My sister sends a piece on mass panic and emergencies:
The idea of mass panic shapes how we plan for, and respond to, emergency events. In Pennsylvania, for example, the very term is inscribed in safety regulations known as the state's Fire and Panic Code. Many public officials assume that ordinary people will become highly emotional in an emergency, especially in a crowded situation and that providing information about the true nature of the danger is likely to make individuals panic even more. Emergency management plans and policies often intentionally conceal information: for ex- ample, event marshals may be instructed to inform one another of a fire using code words, to prevent people from overhearing the news - and overreacting....So: on 9/11, we saw the American Dunkirk:
In the 1950s, as a researcher at the University of Chicago, Fritz made a comprehensive inventory of 144 peacetime disaster studies[.] He concluded that rather than descending into disorder and a helpless state, human beings in disasters come together and give one another strength.
Shortly after the second tower was struck, well before either tower fell, something remarkable, almost miraculous, happened. A fleet of boats began arriving in the waters around lower Manhattan. They were boats of all shapes and sizes – ferries, tugs, excursion boats, fireboats, buoy tenders, patrol boats and yachts. Large and small, public and private, they began an entirely spontaneous, unplanned, unsupervised and uncontrolled evacuation of Lower Manhattan. By the end of the day between 300,000 and one million people, depending on which estimate you use, were carried to safety. Over 2,000 of those rescued were injured. When there were no more people to transport, many of these boats began shuttling supplies to the rescue effort at Ground Zero. It was the largest maritime evacuation since Dunkirk and has gone largely unreported in the media.More here. "Who was in charge of the massive evacuation of lower Manhattan? No one."
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