Comment by wjnc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wjnc | Hacker News Reader

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Please, before I rush to judgement, in what way does taking a suitcase even by a single individual not create a few seconds lost for those further down the line?

I saw the footage and my first thought was exactly that of the OP. Tens of suitcases means tens of seconds delay. In an incident that gives you at most a few minutes for evacuation at least some of the dead are attributable to the actions of those carrying suitcases. That is criminal negligence in my book.

I now see another response quoting a Russian reponse indicating there was no congestion. Technically only the last survivor coming out could answer that question. For me, it seems strange that all the fatalities were instantaneous, while the survivors were unhindered. I'd imagine that with a broken up fuselage but not with a unbroken fuselage on fire. Perhaps the OP is overly emotional, but it's emotion pointing to something that is clearly wrong: people value belongings wrongly in case of serious accidents and the training should help people cope with that. I once saw a video of people trying to get their backpacks in case of a flash flood. They did not survive. Your property is basicly worthless compared to you being alive. We should learn to extend that to other people in case of emergency.

> few minutes for evacuation

The evacuation was completed in 55 seconds. People in the back were stranded/unconscious/buckled-up before the plane even stopped. The eyewitness reported (see links in my post) he had to _crawl on all fours_ out of the plane through thick smoke through a completely clear aisle. People with bags were the ones sitting immediately in the first few rows, they did not cause a congestion.

I would be pissed off as anyone if luggage grabbers killed someone, but it seems they weren't the "deadly stupidity" here? I mean, the dude just wrote the whole pompous blog post with a flashy title off an unlikely rumor?

Well the OP kind of did worse. It's just a repost of the exact same text in earlier incidents.

The unlikely rumor was spread on reddit as a fact for days. In fact I believed it until I saw further accounts and discussion.

Admittedly, the real stupidity here is attributed to ME. I really need to stop caring about details/"news" before some time has passed to filter out the rumors and the garbage that people produce on places like reddit.

> I would be pissed off as anyone if luggage grabbers killed someone, but it seems they weren't the "deadly stupidity" here? I mean, the dude just wrote the whole pompous blog post with a flashy title off an unlikely rumor?

This is such flawed thinking statistically. It really doesn't matter if the luggage killed somebody here or not, it's faster to get out of the plane without luggage and there's no way to tell how fast the plane is burning from inside.

Grabbing luggage put their fellow passengers, even it was for one second, in the hands of fate. I don't know whether it killed any extra people or not, but it was deadly stupidity regardless.

> luggage grabbers killed someone

you are as well making completely unsubstantiated claims and only the final investigation will correctly asses the casualty from the fire and the casualty from the evacuation delay.

like, what about the guys crawling behind that last one? any passenger which suffocated unbuckled was direct result of the jam at the beginning, however few second it might have been, each single second could have been one crawler more managing to get to the front before suffocation.

> in 55 seconds

well yeah but only half passenger evacuated, and the plane was only 70% full. you can't just claim the timing was good like that, in a vacuum.

> he had to _crawl on all fours_ out of the plane through thick smoke

Individual smoke hoods were tested in the 1980s for such eventualities but weren't adopted for cost reasons.

> People with bags [...]

SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD THEIR BAGS. END OF STORY.

You say yourself the last survivor existed after 55 seconds. Did bag carriers cause even a two second delay? Could one extra person have crawled out from the smoke before succumbing? Perhaps that 12 year old girl?

You (and I mean anyone but if you fly I literally mean you) should not be making these sort of calculations when deciding to carry or not carry. Do not carry. Exit.

A quote from the last survivor off the plane says that the aisle in front of them was completely clear as they left. In other words, any delays that might have happened weren't actually enough to harm or kill anyone in and of themselves.

I don't follow; that may mean nobody left their bags sitting in the aisle, but surely it doesn't mean there weren't delays. I've often had to wait upwards of five minutes to deplane at the end of a flight while other passengers grab their belongings, despite the aisle being clear. Bags absolutely slow things down.

(Unless that survivor meant the aisle was free from other passengers, but that ... seems like an unlikely interpretation.)

Or someone ahead of there spent several seconds pushing bags out of the aisle, and not everyone realized the speed of evacuation was being determined by obstructions. Or, not every piece of luggage causes the same slowdown, and the first piece of luggage with significant delay caused the choke point for all of those who didn't make it out. Or a dozen other scenarios. We just don't know.

90% of highway traffic jams I drive through end up having no visible cause. That doesn't mean that there was never anything in the road causing a slowdown.

