"Who Was in Charge of the Massive Evacuation of Lower Manhattan?"

Who Was in Charge of the Massive Evacuation of Lower Manhattan By Water Transport on 9/11? No One Was, Yet it was an Extremely Successful Operation. Implications?

Date posted: Thurs, 26 Sept 2002

This wonderful research note was written by Dr. Enrico Quarantelli and his colleagues at Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. Please take time to read it and share it with others. In his email Dr. Quarantelli wrote:

Dr. O'Leary:

I finally have finished along with several DRC colleagues a research note On the remarkable evacuation by water transport of about half a million persons from lower Manhattan on 9/11. It is almost a classic case of a mostly decentralized happening on a large scale with pluralistic decision making on a vast scale and with no one in any sense being in charge. This is kind of emergent behavior that should be expected and to a certain degree can be partly preplanned, instead of trying to implement a command and control model.

I realize that this research note may be too long for your use. Also, while the description is mostly about evacuation behavior, we try in the last paragraph to suggest the kind of questions that crisis planners and managers in the medical/hospital area might ask as they try to extrapolate from the emergent evacuation to the kinds of new problems that hospital/medical problems that a bioterroristic attack might have to address…

… The best to you. Henry

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WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THE MASSIVE EVACUATION OF LOWER

MANHATTAN BY WATER TRANSPORT ON 9/11? NO ONE WAS, YET IT WAS AN EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL OPERATION.

IMPLICATIONS?

• Kendra, T. Wachtendorf and E. L. Quarantelli September 2002
  

Hospital and medical personnel responsible for crisis planning and managing for their institutions can of course learn how to best prepare by looking at how their counterpart organizations elsewhere have responded to typical crises. However, in the case of unusual, or perhaps just potential rather than actual kinds of new crises, this may not be possible. However, what happened on 9/11 at the World Trade Center in New York City, given the magnitude of the crisis and the newness of the crisis, might provide some clues. We select one major happening on 9/11 that we think can be very instructive for anyone that has to "think outside of the box" with respect to disaster planning and management.

In 2001, it was estimated that 2.2 million commuters were in New York City on a normal working day. With the collapse of the second World Trade Center tower on 9/11, hundreds of thousands of such commuters, as well as other workers, residents and transients in the area, were mostly blocked off from leaving by the usual land routes. Streets around the impacted zone were debris-clogged and public transportation had ceased operations. Given the polluted and suffocating air, these people retreated south, many as far as the sea walls at the tip of Manhattan. At around 11 a.m. there began a massive evacuation by a large number of boats and vessels that had converged on the sea walls and a few docks in the area. The everyday ferries, tour and dinner boats, and private pleasure craft that normally carry passengers, were joined by far more numerous vessels such as tugs, outboard runabouts, pilot boats, and oil spill response vessels, a Coast Guard cutter and even a retired fire boat, that were never intended to carry passengers.

Part of the massive convergence was triggered by a call issued by the local Coast Guard on VHF 13 and 16 after the collapse of the second tower. It requested anyone with a vessel in the area to go to the shoreline of lower Manhattan, but it appears much of the convergence resulted from personal observations or knowledge that an evacuation by water craft was possible or being attempted. The Coast Guard, which swiftly responded to the attack by establishing a security cordon around lower Manhattan, did notify entities such as ferries with which it had regular everyday contacts that safety and accident rules and regulations need not be strictly followed. But on the basis of what some operators reported about their involvement, it seems that many of the converging vessels had little direct interaction with the Coast Guard that day.

There were some spectacular photos and films of the evacuation, a few taken from afar and providing a bird's eye view of what was happening. They show thousands of civilians waiting calmly in line and helping one another to climb down into craft of all sizes and shapes hovering at the base of high sea walls (as well as a few cases of vessels at docking facilities). As some have commented who know about World War II, the scene was reminiscent of the evacuation of more than 300,000 British and French soldiers at Dunkirk. In that situation, there was a similarly massive but unorganized convergence of an armada of big and little craft operating mostly on their own.

While some preimpact thought had been given to evacuation in bridges and tunnels around Manhattan, there had been no planning for this scale and kind of organizational activity. No group had such an activity as a central part of their disaster planning. No organization or official was in complete charge of the overall emergent evacuation activities. Who went where, where evacuees were disembarked in New Jersey or Staten Island, and how long any vessel operated, were very often decisions made independently by the multiple operators of different vessels who had little direct communication with one another or agencies elsewhere. The Coast Guard did suggest some tugs go to particular docks in lower Manhattan, but this was an atypical guidance effort in the situation, especially in the early stages. The larger number of vessels from the private sector operated intermixed with public organizations. This required informal cooperation to avoid collisions and taking turns in picking up evacuees, since no overall control of the water traffic could have been imposed. However, when the vessel traffic at certain localities became very heavy, it was a port captain of a major private shipping company on his own initiative who informally took over as an unofficial waterfront coordinator in one part of the bay (there apparently was another similar occurrence in another part of the waterfront).

