- Author
- Galea, E. R. | Blake, S.
- Title
- Collection and Analysis of Human Behaviour Data Appearing in the Mass Media Relating to the Evacuation of The World Trade Centre Towers of 11 September 2001.
- Coporate
- University of Greenwich, London, England
- Report
- 04LGFG02767(6), December 2004, 114 p.
- Keywords
- World Trade Center | terrorists | terrorism | human behavior | data analysis | fire data | evacuation | high rise buildings | occupants | human response | response time | telephones | people movement | stairways | stairwells | elevators (lifts) | time | fatigue (biology)
- Identifiers
- World Trade Center (110-story-high) Towers, Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2001; pre-evacuation; occupant experiences; time references; occupant pre-evacuation times; occupant state of mind; nature of pre-evacuation actions; knowledge of the event; usage of telephones; collecting items; flow conditions within the towers; obstruction to flow; usage of elevators as a means of evacuation in WTC2; group behavior; stair travel speeds; fire wardens
- Abstract
- The evacuation of the World Trade Centre (WTC) complex represents the largest fullscale evacuation of people in modern times. The survivors of this disaster hold a tremendous amount of information concerning their experiences of the conditions within the structures and the evolving evacuation scenario. In December 2002, the Building Disaster Assessment Group (BDAG) of the UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), engaged through the Fire Statistics and Research Division, the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) of the University of Greenwich to gather, collate, categorise, electronically store and finally analyse data concerning human experiences during the WTC evacuation. Reports were gathered from the literature published in the public domain. Over 250 separate accounts were gathered that described the behaviour of 260 occupants. This report documents these activities and presents the findings of the analysis.The database contains reference to a total of 3,291 experiences from 260 people derived from a content analysis of the 250 accounts (1869 experiences from WTC1, 1,411 from WTC2 and 11 from unknown locations). Gender information was available for 240 people, 164 of which were male and 76 female. The quality of this data varied enormously. While some accounts were several pages long, others were only a couple of paragraphs in length. The reports mainly came from occupants that begun their evacuation in the upper floors of either tower. Within the database, 73 (61%) and 91 (76%) of the occupants from WTC1 and WTC2 respectively were initially located on or above the 78th sky lobby. In reviewing the findings of this report, it must be remembered that the data on which the analysis is based was not collected in a scientific manner but from accounts in the public domain, primarily press accounts. As such it is difficult to generalise many of the findings. However, as much of the data was reported days after the incident, it provides a unique and insightful glimpse into the human response to such emergencies.