Select the padlet and the scenario corresponding to your group number.
Odd numbered groups please look at scenario 1 below, and even numbered groups please look at scenario 2 below before opening your group padlet.
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Earthquakes can contribute to triggering several situational disabilities, as the following imaginary scenario will illustrate.
In Reykjavik on Iceland, a strong earthquake strikes one day in late February, around 2AM in the morning.
Martin lives in a small 12th floor apartment in downtown Reykjavik. He is used to evacuating during fire drills, but this is different. He fights the panic as he awakes, puts on some warm clothes, grabs his smart phone, locks his apartment and quickly walks down the stairs among a crowd of other people, who are equally stressed and worried, and making a lot of noise. When he finally comes out of the building, he sees that some of the surrounding buildings have partly collapsed. He tries to check the news using his smartphone to find out more information about what has happened, but although he is wearing warm clothes, his hands are still shaking from the cold combined with his high level of stress, so he has difficulty navigating the news. All the noise from the crowd and the still shaking ground is making it even harder to focus.
His neighbor Alejandra is recently arrived to Iceland from Mexico to work on her PhD. In a panic, she didn’t think of taking warm clothes with her as she left the apartment. Fortunately, she remembered to grab her smartphone on the way out. She is now very cold, and the noise makes it even more difficult to concentrate on finding safe shelter. There is a woman wearing a Red Cross uniform coming towards her, but she doesn’t understand what she is saying.
The woman is Anna. She has been a volunteer for Red Cross for several years, but this is the first big emergency she has been a part of. Although she has had a lot of training, she still feels unprepared for the challenge of finding, prioritizing and helping victims in such a disaster. Also, the emergency communication equipment is unfamiliar to her, and she is trying to remember the correct channel and how to communicate effectively.
Olav works in the emergency control room communicating closely with different first responders in the field, including Anna. He is surrounded by monitors with warning messages and audible alarms. He is very stressed and overwhelmed by all the reports of collapsed buildings in his area of responsibility, and have a really hard time choosing how to distribute resources, gravely aware that his decisions can have severe consequences.
Fire can contribute to triggering several situational disabilities, as the following scenario will illustrate.
Just before closing time, a fire breaks out in the “Galleriet” shopping mall in Bergen, Norway. It was caused by an accident in the kitchen of one of the ground floor snack bars. The fire alarm goes off, and evacuation begins.
Bill is an American tourist on a one day visit from a cruise ship. He is a bit lost, but finds a map on the wall. To his dismay, the information is only in Norwegian. He tries using google translate to translate the text, but because of stress he gives up and rather follows the crowd to the nearest exit.
Janne is on the top floor, and she is trying to use a smartphone indoor map of the mall to find the way to the nearest emergency exit. Along the way, she sees a person in a wheelchair who is unable to evacuate without assistance, and he is too heavy for her to carry. She sends a message about the trapped person to the local fire department using twitter, since the noise from the fire alarm is too loud for being able to communicate using the emergency phone number.
Nils in the fire department control center is overwhelmed by all the messages about the rapid development of the fire, but sees the tweet from Janne, calls Petter the fire fighter over the emergency communication network, and Petter makes his way to the top floor and is able to help the trapped person out of the burning building.
Scenario 2: Fire in a multi-floor shopping mall.