Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Horrific story from the evening commute here in DC. One Red Line Metrorail train slammed into another, plowing into it from behind with enough force to launch it up on top of the other train. The Washington Post is reporting at least 6 deaths and an estimated 70 injuries. The collision happened between two stations just south of the border between DC and Maryland. No idea yet what caused the accident.

But it’s already clear that as in most sizeable emergencies, regular people did the hardest work in the most important moments--before rescue workers arrived. Getting out of a wrecked subway train is extremely difficult. Between the darkness (due to the loss of power) and the twisted cage of metal, it is very hard to get oriented.

It doesn’t help that subway cars in general are challenging to evacuate. If you’ve ever looked at the instructions for escaping from a Metro train, you’ll see what I mean. It involves finding the center door, lifting the cover of an emergency door-release handle, pulling the lever and then sliding open the LEFT (not right) door. If you want to know more, you can check out this very irritating Flash animation on the WMATA site. As with many of the announcements on the Metro, a good deal of time is spent telling you to listen to the people in charge (even though, in major emergencies, the people in charge are unlikely to be able to help you for a good long while).

One eye witness told the Washington Post that people inside one of the wrecked cars were beating on the windows, trying to get out. Many were on their cell phones. As is so often the case in disasters, people did remarkable things for one another. Survivors report fear, confusion and kindness--but not panic:

“In the moments after the crash, passengers made tourniquets out of T-shirts, struggled to pull debris off others and sought to calm the hysterical and the gravely wounded. Inside the worst-hit car, waiting on ambulances and the “jaws of life,” an Anglican priest led a group in the Lord’s Prayer. On the ground below, a civilian Pentagon employee told a wounded girl he wouldn’t accept her last wish—she was going to live.”

I’m struck by the similarities to the behavior of passengers in London after the 7/7 transit bombings in 2005. This description is from the foreword to the invaluable Report of the 7 July Review Committee:

“What is clear is that the humanitarian response to these events was astounding; from the passengers who helped and supported each other, to the underground workers, ‘blue light’ response teams, shop staff, office workers, hotel employees and passers-by who offered what help they could. The individual acts of bravery and courage are too numerous to list. Often the heroes have been reticent to come forward and have stayed silent about the role they played, known only to those that they helped.”

But the part of this report that I think of most often is the section that explains the fundamental flaw of most emergency plans. We don’t know yet whether this lesson applied today in DC, but it’s worth repeating. I have yet to see a big disaster in which this was not true on some level:

“There is an overarching, fundamental lesson to be learnt from the response to the 7 July attacks, which underpins most of our findings and recommendations. The response on 7 July demonstrated that there is a lack of consideration of the individuals caught up in major or catastrophic incidents. Procedures tend to focus too much on incidents, rather than on individuals and on processes rather than people. Emergency plans tend to cater for the
needs of the emergency and other responding services, rather than explicitly addressing the needs and priorities of the people involved.”

Making the rounds on Twitter…

Thursday’s in-flight death of Continental Airlines pilot, Craig Lenell, may have been a surprise to passengers, but it’s not the first time a pilot has died in-flight. As recently as 2007, another Continental pilot died en route from Houston to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  An MSNBC list of other instances where pilots died or passed out in-flight is published here.

Lenell, who served 32 years as a Continental pilot, was 60 and apparently healthy (per FAA rules, commercial pilots over 40 are required to undergo twice-yearly physicals). He died of a heart attack. According to CNN, of the five pilots who have died in-flight since 1994 (when the FAA began tracking this information) all were filed under the category “cardiac.”

Just like more firefighters die from heart-related conditions than fires, more pilots die from heart attacks than plane crashes. In this case, it’s hard to say if age was a factor. Up until two years ago, Lenell would have been forced to retire at 60. But in 2007, Congress voted to raise the mandatory retirement age to 65. Proponents of the change say that age is a positive, rather than a negative: more experienced pilots are typically safer pilots. The average age of pilots in the US has been gradually rising (check out the FAA stats here), and CNN predicts that Thursday’s death will revive the debate over pilots’ mandatory retirement age. 

Introducing a new, highly portable Unthinkable. Fifty percent lighter. New bonus section on How to Boost your Survival Odds and assorted other updates. More book, less money. Ta-da! 

Wherever I go to talk about the brain in disasters, I get asked one question in particular: What about children? How does a child’s brain respond to a disaster? Is it different than an adult’s brain?

Yes, very different. And the differences make children both better and worse at responding to disasters. It depends on the age of the child and the type of disaster, of course, along with a million other caveats. But here’s what we know:

* Before a disaster strikes—Young children have extremely plastic brains. They can learn faster than adults, making them ideal targets for hands-on training. They are also free of the baggage that adults carry--the fear of looking foolish or overreacting. That’s why firefighters visit schools. Children stop, drop and roll. They don’t just talk about it. And the brain learns much better by doing than by talking. To quote this Time story on a child’s brain:

“While new synapses continue to form throughout life, and even adults continually refurbish their minds through reading and learning, never again will the brain be able to master new skills so readily or rebound from setbacks so easily.”

* During a disaster—As with adults, children will draw upon whatever patterns were in their heads before a disaster strikes. They have fewer patterns in there, however, which can help or hurt. In fires, frightened children sometimes hide in closets--making them hard for firefighters to find. They may be afraid when they see a firefighter in full gear. But again, there is opportunity. If a child has rehearsed evacuating her house from her bedroom in advance, that will help. If a child has seen a firefighter in full gear, that gives the brain something to work with. You can now buy smoke detectors that let you record a voice message. This is a fabulous idea. A child will respond much better to a parent’s specific, aggressive command--in a very serious voice--than to a loud beeping squawk.

* After a disaster—Research into why children develop posttraumatic stress disorder is actually very encouraging, I think. It shows that the two things that correlate with stress symptoms are under our control: 1) Amount of TV coverage of the disaster viewed by the child and 2) Parental distress.

Those two factors can matter more than almost anything else. If a child sees TV coverage of a building collapse, that child may think the building is collapsing over and over again. If it were up to me, CNN and FOX would run ticker warnings to this effect during coverage of disasters. That’s how dangerous this footage can be.

Likewise, if a parent over-shares his fear and anger over a terrorist attack with a child, the child may have no way to put that into perspective. As the National Center for PTSD explains in an extremely helpful fact sheet:

“Although you yourself may be anxious or scared, children need to know that attacks are rare events. They also need to know that the world is generally a safe place.”

After Katrina, Congress created a National Commission on Children and Disasters to study how we can build children into smarter preparedness and response plans. They are supposed to send their recommendations to Congress next year. I look forward to seeing what they come up with. Here’s hoping they are creative--and built around the way children’s brains actually work.