2001-09-12 - 8:50 a.m.

Terrorism and Anger

Yesterday my state office dismissed all non essential personel a bit before 10 AM, including me. Instead of waiting 50 minutes for my bus back home, I went with Redwood. We ended up going to his place and watching the news.

By 10 AM Sacramento was a ghost town. Pretty much all the commerical and government offices were closed. And images of the attack were everywhere.

I'm not going to document what happened, as that is available through many sources. Instead I want to reflect how it makes me feel and talk about some of the undocumented things.

People's On-Line Reactions

First I'm subscribed to several email lists. One of the lists had some activity and people basically kept their comments brief and expressed feelings of grief (and a bit of fear). The second list only sent out yesterday's emails this morning, however the messages were a bit more complex. The grief was present. But then some people were reporting the news and since the server was down, others posted their reports. End result is I read the same story but through different eyes about half a dozen times.

Now this was interesting. It was interesting to see the language and facts that different people had access to yesterday.

Watching the News

I made sure to call my loved ones and check up on them. Redwood and I (later Cricket when she returned) basically watched the news. I think it is safe to say that the three of us were interested in learning not what had happened, but how. And for a very good reason. One thing that I have in common with my best friends is they usually are problem solvers. We all share a desire to help strangers and make life better.

Seeing something so terrible like yesterday's events had us all looking for ways to avoid this. I think this is a much more positive thing than wanting revenge or just wanting to repress your fear and anger by doing other things.

The Death Count Doesn't Matter

I know that later in the night Cricket and I didn't give a fuck about the death count. The loss of one life is more than enough. But we still wanted to know how four planes could be hijacked and how the passengers couldn't take them back.

Naturally we don't (and probably won't) know exactly what happened. But though I got through last week talking about how I hate violence and fear people who have violent thoughts towards others, I do know that in times of crisis that there is a sort of confidence that I get. Two years ago I tried to stop a kid from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. I became very authoritarian towards my friends and started bossing people around until the police arrived.

At work I'm on the emergency response team for my floor. Essentially I'm a "floor monitor", which means if some diaster (likely an earthquake here in California) should occur, I have to stay behind to get the slow people out of the building.

But based on my prior experience I just don't see myself being slow witted in an emergency. I do fear that I'll stop to help people, when I should be leaving myself.

So naturally I've always been paranoid about how to evacuate a large building. What I don't understand is why somebody hasn't developed a "Chutes and Ladders" type of system that is used to evacuate airplanes.

Chutes and Ladders

Imagine if you will a shaft in a tall building that is like an empty elevator shaft. The shaft is big enough that a steep inflatable slide goes from the 1st floor up to the 4th floor. In an emergency you can kick people down this slide so they don't clog the stairs that are necessary for rescue personel. On the 4th floor there is another slide that goes up to the 7th floor. Basically the slides could alternate back and forth just like boot laces do.

The basic idea is that all humans are not equal at running down stairs. Little people tend to go faster. People in high heels just can't do it. So to deal with this, you take the task of running down stairs and turn it into falling down a slide. I think tons of people would panic, but it certainly could be used with a bit of training to remove people from a building faster and free up the stairs for emergency personel.

LISTENING TO: Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again"

-=-

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