(Answer). At the bottom right hand corner of the picture is a box marked "Explosives," inside are what appear to be 4 sticks of dynamite wrapped together. While there is no visible timing or arming device, this does not mean there is not one. These materials should be considered hazardous. CERTs are not allowed to be in a haz-mat situation.
It does not appear that the CERTs in the picture noticed it or if they did they took required action to leave the scene.
A meta-message communicated numerous times during the CERT course, and at the briefing at the start of the day-long drill by all the Captains and Chiefs who spoke emphasized safety. At each station, including the Triage station, we were told to be aware of our surroundings and to be safe. Safe means identifying hazards, evacuating to a safe distance and reporting the hazard to the Incident Commander.
CERT was started to teach people how to respond to a disaster safely. In the great Mexico City earthquake, about 100 spontaneous volunteers died for they were unsafe in their efforts to respond.
I was at this refresher and part of Yellow Group. The CERTs pictured are apparently another team in our group. Bernard Falkin, the photographer who took the photo above, was already there when my team came on scene. I was searching on the otherside of the concrete structure from the CERTs pictured. y team sped ahead without me and I must have ran by the hazard in an attempt to to catch up with them. Shortly after our team, one of the later ones in Yellow Group, arrived at the concrete structure, the excercise ended due to a lack of time.
The concrete structure was laid out in a one-way snail shape - with a cul-de-sac in the middle of the maze. There was one-way in and one-way out. The explosive hazard was placed in a very obvious place just before the snail shape's started curving in. Everyone who got to the center, had to have walked by the box.
As a behavioral scientist who studies and consults on work team issues, I can understand "tunnel vision" or esclation committment as we management Professors call it. Workers/managers concentrate so much on one objective, i.e. the mission of seaarch and triage, that they ignore all else, i.e. a box of explosives. What they ignore often turns tragic. The classic example of esclation commitment is the Bay of Pig Invasion or more recent fiascos but this occurance on a small scale everyday like it did here.
However, what is disturbing is the defensive rationalization I heard afterwards by several people - not necessarily the two people in the photo above. "It wasn't a real box of explosives." Another person said - "The box was empty. I didn't see any explosives." The fact is that there were 4 sticks of mock dynamite in there. What is the purpose of the training if one is to disregard (blow-it off) as "unreal?" If one does not learn from mistake during training when no one dies, what happens after a major disaster, are they going to engage in more defensive rationalizations? The time to learn is now and to take full advantage of the training offered by the experienced CERT instructors of LAFD available to teach us.
Even if there were no explosives in the box, does not mean there are not any others around.
Another mistake was that who ever spotted the hazard first did not alert others. As soon as the first person who noticed the hazard, a warning shoud have been made and everyone should have evacuated.
This obstacle was a missed learning expereience for some people. Let this incident be a lesson for those who think additional training is unnecessary. Such people may think in a disaster they will remember what the CERT instructor said years ago. The people in the photo above knew they needed more training and still made what could have been a deadly mistake. Let us not repeat this error!
Cliff Cheng, Ph.D.
