Sunday Morning – How Do You Get Out of Here?

If you haven't yet read our posting from yesterday about the on-stage fire at the Rihanna concert (HERE), make sure you view the first video taken by a concert-goer that shows the audience uncertain of what to do.  Looking at it again, my observation leads me to believe that Dallas Fire-Rescue was just moments away from a real disaster.  Nowhere do I see any evidence of the arena staff providing any guidance for the exiting of that huge crowd they have in there.  The people that have started toward the exit are orderly, but you can see that the bottleneck is already starting to build.  And you don't see any noticable movement toward the alternate exits which would greatly speed up the evacuation.

One of the basic rules of crowd control is that people will automatically travel to the door that they used to get into the auditorium.  And since almost everybody arrived through the main entrance, they immediately turn and try to retrace their path.  As soon as there was an indication of an unfriendly fire onstage, the arena people should have sprung into action and started directing people to the nearest exits.  You can bet that the security staff was already stationed at all the exits throughout the concert anyway.  Where are they when they are needed?  Maybe they were there doing that, but I don't see it.  If that fire had started spreading suddenly instead of being attacked by that stagehand, there would have been some major trampling going on.

By the time I was 12 years old, it had been impressed on me that whenever you enter a theater, arena, or similar large gathering place, that you always look around and see where the nearest emergency exit is when you reach your seat.  All my life I have been taking note of not only the nearest exit, but where all the others are, too.  But basic life skills like that are no longer being taught to children.  (You know, things like "walk on the left facing traffic.")  So the AA Arena ended up with several thousand people single-mindedly pressing toward the one door that was just moments away from killing them.

Now Rihanna, she knew just where to go when she turned and literally ran off the stage after seeing the shower of firebrands dropping onto the stage.  And thus proving once again that the late Frank Brannigan was right when he reminded us that, "Panic will save your life ….. as long as you're the first one to panic and you're headed in the right direction."

Now let's head in the right direction to get this equipment checked out.   I know the shortest route to the Bunn-O-Matic, so I'll head in that direction.  See you in the day room later.

Update:  Dave Statter goes into the evacuation "problem" in depth on STATter911 HERE.

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