More than 90% of survivors of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York delayed evacuating the buildings in order to carry out tasks such as saving their work, shutting down computers, changing shoes and visiting the bathroom. Interviews with 271 survivors who worked in the twin towers found that only 8.6% fled as soon as the alarm was raised. The vast majority stayed behind waiting for information or carrying out at least one additional task, including phoning their family and collecting belongings. The majority put their escape back by around eight minutes, with some delayed by half an hour. People who tried to find out what was going on took between 1.5 and 2.6 times longer to respond to the alarm than those who didn’t. Researchers from the Universities of Greenwich, Ulster and Liverpool spent three and a half years interviewing former World Trade Center workers about the day of the attack. The interviews generated 6,000 pages of first-hand accounts of what it was like trying to leave the buildings.
