Panic and Human Behavior in Fire

Today, most buildings are equipped with fire safety and fire protection systems. Nevertheless, fires still occur and result in fatalities. The salient part of the problem emanates from the fact that the majority of fire protection systems in buildings are put in place with false and incorrect expectations with respect to how people actually react in emergency situations. In other words, occupants are likely to react differently from what they are mostly expected to do upon which fire safety systems are put in place in buildings. This antithesis of behavior is attributed to people’s panicky reaction and behavior which may give rise to occupants demonstrating dysfunctional andirrational responses. Nonetheless, do people really react and behave in an irrational, anti-social and panicky manner in the event of the fire and emergency or the word panic has wrongly been used in various contexts and building occupants behave rationally and in a socially-acceptable fashion in reality The present study is aimed at demystifying panic definition and investigates on what people’s actual behavior is in case of an emergency such as a fire drawing on some previous research findings.

Keywords:

Panic , Behavior , emergency , fire situation , actual response