A short article in Wired about how many World Trade Center occupants saved themselves by networking:

… one of the lessons is: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do. … After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.

Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.

In fact, the people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene.

After all, information is power.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2005 at 5:00 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Weekend Edition / Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.