Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [75]
It was called a miracle, but it was also a tribute to good training. On the Air France flight, the crew gave loud, clear directions from the moment the plane crashed. The copilot came over the intercom system and told the passengers to calmly exit the plane. The flight attendants screamed at the passengers, just as they’d been trained: “Everyone out the exits at the back! Do not go forward. Move out now!” They did not snuff out all misbehavior; some passengers still insisted on taking heavy carry-on baggage with them. But the plane emptied in remarkably little time. Afterward, passengers told reporters that the crew’s orders had saved lives. Maria Cojocaru, an Ontario resident who escaped with her two small children, remembers the crew guiding her, even as the cabin filled with thick black smoke. “All the time they speak to us and tell us, ‘Move, move, move,’” she told the Canadian Press. “At the end, they saved our lives.”
Leadership can save the life of the rescue worker, too. In river rescues, members of the Kansas City Fire Department rescue squad yell profanity-laced threats at victims before they get to them. If they don’t, the victim will grab on to them and push them under the water in a mad scramble to stay afloat. “We try to get their attention. And we don’t always use the prettiest language,” says Larry Young, a captain in the rescue division. “I hope I don’t offend you by saying this. But if I approach Mrs. Suburban Housewife and say, ‘When I get to you, do not fucking touch me! I will leave you if you touch me!’ she tends to listen.”
As the Beverly Hills burned to the ground, Bailey gave the guests in the Cabaret Room clear directions, accompanied by hand gestures, showing them how to get out. He did exactly the right thing. But even so, there were some people who did not leave. Perhaps they didn’t hear the warning. Or maybe they did, but they didn’t believe it. Quite possibly, like so many disaster victims, they were in denial. Or maybe they couldn’t get out, so they decided to wait until the crowd had thinned. Whatever the case, not everyone got up to leave. When firefighters finally got the blaze under control and entered the Cabaret Room the next day, they found one table with six burned corpses still sitting in their chairs. All told, 167 people died from the fire at the Beverly Hills. It was one of the deadliest fires in U.S. history.
The bride, McCollister, stayed on the hillside until 1:00 A.M., trying to help. She finally walked to a nearby hotel, still wearing her charred dress and holding her bouquet. “People did weird things,” she says, remembering how someone had rescued her veil for her that night. The next day, she had to call everyone on her guest list to see if they had survived. That, she says, was the most excruciating part of the whole ordeal. “It was gut-wrenching. You didn’t know what you were going to get hit with. Someone hysterical, someone angry.” One woman, the wife of a family friend, died of smoke inhalation, and McCollister was devastated by guilt. “You feel like a real schmuck. I knew I had nothing to do with her dying, but you cannot look yourself in the mirror and say you’re not accountable.” After the fire, she says, her new husband was never the same. They got divorced four years later.
McCollister declined to discuss the fire with reporters until 2007. That spring, on the thirtieth anniversary of the fire, some of the survivors and relatives of the victims gathered for a ceremony at the site of the Beverly Hills Supper Club. The grounds were overgrown with weeds and honeysuckle, so it was hard