Lesson from WTC: Question Authority

[Tim May]

On Monday, October 1, 2001, at 09:53 AM, John Young wrote:

> Peter Wayner wrote:
>
>> But please come to listen to hear about their company not about the
>> WTC.
>
> But when do we hear about the really important stuff the company
> employees learned from 80 feet away, to hell with hearing more
> online trivia of phonexing the ashes. Not that the lucky CEO knows
> any of that stupefying experience first hand. Can he offer anything
> up to date or should another company rep with hands on do the
> gripping show and tell.
>

There have been a couple of very interesting eyewitness, close-at-hand 
reports that I have seen. One was a long report from a survivor from 
around the 50th floor, posted in misc.survivalism.

Another, which few of you have probably seen, was from a UCSC graduate 
who had just started in a clerical job at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. 
This was the cover story for one of our Santa Cruz weekly freebie 
papers. This guy's story of escape pretty much matched the above story.

In both cases, something leapt out at me:

The "authorities" (the voice over the building PA system) were advising 
employees not to panic, to return to their desks, to await orderly 
evacuation orders.

When he heard/saw the first impact, his supervisor said they should "not 
panic" and should await further orders. As he was quoted in the 
newspaper, his view was "Fuck it, I'm OUTTA HERE." He headed down the 
stairwell.

The other survivor reported much the same story.

Those who stayed behind, or who returned to their offices, or who turned 
around in the stairwell and headed back up, most of them probably are 
now  human smoked puree in the rubble.

The moral: look out for yourself, and maybe a few others, friends or 
even strangers. But don't trust "authority"--trusting the soothing 
voices over the PA got a lot of people killed.

--Tim May