Even When the Fire Alarm Rings, People Cannot Move — What Lies Between Knowledge and Action —

The fire alarm rang

In the middle of a meeting, the fire alarm suddenly rang.
The alarm sound echoed through the room.

For a moment, I felt as if the air had changed. However, no one stood up from their seat. The meeting continued as it was, and I, too, thought, "It must be a false alarm," and watched the situation from where I sat.

As it turned out, it really was a false alarm.
It was an incident that ended without anything happening.

Even so, looking back on it later, one question would not leave my mind.

If it had been a real fire, what would we have done?

Even when they know, people cannot move

The term that came to mind with this incident was "normalcy bias."

When people face an abnormal event, they often think, "It will surely be fine" or "It's just like always," and end up underestimating the danger.

I knew of this psychology as knowledge.
Therefore, I thought I could judge things calmly.

However, reality was different.
The moment the fire alarm rang, the feeling that "it might be a false alarm" worked faster than the knowledge I had in my head.

Furthermore, when I looked around, no one was panicking. While watching that scene, an atmosphere that "it is not yet a situation to evacuate" was naturally created.

Looking back now, perhaps everyone who was there was thinking the same thing.

This was not the judgment error of any one person.
People are creatures that make judgments within a group, and this was an incident that I experienced firsthand.

What are evacuation drills training for?

With this experience, I thought about the meaning of evacuation drills again.

When people hear "evacuation drill," they have the impression that it is for confirming evacuation routes.

Of course, that is also important.
However, isn't what we are really training for the initial action of "starting to move when the fire alarm rings"?

In an emergency, people cannot be as calm as they think they can.
Even if they have knowledge, they hesitate and are influenced by the behavior of those around them.

That is precisely why I think it is important to create a system where people can move naturally even when they are hesitant, rather than expecting them to be calm.

The purpose of evacuation drills might not be to change the person, but to make the organization's actions a habit.

It is not a story that ended just because it was a false alarm

This time, it was a false alarm.
Therefore, it ended without anything happening.

However, what is truly important is not the result that "it was a false alarm."

That day, I could not move.
And, perhaps many of the people who were there were also thinking, "Let's wait and see first."

That in itself is likely a natural human reaction.
Therefore, what is needed is not a mental argument that "we should be calmer."

It is to think about how we can take that first step, based on the premise that people will hesitate.

This alarm was not a fire.
However, for me, it was an "alarm" that became a trigger to rethink human psychology and how organizations should be.

And now, I am asking myself.
The next time the fire alarm rings, will I be able to move without hesitation?