By any criteria, the evacuation, one of the largest ever in American history, was an extremely successful endeavor. There appears to have been no fatalities or casualties in the operation; no vessel was involved in any accident. In the course of about six-seven hours, according to the Coast Guard, perhaps up to 500,000 persons were moved. Later estimates have sometimes reduced the figure to around 300,000. Both seem reasonable given that one ferry company alone did count transporting 158,502 evacuees. Estimates that perhaps one million persons were evacuated, while still cited to this day, do not seem to be reasonable (but do indicate that no organization had much overall control of or knowledge about the operation as it proceeded). However, even the lowest overall estimate is an impressive figure.

It is difficult to see how the overall evacuation effort could have been different in any way in the positive sense. What could have been done that would have been more effective in attaining the implicit collective goal of transporting the evacuees from Manhattan? In fact, on the basis of our knowledge of how disaster planning is frequently resisted, we can say that any attempt to preplan such an evacuation would have immediately been met with objections such as: e.g., 70 persons cannot be put on a boat authorized to carry only 40 persons or on one not built to carry passengers; people cannot be picked up at high sea walls because potential evacuees will panic or fight one another to get on approaching boats; or, ignoring everyday marine and port rules and regulations will create potential lawsuits. Fortunately, in the actual crisis of 9/11, people and groups rose to the occasion, doing what needed to be done to cope with new and unexpected problems.

The emergent evacuation behavior was in a very important sense rather familiar to veteran disaster researchers. Many of the specifics and to some extent the magnitude of the evacuation could not have been well forecast. But the overall major social characteristics and general patterns of the evacuation were very predicable. Studies of evacuation at times of crises have now been undertaken for the last 50 years. They have consistently shown that at times of great crises, much of the organized behavior is emergent rather than traditional. In addition, it is of a very decentralized nature, with the dominance of pluralistic decision making, and the appearance of imaginative and innovative new attempts to cope with the contingencies that typically appear in major disasters. Fortunately on 9/11 no attempts were made to impose a command and control model (Dynes described its features in previous communications) on the evacuation by water transport from lower Manhattan.

In passing, we should note that there were two nearly concurrent activities on 9/11 at the World Trade Center which also showed the social patterns that disaster researchers would have expected. One was the largely successful evacuation of the surviving occupants of the towers and surrounding buildings. The other was the initial (but not the later) search and rescue undertaken right after the collapse of the second tower. Neither activity was controlled by anyone. Instead, in both responses to the crisis, there were many emergent features, actions of a non traditional nature. The individuals and small groups involved showed considerable flexibility and initiative in dealing with the drastic challenges that the massive physical destruction created for survivors.

What has been described is no argument at all against pre-impact disaster planning. In fact, to researchers just the opposite is clearly indicated. This is that good preplanning should explicitly indicate to any organization which might become involved at the emergency time period of a disaster that command and control models will not work. Instead there should be an acceptance of the fact that things can be done to encourage group and individual responses that make sense in the crisis. Just making crisis planners conscious of the fact that there will be considerable emergence of new behaviors and decentralization of decision making will discourage trying the impossible and will facilitate realistic disaster management. Acting on wrong assumptions can be totally dysfunctional for good planning and managing.

The Coast Guard has far more legal authority over New York harbor than most organizations have over the territories in which they operate. But this organization, intelligently, made no effort to take over the evacuation which had primarily started on its own. Instead it provided as much relevant information as it could to facilitate as much as possible the new decentralized behavior marked by pluralistic decision making that emerged. The Coast Guard essentially played a supportive rather than a directive role. In this instance, the specific reasons as to why the Coast Guard demonstrated such appropriate and laudable behavior are being studied, but at the very least what happened shows that even organizations used to operating in a highly structured framework can change their operations to better adapt to a very new kind of major crisis.

Anyone involved in the medical/hospital area might consider the implications of what we have described happened on 9/11? What might be rather unexpected problems in these areas in a major disaster? What sort of crises may particularly require new kinds of organized responses? What sort of non-traditional resources (people and/or things) might be potentially available for emergence? What preplanned steps might be taken to facilitate such new organized behavior as might emerge? How can pluralistic decision making be made effective in new kinds of crises? What traditional or standard crisis management procedures or structures might not be very effective for new kinds of crises? We think that if medical and hospital personnel consider some of the happenings in New York City, they will be able to generate answers to these questions and other relevant questions that will be very helpful in crisis planning and managing. Of course for that to occur, they will have to think “outside of the traditional box.”