Where is the ‘common sense’ in ignoring a fire alarm?

“If either of us was in a fire,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the British House of Commons, “Whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the building. It just seems the common sense thing to do.”

He was referring to the Grenfell Tower fire in which 72 people died as flames tore through the high-rise’s outer cladding, bypassing fireproof doors that were supposed to keep them safe.

Leaving aside Rees-Mogg’s snobbery, his superiority, his implication that victims died because they were stupid, and the vanity that such a thing wouldn’t happen to a (white, English-speaking, university-educated, properly British) person such as himself, he’s utterly wrong.

Because who among us has never ignored a fire alarm? Or carried on working through a fire drill? Once, in decrepit newspaper offices in Doornfontein – long since vacated – a chap from accounts came running up the stairs to tell
us to get out, because there was a fire downstairs and our fire alarm didn’t work.

We finished typing our sentences, saving our files as he flapped; yes, yes, we said, just got to do this thing. We trotted down the stairs and waited outside until the fire brigade was finished, before traipsing back. It was a fire of the wastepaper basket stripe but, still, most blazes start small.

Then, in a youth hostel in London, every morning someone would burn the toast and set off the fire alarm. I only panicked the first time, dripping wet, wrapped in a towel. Next time, I ignored it.

The other day, my younger son was having lunch with his girlfriend at her college when the fire alarm sounded. Everyone stayed put, until someone screeched at them to move. My oldest works in a fancy office block. Each Tuesday there’s a fire drill, but the folk in his office have long since stopped attending.

We all do the same, hard-wired not to imagine our own deaths, for if we could, we’d be crippled with fear. Even on 9/11, according to a recently-published oral history, people who might have been saved did not evacuate because authorities told them it was safe, to stay put, that their building was not affected.

Until it was.

“… and it’s such a tragedy it didn’t happen,” Rees-Mogg finished.

Well, at least he was right about one thing.

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