2006, meeting held in New York by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. The meeting was held to discuss the implications and early findings of Robyn Gershon’s evacuation study.

Mayor Nagin’s concerns about liability come from Bruce Nolan’s
Times-Picayune
story on August 28, 2005.

The study of parent-taught driver’s education was conducted by V. J. Pezoldt, K. N. Womack, and D. E. Morris at the Texas Transportation Institute.

Room for Improvement

The Temple University study on spatial reasoning was conducted by Melissa Terlecki
et al.

Selected Bibliography

Air Accidents Investigations Branch.
Report on the Accident to Boeing 737-236, G-BGJL at Manchester International Airport on 22 August 1985.
Aircraft Incident Report No.8/88. London: UK Dept. of Transport, 1988.

Alcock, John.
Animal Behavior
. 7th ed. Sunderland, MA: 2001.

Artwohl, Alexis, and Loren W. Christensen.
Deadly Force Encounters
. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1997.

Asencio, Diego, and Nancy Asencio with Ron Tobias.
Our Man Is Inside
. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1983.

Atkinson, Neil. “‘I Was Down for Only Seconds but When I Got Back Up She Had Gone.’”
Huddersfield Daily Examiner
, Jan. 21, 2006, 5.

Atwater, Brian F., Marco V. Cisternas, Joanne Bourgeois, Walter C. Dudley, James W. Hendley II, and Peter H. Stauffer. “Surviving a Tsunami—Lessons from Chile, Hawaii, and Japan.” U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1187, Version 1.1 (2005).

Bateman, Major Robert L. “Rick Rescorla: Ia Drang Hero.”
Vietnam
, Jun. 2002.

Berkman, Lisa F. “The Role of Social Relations in Health Promotion.”
Psychosomatic Medicine
57 (1995): 245–254.

Best, Richard L. “Tragedy in Kentucky,”
Fire Journal
(Jan. 1978).

Blanke, Olaf
et al.
“Out of Body Experience and Autoscopy of Neurological Origin.”
Brain
127, no. 2 (2004).

Blendon, Robert J.
et al.
“High-Risk Area Hurricane Survey.” Harvard School of Public Health Project on the Public and Biological Security, 2006; http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hurricane/topline.doc/.

Bowden, Mark.
Guests of the Ayatollah
. New York: Grove Press, 2006.

Brooks, Charles.
Disaster at Lisbon: The Great Earthquake of 1755
. Long Beach: Shangton Longley Press, 1994.

Bryan, John L. “Behavioral Response to Fire and Smoke.”
The SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering
. 3rd ed. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association, 2002.

Burton, Alan C.
Man in a Cold Environment
. New York: Hafner, 1955.

Cirillo, Jim.
Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights: Lessons and Tales from a Modern-Day Gunfighter
. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1996.

Clarke, Lee. “Panic: Myth or Reality?”
Contexts
1, no. 3 (Fall 2002).

Damasio, Antonio R.
Descartes’ Error
. New York: Putnam, 1994.

Davis, Lynn E.
et al.
Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear and Biological Terrorist Attacks: A Quick Guide
. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003; www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_ reports/MR1731.1/.

Dawkins, Richard.
The Selfish Gene
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

“Diver Dies,”
Sun-Sentinel
, Jun. 1, 1993, 3B, Palm Beach Edition.

Donohoe, Cathryn. “Anniversary of Sorrow.”
The Washington Times
, Jan. 13, 1992, A1.

Downey, Cheryl. “Vacation Turned to Tragedy in World’s Deadliest Air Crash.”
Orange County Register
, Mar. 22, 1987, A1, Evening Edition.

Drabek, Thomas E. “Disaster Warning and Evacuation Responses by Private Business Employees.”
Disasters
25, no. 1 (2001): 76–94.

Elliott, Ron.
Inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire
. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Co., 1996.

Federation of American Scientists.
Analysis of Ready.gov
. Washington, D.C.: updated regularly. Accessed for this book in August 2007 at www.fas.org/reallyready/analysis.htm.

Final Report on the Capsizing on 28 September 1994 in the Baltic Sea of the Ro-Ro Passenger Vessel MV Estonia
. Helsinki: The Joint Accident Investigation Commission of Estonia, Finland and Sweden and Edita Ltd., Dec. 1997.