- Author
- Kuligowski, E. D. | Mileti, D. S.
- Title
- Modeling Pre-Evacuation Delay by Occupants in World Trace Center Towers 1 and 2 on September 11, 2001.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD Colorado Univ., Boulder
- Journal
- Combustion and Flame, Vol. 156, No. 5, 487-496, May 2009
- Sponsor
- U. S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC
- Keywords
- World Trade Center | occupants | evacuation | human behavior | building fires | high rise buildings | survivors | evacuation time | validation | risks | delay | data analysis | risk analysis | human response | human performance | terrorists | terrorism
- Identifiers
- World Trade Center (110-story-high) Towers, Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2001; path analysis; estimated parameters of the model for Tower 1and Tower 2; zero-order correlation matrix for Tower 1 and Tower 2; observed means, standard deviations, and ranges; evacuation theory from communities and buildings; populations and samples; data collection; measurement reliability; predicting perceived risk; predicting seeking information; predicting pre-evacuation actions; WTC pre-evacuation delay models
- Abstract
- On September 11, 2001, two airplanes hit World Trade Center (WTC) 1 and 2 sixteen minutes apart, which forced one of the largest evacuations from high-rise buildings in US history. Path analysis is used to analyze telephone data obtained from WTC survivors to empirically determine if the theories from community evacuation hold true for building fires. Results show that community evacuation theories do hold true for building fires; specifically in WTC 1 and 2. In general, longer pre-evacuation times were predicted by witnessing a higher number of environmental cues, being on a lower floor in the building, obtaining more information, seeking additional information, and performing a higher number of pre-evacuation actions. A deeper understanding of human behavior in fire events can be gained by using path analysis techniques, which can ultimately improve evacuation education, training, and procedures for high-rise buildings across the world as well as future evacuation prediction techniques.