The WTC Survivors on Emergency Evacuation Drills

The tragedy that struck the United States on September 11, 2001, registered such a massive death toll in the end partially because people trapped inside the buildings panicked and ran to windows for salvation, instead of following a carefully-organized evacuation plan, which should have been available for a building the size of the twin towers. A team of investigators from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health has recently released a scientific study detailing some pieces of advice on how such tragedies can be avoided in the future.

Working together with several survivors of the tragedy invloving the World Trade Center buildings, the team has tried to pinpoint factors that hindered the evacuation efforts, and to find answers if such problems are to appear again. They have used PAR (participatory action research), a research methodology that involves the authors of the study consulting with all the participants in all stages of the project – from designing the research to the presentation of the results.

“PAR has been used extensively in occupational health research but not, to our knowledge, in disaster research,” Mailman School of Public Health professor of clinical Sociomedical Sciences Robyn Gershon, DrPh, who has also been the main investigator for the new study, says. The WTC Evacuation paper has united research experts, survivors, and specialists in various fields of science, such as construction, sociology, and psychology. They have worked together to find a near-perfect method of saving lives in such terrible situations.

Their goal has been to elaborate a good method of evacuating businesses from skyscrapers in the shortest amount of time possible, while at the same time minimizing casualties among the workers. The tragedy in New York claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, but most of them were trapped on the lower floors, beneath the place where the planes struck. A lack of experience in evacuation drills led to them being overwhelmed by fear and wasting precious time in wandering around, confused and scared.

“One of the most important recommendations the teams made was to encourage the development of a clear cut emergency preparedness climate that is communicated to personnel. Emergency preparedness is a shared responsibility,” Gershon states. He adds that mandatory training and drills, such as full-building evacuation drills, are absolutely necessary in order to ensure less victims in disasters of this magnitude.