On September 11, 2001, three thousand people died in a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This was a horrible infliction of destruction. While the memory of those lost should never be forgotten, an equally important question remains to be answered in relation to those who made it out alive: why? Why did some escape but not others? What made the difference between life for one and death for another? What, if any, deciding factors influenced the survival of so many and can any lessons be drawn from this knowledge?
Major disasters can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime. “nine out of ten Americans now live in locations that place them at a moderate to high risk of experiencing damaging high wind, earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, or wildfires” (Flynn Para 3). With this vastness of human life at risk, we need to be educated on individual survival factors and how to increase them. If a few simple actions have the capability to save so many lives, then the effort to discover and utilize them will be well worth the effort. I will focus on controllable factors. Standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bullet decides it wants to be in the space as you can hardly be controlled on our end so I will ignore those situations.
So who survived? Fifteen thousand people made it out of the building alive (Cauchon Para 15). Preparation was and is an undeniably crucial component in survival. Tara Parker-Pope tells the harrowing story of her experience inside the towers.
“I confess to being one of those employees who has routinely blown off the fire drill. But it was at my own peril. During the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, my offices in the World Financial Center were evacuated, but I didn’t have a clue how to get out because I had never used the stairs during a drill.” (Parker-Pope Para 2)
She was saved by a fellow co-worker who led the way out. Had she not the option to follow someone who knew what to do, her body may have been part of the count. In 1977, a man was sitting in a plane waiting on the tarmac. He happened to be reading an in-flight safety card when another plane crashed into his. As he felt the plane begin to tilt, he followed the card’s instructions, grabbed his wife, and jumped out of the hole in the fuselage. He then turned and watched as the passengers remained in their seats and within minutes were engulfed inflames. That tiny bit of preparation made the difference between his life and their death (Ulaby Para 5).
A second major factor is what Amanda Ripley refers to as the “The Survival Arc” (Ulaby Para 62). In a disaster everyone goes through the same phases. The first is denial which most often takes the form of delay and sluggish reactions. One example would be the passengers on the air plane who simply sat in their seats because they did not know what to do. Another set of potent examples are the numerous instances of workers within the World Trade Center who took an average of six minutes to clean their desks, turn off their computers, and ponder which personal items to take, all this while the building was burning above their heads (Ulaby Para 3). They then moved to and down the stairs-slowly (Ulaby Para 2). A similar example of this behavior is on board crashed air planes. Passengers who often only have minutes to act before the flaming smoke becomes toxic will calmly retrieve bags from the overhead bins (Parker-Pope Para 9). The second phase is deliberation in which a person has recognized things are terribly wrong but is not yet sure on how to react. This also contributes to the often fatal delay seen in disasters. The third phase is decision when the person finally begins to react to the situational reality.
An imperative lesson we can draw from this is to simply be prepared. Just knowing what to do greatly decreases the time it takes to move through these phases. The second, equally important lesson is to know and understand these physiological responses the human body goes through and realize what is happening. If you know your body is reacting slowly you can mentally force it to speed through the phases and cut off this deadly time delay. The next time your in a horrible disaster, I hope you live through it to thank me for this wonderful advice. Good luck and stay at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Works Cited
Cauchon, Dennis. “For many on Sept. 11, survival was no accident.” USA Today. 20 Dec. 2001. Gannett Co. Inc. 23 Sept. 2008 <http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/12/19/usatcov-wtcsurvival.htm>.
Flynn, Stephen. “America the Resilient”. Foreign Affairs. March/April. 2008. Council on Foreign Relations. 23 Sept. 2008 <http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87201/stephen-e-flynn/america-the-resilient.html>.
Parker-Pope, Tare. “Learning to Be Your Own Best Defense in a Disaster “. New York Times. 23 Sept. 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/05well.html?ref=health>.
Ulaby, Neda . “Identifying Who Survives Disasters And Why”. NPR. 23 Sept. 2008 <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92616679>.
