I want to quickly tell you about the dream I had a few nights ago and then tell you how I think it is relevant.
Dream: In this dream, I was at Disneyland with my roommate and a few other friends. Instead of walking around the park, everyone had a transportation vehicle that flew. Everyone's vehicle was difficult--mine was shaped like a spaceship. Okay, now here's where the dream gets a little weird. If you didn't hold on to your transportation vehicle it flew up into the sky like a balloon does if you let go of the string. As you probably guessed, I accidentally let go of the spaceship and it flew into the sky. What goes up must come down, right? So after a few minutes the spaceship came plummeting back down and hit Disneyland. An announcement was made over a loud speaker that Disneyland was hit by a nuclear bomb and everyone needed to immediately follow evacuation procedures. No procedures were followed. CHAOS took place.
My Point: In the dream, I tried really hard to explain to security officials what had happened. It was not a nuclear bomb, just my spaceship transportation vehicle! Each security official that I sold slowly began to understand and believe me. However, Disneyland is a very large place with many security officials and the amount of time that simply relaying a message "through the grapevine" to all of the security officials across the park was completely inefficient. I consider Disneyland in my dream to be a microcosm for NYC. The procedures that could have been followed are similar to that of officials in NYC during a citywide disaster such as 9/11.
Handheld devices, as I have been speaking about in many previous posts, could have eliminated the hysteria. A simple officer wide text message via the handheld devices could have easily explained the situation and then calmed down the people. Although at Disneyland, the visitors have not signed up for a text message service, many residents of NYC do. If the first round of text messages went to public officials until they could validate the "all-clear" and then the second round of text messages went to all subscribers, CHAOS could be avoided (or at least limited).
So many dreams really do have meaning...?
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2 comments:
hi ariel,
i found an article and a study on the 9/11 evacuation, check them out here:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5335a3.htm
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/sep/evacuation090806.html
i even saw a website dedicated to the people who successfully evacuated the world trade centers on 9/11 so they can share their story.
http://fseg2.gre.ac.uk/HEED/
good post by the way, i agree that if they had a better communication medium that things would have been a lot more successful.
-Omar
yes- seems like dreams do have a meaning... you're dreaming of your IOM blog again ariel?? ;) haha.
check out the trojan messaging service- maybe this could use used as a tool to help NYC plan for disasters using handheld technology you've been referring to.
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