Your plane has to make a crash landing and the cabin crew tells everyone to evacuate as quickly as possible, leaving all their bags behind. Smoke is billowing everywhere and it’s clear that time is of the essence.
You’d think that most people would be happy to escape with their lives but photos taken after emergency situations like this tend to prove otherwise. Some people are so attached to their personal belongings that they risk their own life and the lives of others to grab their bags before leaving, as you can see in these astonishing 17 photos of crashed Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco in 2013.
It’s the same with burning buildings. There are countless tales of people running back into an inferno to save their precious possessions, and it can often be the death of them. There was a woman in Illinois, for example, who safely escaped a blaze with her daughter and then rushed back into the house to get her cell phone. She didn’t make it out alive the second time.
Experts agree that a little education about emergency situations can make all the difference. Do you know, for example, that aircraft slides are made of urethane-coated nylon? That’s why women are asked to take off high heels – to avoid ripping the nylon. A zip or metal catch on a bag can do just as much damage. You have to ask yourself, how would you feel if your precious bag wrecked the slide so badly that no-one else could get off the plane?
Sliding down isn’t so easy either. Some slides are the height of a house. Sitting up, not lying down, is the recommended way to do it, and rather than clutching a bag, you’ll need your hands free to regain your balance and move quickly away at the bottom, which is where pile-ups can happen.
This video gives an insight into what the experience feels like. One person’s leg got broken, and 33 of the volunteers got slide burns (although they don’t mention that on the film). And that’s without anyone attempting to take a bag with them, or the chaos of a real crash situation.
The problem is, most people have never thought through how they would react in an emergency and what they would take with them. What would you do? Is your stuff more valuable than your life?
Related articles
How to escape down an airplane slide
How to survive a plane crash
Copyright © Karen Kingston 2015