Originally Posted by
chrisl137
You actually want people who are evacuating to do it just like a fire drill at the office-- it will go quickly, people will help each other and there will be minimal chaos. It's why you do drills. Panic causes things like everybody piling up against one emergency exit while 3 others are clear but unused.
On the whole I would agree. Having gone through 9/11 at the Pentagon I'm sure the various drills we'd gone through over the years certainly helped facilitate a relatively calm evacuation. At least in my part of the building, about 700 feet from the impact, there was no obvious or wide spread panic. We had light smoke in the hallways but no fire, collapsed walls, etc., so people pretty calmly and quietly walked to the nearest exits. To the best of my knowledge only a few people of the 25,000 people in the building not in the immediate impact area were injured in that process. Did the evacuation go exactly to plans? No, not really but close. Did it point up shortfalls in the plans? Absolutely though none that actually spoke to or caused loss of life or limb. One of the biggest shortfalls was that we had no rally point and no plan or method to take a roll call. That led to hours and actually days of not being able to account for all personnel and a lot of angst at the management level. Should say I'm speaking to the larger procedural evacuation plan. There were other shortfalls identified that were structural or facility related like lack of pathway lighting/signage, redundant alarm systems, redundant fire suppression, etc., that were eventually incorporated in the rebuild and subsequent renovations.
The one thing that did happen was that there were a few people who left all their personal belongings at their desks. In my group of about 200 we had five or six that left their purses or wallets in locked desk drawers or in their jackets hanging in their cubicles. Of those two of three had a heck of a time getting home as they had no car keys, no money, no Metro passes, and no ID. Obviously different than a plane but one of the new instructions, at least initially after 9/11, was to make sure you took at least your basic belongings with you in case of evacuation. Of course that doesn't mean all the pictures of the family, awards and decorations hanging on the wall, etc.