Study questions 20,000 people who worked in WTC towers

On Monday, May 24, invitations to complete a comprehensive questionnaire on the evacuation and fire safety practices of the WTC were mailed to 20,000 employees who worked in Towers 1 & 2 of the World Trade Center (WTC).

The questionnaire is part of the World Trade Center Evacuation Study at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The study, which will evaluate the evacuation experiences of WTC employees, is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The goal of the WTC Evacuation Study is to identify the individual, organizational, and structural factors that affected the evacuation, and ultimately, to inform policy and practice for safe evacuation of high-rise structures under extreme conditions. Issues such as communications, training, human behavior, and structural factors will be analyzed through the questionnaire responses. Invitations to participate in the questionnaire phase of the project are being mailed to former WTC employees who were selected at random from a list generated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

"A study of this magnitude has never been conducted. More than 12 months and hundreds of hours of research and data collection have already been devoted to the project, and over 100 fire safety and evacuation specialists have helped to develop this groundbreaking study questionnaire," said Robyn Gershon, DrPH, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School and principal investigator for the study. "At a very basic level, this study will have far-reaching effects on how buildings are constructed, and especially on how employees are prepared to deal with extreme situations at work. The study will also impact routine fire safety practices of high rise work places."

Participation in the study is strictly voluntary and all information will be held in the strictest of confidence. Only generalized group data will be reported. At the conclusion of the study, summary reports, including detailed recommendations for improvements, will be provided to all stakeholders, including government agencies, former WTC tenants and former WTC employees.

Specific study objectives include:

• To determine the role of pre-event training, preparedness, safety climate, and other organizational elements that may have affected evacuation;
• To inform policy makers, regulatory agencies, codes, standards and guidelines that affect workplace preparedness;
• To identify recommendations made and implemented after the 1993 WTC attack and to assess their impact on the 9/11/01 evacuation;
• To identify organizational and individual level interventions to improve readiness and evacuation decision-making.

"Most Americans, including public safety and homeland security officials, believe that further terrorism is highly likely in the foreseeable future. Dr. Gershon and her colleagues have launched the most comprehensive study ever developed to look at what we've learned about the safe evacuation of people from high-rise buildings in the event of a major disaster," said Irwin Redlener, MD, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Mailman School of Public Health. "Clearly, the results of this work will guide new policies and emergency procedures and, ultimately, have the potential to save many lives."

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