

Ask HN: Would a “National Fire Drill” save more lives than it cost? - lifeisstillgood

In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, it occurred to me that there is a slim possibility travel and &quot;physical interactions&quot; might actually be imposed.<p>It also occurs to me that fire drills help the occupants of buildings to be more calm and better prepared in the event of a real fire.<p>So would it be possibly to estimate the numbers who would die if we practised a two day shutdown as if an infectious outbreak was occurring - not to train the emergency services but to make sure all us citizens had thought about the many necessities of a shutdown? Got a calor gas cooker or extra twenty tins of tomatoes or ...<p>There is a (small?) likelihood of harm during such an exercise.  But will the benefits outweigh the cost?
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dalke
Fires break out often. We have plenty of experience in how to handle it, and
the likely variations.

They also take place in relatively small areas, where it's possible to stagger
the training.

It's very hard to practice large-scale events where we don't know the details
of how to handle it. A disease transmitted by animals or insects is different
than water born is different than through bodily contact, etc.

We have quarantine laws in place, btw. See
[http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/specificlawsregulations.html](http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/specificlawsregulations.html)
. They haven't been used since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919.

How often do we need to train in order that everyone has an idea of what to
do? Once a year? Once a decade? Without experience giving feedback, how do you
judge if it's often enough?

In any case we _know_ that hurricanes come to the Gulf and Atlantic coasts,
and we know that people are supposed to keep emergency supplies. Every year
there's available training, reminders on grocery bags, mentions in the news
shows, etc. We also know that they don't - one need only look at how quickly
certain things like batteries are sold out.

If people don't plan for once-every-few-years events, they aren't likely to
plan for once-every-century events.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
The hurricane comparison is a good one - but presumably some of the people who
did buy batteries did so because they saw the warning on the shopping bag -
and would not if the bag was blank.

I am pretty sure the lessons of crowd behaviour is that the difference between
mass riots and calm management is to be measured at the margin. So almost any
drills that can prevent a nation breakin down have a lot of value, which is my
not very hidden agenda here.

I am also fairly sure that fire drills seem not to evolve with time and
experience, makng it hard to believe that just because we cannot measure how
effective a drill is in staging off national disaster - the essence has not
changed in twenty years by my memory. Despite a down thread comment it seems
that preparedness is considered a good thing in itself by fire services.

~~~
dalke
Eh, I can't find pictures of the bags I remember from when I lived in Florida.
It's the regular brown paper bags. They would have a suggested shopping list
on the side, to help plan before a hurricane comes. They would also have a
hurricane tracking map.

It's definitely a early planning thing because it's pointless to get the list
of things to buy _after_ you've gone through checkout.

Here's an example I can find - “Prepare for Hurricane Season” coupons for 6/22
to 7/19 (the start of hurricane season)
[http://www.iheartpublix.com/2014/06/new-publix-coupons-
prepa...](http://www.iheartpublix.com/2014/06/new-publix-coupons-prepare-
hurricane-season-valid-622-719/) . Same basic point though - buy staples early
because the shelves will quickly be bare if a hurricane is coming.

"almost any drills that can prevent a nation breakin down have a lot of value"

You need to demonstrate that 1) the nation might break down, 2) there are
predictable way(s) that it will break down, 3) there are drills which might
prevent that from happening, 4) that a significant proportion (10%? 80%) of
the people will participate, and 5) that it's worth the costs, including
social effects.

Otherwise (and IMHO) you are worried about fantasy scenarios. And I don't even
agree with part 1)

For another historical example, look towards civil defense preparations for
nuclear war. Should we still be doing "duck and cover" drills, on the off
chance that a nuclear bomb will go off? When I was a kid they tested the civil
defense / nuclear missile warning system every month, just in case. I wonder
if they still do that now..

Compare that to the fire, tornado, earthquake, tsunami, etc. drills that
people do now. Those are more likely, there's more experience with them, and
there are specific ways to handle each one.

"fire drills seem not to evolve with time and experience"

The technique for sharpening pencils hasn't changed much either. There's
something like 130 years of experience in doing school fire drills. Why should
you expect to see big changes in the last 20 years?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
"National breakdown" does sound extreme, but the damage to "society" by
failing to prepare for a hurricane is the sort if level of impact I am
thinking of - not World War Z.

But we lack even the minimum levels of putting advice on shopping bags in the
vast majority of States and countries. If there is a real need to lock down
say two states, is it reasonable to expect the one that regularly has
hurricane drills and experience will fare better - I _assume_ so - and
primarily because it's citizens are more prepared for hurricanes and thus
_anything_ is slightly easier to deal with.

This is an eminently reasonable position to take IMNSHO - most armies will
tell you preparation beats most everything else.

all your points are valid and I am far more convinced than before I started. I
guess my only objection is experience has taught me to beware of convincing
explanations that I ought to do nothing ... Which barely counts as a rational
position.

~~~
dalke
We have state and national organizations which are supposed to prepare for
large scale emergencies. They do practice.

"real need to lock down say two states"

Please don't use "lock down". Not only is it tainted with the hyped up fears
that schools have to be scared all the time (have you considered what should
happen if a fire alarm goes off _during_ a lockdown?), but the correct term is
"quarantined". I even linked to the laws regulating quarantine.

"most armies will tell you preparation beats most everything else."

