What not to do in a disaster
BBCWhat not to do in a disaster Survival is less about heroic actions than avoiding mindless mistakes. Though news reports tend to focus on miraculous survival, if people escape with their lives it’s often despite their actions – not because of them. “Survival training isn’t so much about training people what to do – you’re mostly training them not to do certain things that they would normally think to do,” says John Leach, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth who survived the King’s Cross fire disaster in 1987. “The number of people who have been killed going back to get their wallet from their house, or checking if they’ve left the oven on…” says James Goff, a specialist in disaster and emergency management at the University of Hawaii. “People tend to wait until they can see the smoke – and this often means it’s too late to leave.
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