Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [62]
On the night of May 28, 1977, McCollister pulled her white dress, which she’d designed and made herself, over her head. She was twenty-one and getting married—to a different boyfriend—at the Supper Club. It was a humid spring night, and nearly two hundred of her friends and relatives were gathering in the garden below. Her six bridesmaids buzzed around her, getting their own hair and dresses ready. That was when they noticed how unusually warm it was in the room. By then it was almost 7:30 P.M., time for the ceremony to begin, and they bustled downstairs, holding McCollister’s train aloft.
Under the gazebo in the garden, McCollister got married. She remembers being excited and nervous. In the photographs, she looks like she was crying as she walked down the aisle. After the ceremony, the couple sat for pictures by the fountain as the guests milled about, eating appetizers. Then came the receiving line, and just before 9:00 P.M., the party began to move inside for dinner. The band began to play. That was when a waitress appeared at McCollister’s side and told her there was a small fire in the building.
The electrical fire had started in the Zebra Room, adjacent to the bride’s dressing room. The flames would tear through the Beverly Hills, led by a roiling advance of smoke. There were nearly three thousand people packed into the sprawling club on this Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend. Upstairs, ninety members of the Afghan Dog Owners Club were having a banquet in the Crystal Rooms. A group of doctors dined together in the Viennese Room. About four hundred people had gathered for an awards banquet in the Empire Room. But the vast majority of guests were in the Cabaret Room, the ballroom located off the garden. Most of the people who died that night would die in the Cabaret Room. All told, the fire would kill 167 people.
Everyone at the Beverly Hills that night had arrived with friends and family, and they would try to leave the same way. No one in the club that night would act alone. People would look to one another for direction and support. Their individual profiles mattered, but the group, and the parts they played in it, mattered just as much.
“I’m a Survivor. I Hope You’re a Survivor Too”
Contrary to popular expectations, this is what happens in a real disaster. Civilization holds. People move in groups whenever they can. They are usually far more polite than they are normally. They look out for one another, and they maintain hierarchies. “People die the same way they live,” notes disaster sociologist Lee Clarke, “with friends, loved ones, and colleagues, in communities.”
So far, we’ve watched human beings grope their way through denial and then deliberation. We’ve seen how genetics and experience can make certain people more or less risk-averse—or resilient. But disasters happen to masses of people, not individuals. Disaster victims are members of a group, whether they want to be or not. And we all behave differently in a group than we would on our own.
When people are told to leave in anticipation of a hurricane or flood, most check with four or more sources—family, newscasters, and officials, among others—before deciding what to do, according to a study by sociologist Thomas Drabek. That process of checking in, or milling, sets the tone for the rest of the evacuation. Who you’re with matters a great deal.
On April 18, 1906, psychologist William James was awakened in his Stanford University apartment by a violent shaking. As