That's begging the question. _Are_ there useful mass-scale preparations? You
haven't demonstrated even that there is a predictable way to handle all
possible pandemics. We could find out that a pandemic is carried through cat
fur, and that the best response is to kill, shave, or vaccinate all of the
cats. How do we practice that?

Remember the anthrax attacks? The government gave advice on what people might
do in case of attack, including sealing a room with plastic sheeting and duct
tape, and suggested that people should stock up with those materials.

Did you do so? Do you have a pile of plastic in storage somewhere in your
house. It's only effective if you can put it up within the first few minutes
of a biological attack. Have you practiced doing so? What about your
neighbors?

Why do you think any mass advice for possible pandemic would be any more
successful?

In Switzerland, nearly every home has a bomb shelter, and there are
inspections to verify that the shelter is in working condition. Why don't we
have those same preparations here? Even in the bomb shelter fads during the
Cold War, it wasn't a law and there were no government inspectors for the US.
Why did we not do those preparations? Why did we stop doing duck and cover
drills?

It's eminently reasonable to assume that your position doesn't hold in the
real world.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you for pointing out Swiss bomb shelters - I did not know it was that
extensive.

I agree about the term lockdown and the fears around schools - not a term I
would want to use again in this discussion.

But I cannot help but wonder if the Swiss are right and we, without plastic in
our garages, are wrong. But if they are right they have been paying their
insurance for fifty years. That's a lot of dividends and no payouts.

~~~
dalke
But you can help it. What is your payoff matrix? How much effort do you think
it's worth to prepare for every possible eventuality?

You'll notice that while flight crew give instructions on how to use various
safety equipment, they don't actually run through drills where the masks comes
down and they check to make sure they are put on correctly; they don't run
through drills where the passengers actually leave the aircraft; they don't do
all that while dumping simulated smoke in the cabins.

You'll notice that while there are tests of the evacuation alarms around, say,
a nuclear power plant, they don't actually run mass tests to see if everyone
can evacuate in time. New York City is in the 50-mile evacuation zone for
Indian Point Energy Center. And those "plans" are more like "fantasy".

What you can do is read about disaster planning for those different scenario
(hurricane, tsunami, nuclear reactor meltdown, bomb shelters, plastic sheeting
& duct tape against biological attacks, fire drills, airplane evacuations,
etc.), see what the plans are, and figure out why people came to the
conclusions that they did. There's no reason to make wild guesses about what
you think it should be when there's plenty of material for you to ground your
thinking.

Regarding specifically nuclear bomb shelters, read Freeman Dyson's essay at
[http://scilib.narod.ru/Physics/Dyson/Weapons_and_Hope/Weapon...](http://scilib.narod.ru/Physics/Dyson/Weapons_and_Hope/Weapons_Hope.htm#chap08)
. For the US, a nuclear shelter program could destabilize the arms race, since
we would be planning to defend ourselves against Soviet attacks, giving the
Soviets cause to think that we would attack them knowing that we would be more
likely to survive. The Swiss bomb shelters don't destablize international
politics in anything like the same way.

------
impendia
In my experience, fire drills make people _too_ calm in the event of a fire.

Five years ago, fire alarms rang throughout the office building I was working
in. People were nonchalant. Most people left eventually, although some people
went back in to pick up some books to read or grab some work to do.

Meanwhile, and to my surprise, there was actually a fire. The fire department
showed up, and they were _pissed_ that people weren't taking the alarm
seriously.

~~~
dalke
That means your fire drills aren't being run correctly.

Rather, how come this poor behavior wasn't noticed during earlier drills? Did
the staff fire warden not have the management support to be able to affect
staff behavior?

~~~
impendia
We'd never had a fire drill in this building, but like all Americans we'd been
through dozens of fire drills before, mostly in school.

I don't really understand your second question. Our office did not employ or
appoint a fire warden. In any case, I was unaware of anyone outside the fire
department who was upset.

~~~
dalke
You started with "In my experience, fire drills make people too calm in the
event of a fire."

I thought that meant that your building had fire drills, and those previous
drills made them too calm.

A real fire drill is more than setting off alarms to see if they work. There
are also local fire wardens, which are staff whose job it is to see that
people hear the alerts and evacuate, and who make sure that people don't try
to re-enter the building.

I've done consulting work for chemical manufacturing companies. A couple
required that I go through (pretty basic) training just to work on site.
Another had a fire alarm go off at about 6pm, when I and others were still
there. Almost evacuated that building (there was some doofus who was on a
phone call and refused to leave.)

I was only there for consulting work, and don't know what happened to that
person. But if management believes that fire drills, and responding correctly
to actual fire alarms, are necessary, then they will reprimand those who don't
participate.

But what you experienced was different than I thought. There were no fire
drills, people were mostly using their experiences from school/college, and
management didn't care.

That's not the same as fire drills making people complacent. It could be that
the lack of fire drills making people complacent.

In any case, I'm not suggesting your building needs regular fire drills.
Buildings are much safer now they they used to be, and most places don't have
fire drills because the cost of running them is worse than the benefits of
not. (Chemical companies which store lots of flammable materials on-site, and
schools or hospital care facilities with a lot of people who need assistance
to evaluate, are exceptions.)

------
logn
In the northern parts, that's called an ice storm. Few people die. Almost
anyone can live 2 days without food, and water is normally safe after boiling.
I think the bigger problem is that local governments are underfunded and
national governments are such bureaucracies that it's nearly impossible to
mobilize a rapid and effective response.

