A lot of stories are moving now trying to glean lessons from the terrible stage accident that killed five and injured more than 40 at the State Fair. If there is one, perhaps it is in these remarks by Gov. Mitch Daniels:
"What needs saying most about last night's freakish accident was that we saw on display the best qualities of both public and private Hoosiers. By every account the response by every responsible entity - Mayor Ballard's outstanding police and fire forces - our own Indiana State Police, the security force of the State Fair itself, emergency management personnel, was instantaneous and highly professional. It's equally important to say what I heard over and over and over again last night - that individual Hoosiers ran to the trouble, not from the trouble, by the hundreds, offering in many cases their own professional skills. I've heard it from everybody I've debriefed this morning. People rushing up, 'I'm a nurse, I'm a doctor, I'm a trained EMS responder.' But also people who simply pitched in," said Daniels, struggling to contain his emotions.
They ran "to the trouble, not from the trouble, by the hundreds" rather than huddling in fear and waiting for help to come running to the rescue. This leads Glenn Reynolds to recall a column he wrote after 9/11 about the improvised navy that of ferries, commercial boats and pleasure craft that assembled spontaneously and evacuated roughly a million people from Lower Manhattan:
Of course, many of the players in the New York evacuation and supply effort already possessed the technical skills that they needed - it was just a question of applying them to the job at hand. Such might not be the case among a group of ordinary citizens at the scene of another disaster.
But things don't have to be that way. With a modicum of effort, it might well be possible to ensure that people at the scenes of disasters are prepared, and possess the necessary skills for quick action on their own. How? By training them now.
The danger in overpraising those who acted quickly at the State Fair is that we make it just another story of "Hoosier heroism," and ain't we grand? But acting in your own self-interest before help can arrive is just common sense. You can never predict when a given group will respond the way those in New York and Indianaplois did, but making sure they've not shocked into inactivity couldn't hurt. "Disaster prparedness" should include a lot more people than only those who are "first responders." That might include any of us some day.