Even if it does, we know full well from decades of medical and aerospace disaster research that these problems can only be treated if they are handled as systemic and non-malicious. Punishing these people will make it harder to learn from what happened here, and make it harder to prevent these sorts of disasters in the future.

We know people act irrationally or apathetically in disasters. The only way to fix it is to design systems around peoples' inherent weaknesses. You can't go around punishing these people after the fact, we need to understand why they acted how they did and how we can stop it from happening in the future.

> We know people act irrationally or apathetically in disasters.

This, times a million.

Brains don't work right sometimes, and you fixate on weird things, shut down, or fall into patterns that aren't useful in the situation in question. Afterwards, you'll be surprised by your behavior, shocked, embarrassed, and ashamed. Sometimes your behavior will seem brave to an outside observer, sometimes it will seem shameful, sometimes inane, but it's the same I-don't-understand-what's-happening disaster fugue state from the inside while it's happening.

I'd lay odds that for most of those people getting off the plane, it wasn't even any sort of "I need my stuff! It might get damaged!" thinking. From the inside of their head, they were getting off the airplane. When you get off the airplane, you put on your coat and grab your bag. What else would you do? You never leave your stuff on the airplane. When you are in a disaster and your brain shuts down, you fall into that sort of routine, even if it is the wrong thing to do in that situation.

> we need to understand why they acted how they did and how we can stop it from happening in the future.

I agree, but a deterrent might be part of a strategy to improve passengers behavior in such situations. "In case of evac, leave your bags or you'll get sued" might help a few people remember this line in the safety video. I'd obviously only advocate for something like this if studies show it to be effective.

I doubt you'll find any studies that show this to be effective.

And, arresting someone who just survived a plane crash who barely escaped a situation they didn't cause with their life just because they brought their purse with them is going to get ugly really fast.

I agree, the solution is to design better evacuation systems. That might include preventing people from bringing carry on luggage larger than a purse or briefcase.

I don't get all this posts defending the (and I want to fully repeat the articles original wording) STUPID behavior of these people.

Yes agreed, if it really didn't delay no blame for causing any loss of life no blame should have been put on them, media coming too quick to lurid headlines is a common bad thing, bad journalism, true.

But this does not matter at all here WTF? Even if this behavior did not cause any death, or delay, it is just outright stupid.

It still risked other passenger's lives (no one can judge in this situation by "looking at the aisle" if it is save trying to get your luggage or not), it still risked hurting other people during evacuation, it still risked damaging the slide, it still ignored the safety instructions and the stewardess shouting at the people to get the fuck out, it still just is an ultra egoistic asshole move trying to save your belongings.

And btw I also don't get the defense of "people act irrationally or apathetically in disasters". Your most basic natural instinct is to flee a life endangering situation, the second thing that can happen is an apathetic reaction, but apathetic reaction != trying to save your belongings while a plane is burning. Anyone who tries to fetch and carry their luggage while the stewardess is shouting at you to get out is just trying to save their very belongings, and not reacting irrational or apathetic. Unfortunately stupidity and egoism is also human nature, but still it is just this and not irrationality or apathy, this behavior is not defendable and just outright stupid.

I also don't get the downplay of "people just carrying a purse"... please watch the footage, you can see a roll-aboard.

"Technically only the last survivor coming out could answer that question"

And last survivor witnessed exactly this - quick evacuation without any issues with the luggage.

"people value belongings wrongly in case of serious accidents"

this catastrophe shows exactly opposite.

Could you link to a source for that claim?

https://meduza.io/feature/2019/05/07/ya-shel-poslednim-za-mn...

that article says survivor waited and asked his wife to wait instead of rushing to the exit because expected crowd near the exit.

He also said he waited until exit will be freed from others "Я уже не могу сказать, сколько мы ждали, пока проход освободится".

не пизди, не просил он жену ждать. Про жену он пишет только "толкнул вперёд". Про "сколько мы ждали" он говорит лишь "время относительно, не могу точно оценить. Но я не могу сказать, что что-то тормозило эвакуацию".

exact citation from the article where he said what I described above: "она пыталась встать и побежать, но я сказал сесть, потому что ждал, что из-за паники в проходе начнется давка."

No

Мы с женой оставались на местах после удара — она пыталась встать и побежать, но я сказал сесть, потому что ждал, что из-за паники в проходе начнется давка.

Мало ли, кто чего ждал. Важно, что случилось по факту.

I wonder if its worth configuring baggage storage as lockable in the event of emergency exits being deployed?

Though knowing our luck, that will probably make it worse as people try to force the handles/locks.

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