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The phenomenology of panic

• Discourse and experience in survivors accounts
  of mass emergencies
• Chris Cocking John Drury
• University of Sussex
• cpc20_at_sussex.ac.uk
• 11/9/2006

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Outline

• The concept of Panic in mass emergencies
• Hillsborough football disaster
• July 7th 2005 bombings
• Conclusions/implications

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The Panic Model

• Part of the irrationalist tradition, drawing from
  Le Bon (1896) The crowd
• Reflected in popular discourse
• a) Threat causes emotion to overwhelm reason
• b) Collective identity breaks down
• c) Selfish behaviour- pushing trampling etc
• d) Contagion-these acts spread to whole crowd
  

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The self-categorisation approach

• Derives from Turners Self-Categorisation Theory
  (SCT), and Tajfels Social Identity Theory (SIT)
• Disasters can create a common identity- Furedi
  (2004) or sense of we-ness- Clarke (2001),
• This common identity can result in orderly,
  altruistic behaviour as people escape common
  threat
• Increased threat can enhance common identity
• Evidence so far supports SCT approach

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Hillsborough football disaster

• FA Cup semi-final 1989
• 96 Liverpool fans died in crush
• Mismanagement of crowd to blame, but claims of
  crowd trouble by some-anger still exists to this
  day
• IPA done on interviews with 3 survivors to look
  at concept of panic

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• I dont think people did lose control of their
  emotions and I think the restraint shown
  should be source of great pride to those people
  they were clearly in control of their own
  emotions and their own physical insecurity, I
  mean youre being pushed, youre being crushed
  when youre hot and bothered, youre beginning to
  fear for your own personal safety, and yet they
  were controlling or tempering their
  emotions to help try and remedy the situation and
  help others who were clearly struggling

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• one didnt have the capacity physically to
  panic. You couldnt move, so panic became things
  like breathlessness.. people losing consciousness
  but thats really a physical degree of I
  have to say that two people that struck me as
  panicking most were those police officers and it
  really was discomforting particularly because
  one of them was on a horse and when youre on a
  horse you have a vantage point because you can
  see whats happening and when youre also looking
  at someone ten feet away and theyre panicking
  because of what they can see and you cant see it
  

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panic as gloss?

• once blind panic has set in I would think that
  was that was the main part every everyone really
  panicked- sheer panic the police panicked the
  crowd panicked everyone panicked

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Panic or survival?

• I would never ever consider stepping on a
  dead body. I did that to save myself because I
  panicked I thought to myself look Im either
  going to step on he or she to get out of this
  and live or die. The choice was that simple. I
  hope that would be an example of panic because I
  was certainly panicked

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Co-operation when possible

• when people got over the fence they tried to
  pull people out. I had a grip on this person
  I distinctively remember trying to pull him out
  but the crowd had a vicelike grip on him it was
  next to impossible but everyone would have
  tried anything possible you know they pulled all
  the hoardings down and made temporary stretchers
  for people to take them over to the mortuary. the
  fans were fantastic

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Denial of Panic

• I cant think of any examples no I can see
  people wandering dazed but I cant see in my
  images anyone doing irrational you know people
  can say well I panicked and I had to get out but
  thats rational behaviour thats not panic
  behaviour, so no not in the classical mythical
  sense

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July 7th 2005

• 8 interviews analysed so far
• 7/8 make spontaneous references to panic in some
  degree
• But when asked directly, 7/8 deny that there was
  mass panic

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• there might have been some panic with the people
  who were hyperventilating so I probably only
  saw 1 or 2 people hyperventilating but in terms
  of trying to smash windows open it was all
  controlled it was one window that was smashed it
  was to help other people there werent people
  trying to open up hatches on their own. there
  were people trying to let fresh air in, but there
  was no-one trying to like run out of the train on
  their own in a mad panic

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Denial of panic

• Int ok so do you think anybody panicked from
  what you saw
• LB5 I think people remained calm, people were
  upset but they didnt, I didnt see anyone
  panicking rushing round tearing round shouting

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Vocal panic?

• LB7 quite a lot of people probably panicked when
  it first happened, yeah
• Int and can you remember what they were doing
  that made you think that they were panicking?
• LB7 um screaming really loudly yeah

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• Int is this something you can put on a scale of
  1-10 of how calm you think the general mood was?
•  LB7 in the first sort of few seconds after it
  um I guess overall so if 1 is calm and 10 is not
  calm, yeah, um probably around 8/9 because there
  were a lot of people really hysterical but then
  some people were still in control, but then by
  the time I had got out and could walk around
  everything seemed quite calm. I dont know say
  5 or something because it was still a really
  crazy situation and stuff but people were
  relatively calm

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Why is the p word used so often ?

• Quite liberal use of the term panic in our data
• But this usage doesnt always stand up to
  scrutiny, and accounts are often qualified or
  contradictory
• Often used to contrast panicked behaviour of
  individuals with crowd as a whole
• Reflects general mistrust of the crowd by some
  groups in society?

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Summary

• Panic is often used to describe behaviour in mass
  emergencies
• However the term is often a gloss that doesnt
  stand up to scrutiny
• More than just semantics as emergency planning
  often based on fear of mass panic

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Any questions/ comments?

• Do you have any experiences of the London
  bombings you are willing to share?
• please visit www.cs.nott.ac.uk/dzs/londonbomb/ind
  ex.htm if you do