The Examined Life by Grosz Stephen

Author:Grosz, Stephen [Grosz, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448162413
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Published: 2013-01-02T20:00:00+00:00

Changing

How a fear of loss can cause us to lose everything

WHEN THE FIRST plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, Marissa Panigrosso was on the ninety-eighth floor of the south tower, talking to two of her co-workers. She felt the explosion as much as heard it. A blast of hot air hit her face, as if an oven door had just been opened. A wave of anxiety swept through the office. Marissa Panigrosso didn’t pause to turn off her computer, or even to pick up her purse. She walked to the nearest emergency exit and left the building.

The two women she was talking to – including the colleague who shared her cubicle – did not leave. ‘I remember leaving and she just didn’t follow,’ Marissa said later in an interview on American National Public Radio. ‘I saw her on the phone. And the other woman – it was the same thing. She was diagonally across from me and she was talking on the phone and she didn’t want to leave.’

In fact, many people in Marissa Panigrosso’s office ignored the fire alarm, and also what they saw happening 131 feet away in the north tower. Some of them went into a meeting. A friend of Marissa’s, a woman named Tamitha Freeman, turned back after walking down several flights of stairs. ‘Tamitha says, “I have to go back for my baby pictures,” and then she never made it out.’ The two women who stayed behind on the telephones, and the people who went into the meeting, also lost their lives.

In Marissa Panigrosso’s office, as in many of the other offices in the World Trade Center, people did not panic or rush to leave. ‘That struck me as very odd,’ Marissa said. ‘I said to my friend, “Why is everyone standing around?”’

What struck Marissa Panigrosso as odd is, in fact, the rule. Research has shown that, when a fire alarm rings, people do not act immediately. They talk to each other, and they try to work out what is going on. They stand around.

This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken part in a fire drill. Instead of leaving a building, we wait. We wait for more clues – the smell of smoke, or advice from someone we trust. But there is also evidence that, even with more information, many of us still won’t make a move. In 1985, fifty-six people were killed when fire broke out in the stands of the Valley Parade football stadium in Bradford. Close examination of television footage later showed that fans did not react immediately and continued to watch both the fire and the game, failing to move towards the exits. And research has shown, again and again, that when we do move, we follow old habits. We don’t trust emergency exits. We almost always try to exit a room through the same door we entered. Forensic reconstruction after a famous restaurant fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky confirmed that many of the victims sought to pay before leaving, and so died in a queue.

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