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Before you criticize the people who stayed put, it's helpful to remember the may things that changed from pre-9/11 to post-9/11.
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But here's something that has not changed: in NYC hi-rise office buildings, in the event of a fire we are trained to evacuate the fire floor, and the three floors above and below. In fact, if you are evacuated from your desk, you are told to re-enter the building after descending four flights of stairs, and not to continue all the way to the lobby. Most buildings were not constructed with the appropriate systems to evacuate all of the occupants. If they tried, the fire department would have no way of getting up to the fire floor.
So it's not so surprising that people did not evacuate on their own - we have been trained over and over again that self-evacuation is NOT what you are supposed to do. This training continues to this day, and is supported by the fire marshals and FDNY. Nobody ever considered that what happened on that day could happen, and unfortunately, the training that generally made emergency responses work more smoothly cost lives.
That said, there is a large group of people working in NYC these days who routinely ignore this training and bug out early and often. As you may be able to guess, I'm firmly in this group!
That was a very interesting post.
I am usually outside either building high-rise towers or industrial plants like refineries.
My response to alarms is evacuation to muster points far enough removed from the scene both for safety and to allow emergency personnel a clear access route.
Unfortunately in a situation like the WTC bombing a normal muster point likely would not have been far enough away.
High-rise buildings have always had a problem with proper evacuation plans. There is no simple way to provide enough exit points, even if it was architecturally possible the cost in floor space would be prohibitive. You would end up losing more area than you gained by adding the extra floors.
(Lets not even mention wheel chair accessibility here)
Thank you Jesselp for pointing out the vertical traffic problem and the limits it places on evacuation plans.
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