Panic during earthquakes and its urban and cultural contexts.

Abstract

Although panic behaviour has been studied by many researchers over the last fifty years (Johnson, 1987; Klerman 1993), much remains to be learned about its nature, causes and implidations. Sociological research has tended to show that panic is a rare phenomenon, but nevertheless in certain major earth quakes it may be both common and wide spread (table 1; Takuma, 1978; Ohta and Ohashi, 1985; Yoshii, 1988; Alexander, 1990). For instance, eye-witness reports suggest that up to a quarter of the 480 people killed by the earthquake of 12 October 1992 in Cairo (magnitude 5.9) may have died as a result of injuries sustained during panic flight. Forty Egyptian schoolchildren were allegedly crushed to death when occupants fled blindly from a school (Degg, 1993, p.230). Thus, extreme forms of behaviour may lead a person into rather than out of danger, and hence panic during earthquakes, and its con comitant flight, merit study both in terms of how they may cause injuries and how they can be mitigated or avoided. This paper will review the sociological and psychological studies of panic, discuss the phenomenon in the light of its relationship to earthquake epidemiology, investigate its role in earth quakes, describe the contexts which facilitate it and prescribe some remedies. The following account will not concern itself with the kind of panic engendered by an exorbitant restaurant bill (Drabek, 1986, p.136) or an abrupt fall in the price of shares; instead it will deal with panic engendered by sudden earthquake, and the direct threat to human life that this may pose. As Goltz et al, (1992) pointed out, the extensive literature on the behavioural aspects of earthquake disasters includes remarkably little on what people actually do during the few seconds of strong shaking.