Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [72]
When Bailey got to the Cabaret Room, he walked up to a supervisor and told him there was a fire. “We have to clear the room,” he said. The man just stared blankly at him. Then Bailey turned to find the club’s owners. But then he stopped himself. “This is stupid,” he told himself. “I’m wasting time. Either he has to clear this room or I will.” So he went back to his supervisor and told him, again, to clear the room. The supervisor walked off. Bailey assumed he was going to start the evacuation. In the meantime, he decided to start moving a line of about seventy people who were still waiting to enter the show. “Everyone, follow me,” Bailey said. And they did. Without a word of explanation, he led them down the hallway and out into the garden. “OK, everyone stay here,” he said. To his amazement, they didn’t ask any questions.
When he came back to the Cabaret Room, he was stunned to see that nothing had changed. The opening act was still in progress, the comedians were still chortling their way through their bit. “This isn’t going to do,” he told himself. “This room has to be cleared out, and it has to be cleared out soon. I’m probably going to lose my job, but I’m just going to do it.” Then he walked right down the middle of the room, through the VIP seats in the pit and up the steps to the stage. He reached over to one of the comedians and took the microphone. The crowd stared up at him, confused. “I want everyone to look to my right,” he said. “There is an exit in the right corner of the room. And look to my left. There’s an exit on the left. And now look to the back. There’s an exit in the back. I want everyone to leave the room calmly. There’s a fire at the front of the building.” Then he walked back off the stage.
Thirty years later, Bailey still has a flat, calm voice. He still uses words like super and neat. Back then, he was a quiet teenage boy who didn’t have too many friends at the club. He had recently discovered at school that he had stage fright, so he was terrified when he climbed the stairs to take the microphone. But he did it anyway, saving hundreds of lives.
How did Bailey do it? Why didn’t he stay within the narrow confines of his role, like most people that night? When I ask Bailey about this, he explains that his identity was actually a little more complicated than it appeared. Unlike a lot of the Beverly Hills employees, who loved working there, he was not particularly attached to his job or the club. He had lived all over the country as part of a military family and had worked at construction jobs that paid a lot more money. The busboy job paid just $1.10 an hour. “I put in my time and left,” he says. So when it came time to react to the fire, Bailey had less to lose. He was not as impressed by the club’s hierarchy, and he could easily imagine life without the smock. “When I decided to clear the room, my first thought was, ‘I’m going to get fired.’ But I wanted to do the right thing.” Heroism is the subject of another chapter, and there is much to say. But suffice it to say that Bailey was, in some ways, a classic case.
After Bailey told everyone in the Cabaret Room to leave, he went outside. Then he circled around to check on another exit. He saw smoke coming out and headed back in. As soon as he got inside, he realized that he was witnessing a catastrophe. He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear people—so many people—crying out for help. He started reaching into the depths, grabbing people by the collar and dragging them out the door. He went back and forth this way