“We call it friendly fire syndrome,” he says. “We are not exposed to fire on an everyday basis any more, as we used to be 100 years ago when we were experienced at starting fires for cooking. We have lost all of that connection to how rapidly fire can develop.”
Hagger says “some people will stand and physically watch the fire, fixated by what they are seeing. They don’t physically perceive the danger. Some will film it, some will even try to hide, rather than escaping.”
In a famous study from 1968, psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley recruited male Columbia University students and asked them to fill in a form while smoke was pumped into the room. The researchers measured how many students stepped out to raise the alarm.
When they were in the room alone, 75% reacted to the smoke by raising the alarm. But when two other people were with them – who were in on the experiment and had been told not to react – just 10% of the subjects reported the possible fire.
The authors concluded that sometimes an “individual seeing the inaction of others, will judge the situation as less serious than he would be if he were alone”.
In The Station fire, crucial seconds passed before both Gina and Phil decided to get out, almost like they were waiting for something to happen.
“My initial reaction to the fire was, ‘Oh, that’s interesting’,” Phil says. “It almost looked like it was just sitting on the surface. It was going to burn out.”
“We’ve been conditioned to believe that there are fire sprinklers or extinguishers nearby, right? I remember thinking at one point, ‘We’re all going to get wet’. Obviously that didn’t happen.”
The Station nightclub did not have them.