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Safety cannot be guaranteed during a fire in a large public venue
because people panic, leading to inappropriate behaviour
Risk Assessment and Human Behaviour
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Safety cannot be guaranteed during a fire in a large public venue
because people panic, leading to inappropriate behaviour
During fire people behave and response in different manner. This leads to the study of human
behavior in fire which was firstly advertised in the 2012 Human Behaviour in fire symposium
(Interscience ,2012). The symposium identified the human behaviour in fire that involves several
disciplines such as architect, engineering’s, mathematics, sociology, psychology, and
ergonomics.
The media representatives and public officials indicated that several fire events indicated that
behaviour of people and reactions are shown as panic (Tierney ,2003). This concept of panic was
explained due to the existence of several fatalities in fire disasters (Quarantelli et al ,1972).
Several definitions identified the panic as a flight type of behaviour which leads to extra unwise
acts (Johnson ,1987a). Johnson described the panic that it is not limited to a single person but can
be adopted by several people which can be called mass panic. In addition (Johnson ,1987b)
described the panic as uncontrolled action motivated by social and cultural activities.
The fire at Beverly Hills Supper Club (1977) attracted researchers to interview the people who
survived from that tragedy, and they found that staff/patrons didn’t show panic behaviour,
although the media represented that the huge loss of fatalities were due to extra panic (Best,
1977). During the deadly incident of the World Trade Centre (WTC) several studies (Blake et al,
2004) interviewed the survivals from the terrorist attack and they found that they were calm, but
the media reported them crying or nervous.
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Most of the stories revealed that the survivals were delayed in the response of that disaster
(Galea et al, 2008). In his research for human behaviour in fire (Ramachandran, 1990) concluded
that:” In the stress of a fire, people often act inappropriately but rarely panic or behave
irrationally. Such behavior, to a large extent, is because information initially available to people
regarding the possible existence of a fire and its size and location is often ambiguous or
inadequate”.
Engineering models started to be developed the prediction of the behaviour during fire such as
The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM), which was based on research on disaster fires
for almost 50 years (Drabek, 1986), (Mileti et al, 1990).
Scientist reached to a conclusion that people in fire situation always poor judge the disaster and
they can’t realize the severity of that scenario where they will use a variety of “quick and dirty
heuristics “(Klein, 1999). People start judging the heuristics by using similar recall of memorial
incidence like the same scenario that they are facing which is totally misleading them
(Kahneman,1982).
The disaster myth can become true in small group of people, but it became like a huge bubble for
the entire population (Lindell et al, 2006), this led to the introducing the three disaster myths:
panic, disaster shock and group mind. These three myths are so rare to happen in the past or even
in the future (Fischer, 2008). The disaster myth provided a negative effect on the fire safety study
where that affected the emergency communication along the duration of fire (Quarantelli, 1971).
During the response of a fire incident the panicked people who reported that through notification
Sensitivity: General
language could provide less panic to people. They need to become more detailed on the
information they announce so people can accept the emergency action rather than panic
(Kuligowski et al, 2012).
The researchers found that disaster myth for people who attended the WTC tragedy, that they
responded to their colleague whom guided them to the emergency exists and safest area
(Kuligowski , 2011), also they provided wrong actions like rescue activities before the fire
brigade arrive the scene.
In conclusion data from fire disaster can assist fire safety analysis to develop engineering
programmes that can model the different fire scenarios so the architect and fire protection
engineers can find a technical proper solution in their future building design.
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References
1. Best, RL. 1977. “Reconstruction of the Tragedy: The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire”.
National Fire Protection Association: Boston, MA.
2. Blake S.J., E.R. Galea, H. Westeng, and A.J.P. Dixon, “An Analysis of Human Behaviour
During the WTC Disaster of 11 September 2001 Based on Published Survivor Accounts,”
in 3rd International Symposium on Human Behaviour in Fire 2004, Interscience
Communications and Ulster University, Belfast, pp. 181–192 (2004).
3. Drabek, Thomas E. 1986. Human System Responses to Disaster: An inventory of
sociological findings. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.
4. Fischer, H.W. III. 2008. Response to Disaster: Fact vs. fiction and its perpetuation, 3rd
edition. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc.
5. Galea, E.R., J. Shields, D. Canter, K. Boyce, R. Day, L. Hulse, A. Siddiqui, L.
Summerfield, M. Marselle, P. Greenall. 2006. “Methodologies Employed in the
Collection, Retrieval and Storage of Human Factors Information Derived from First
Hand Accounts of Survivors of the WTC Disaster of 11 September 2001.” Journal of
Applied Fire Science 15(4): 253–276 (published in Nov 2008).
6. Interscience Communications (2012) Human Behaviour in Fire Symposium, developed
by consensus of program committee members
7. Johnson, Norris R. 1987. “Panic and the Breakdown of Social Order: Popular Myth,
Social Theory,Empirical Evidence.” Sociological Focus 20(3).
8. Johnson, Norris R. 1987. “Panic at ‘The Who Concert Stampede’: An Empirical
Assessment.” Social Problems 34(4): 362–373.
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9. Kahneman, Daniel, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky. 1982. Judgment Under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
10. Klein, Gary. 1999. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press.
11. Kuligowski, E. D. (2011). Terror Defeated: Occupant sensemaking, decision-making and
protective action in the 2001 World Trade Center disaster. Ph. D. Dissertation. Boulder,
CO: University of Colorado at Boulder.
12. Kuligowski, E.D., S.M.V. Gwynne, K.M. Butler, B.L. Hoskins, and C.R. Sandler. (2012)
Developing Emergency Communication Strategies for Buildings. Technical Note 1733,
National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, MD.
13. Lindell, Michael K., Carla S. Prater, and Ronald W. Perry. 2006. Introduction to
Emergency Management. Wiley.
14. Mileti, Dennis S. and John H. Sorensen. 1990. Communication of Emergency Public
Warnings: A social science perspective and state-of-the-art assessment. ORNL-6609.
Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy.
15. Quarantelli, E.L. and R.R. Dynes. 1971. “Working Paper #37, Disaster Behavior: Myths
and Consequences.” Columbus, OH; Disaster Research Center.
16. Quarantelli, Enrico L. and Russell R. Dynes. 1972. “When Disaster Strikes (It Isn’t Much
Like What You’ve Heard and Read About)” Psychology Today 5(February): 67–70.
17. Ramachandran G., “Human Behavior in Fires—A Review of Research in the United
Kingdom,” Fire Technology, 26, 2, pp. 149–155 (1990).
18. Tierney, Kathleen J. 2003. “Disaster Beliefs and Institutional Interests: Recycling
disaster myths in the aftermath of 9–11.” Pp. 33–51 in Terrorism and Disaster: New
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Threats, New Ideas (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 11), edited
by Ted I. K. Youn. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.