Know when to run away
People like to take the familiar road home. We all know the jokes about “being on autopilot”; today I learned that it extends to our response in an emergency. The fire alarm sounds in your office building and people head for their usual exit, even if it means choosing to be in harm’s way.
Now, this isn’t due to direct observation. I’ve become part of a procedural group at work, with the heady label of area warden. We’re volunteers and we’re numerically important; there were fourteen staff members in the group, out of a total of fifty-five for the whole centre. If we all left the building and took three others, it would be an evacuational home run.
Today there was an in-service session presented by two members of the local fire department. Not exactly pedagogues, but once they got on their own subject which involved telling war stories about abortive fire drills in other buildings we knew we had struck gold. People tend to follow the leader, and they also tend to underestimate the time available for getting out of Dodge. Our role is to be prepared, mentally, to get them moving away from danger and in the direction of our assembly area, outside (away from all the arriving emergency vehicles with flashing lights and wailing sirens).
We had a short lesson on the relative inutility of the fire extinguisher; know where they are and know how little you can do with one. Instead, practice the move needed to “dial” 9-1-1 and describe the situation. The difference in the size of the response team depending on if the call was generated by a silent alarm or a live screaming person was enough to give us incentive.
Now that was only one page in our manual; we still get to work through hostages, gas leaks, violent weather and flooding. I think I’ll have some material for a cheap TV docu-drama if we get all the training that’s “on the books”.
