Headline: Man run over at the Lewisville 5K. Last words “seek shelter”.

People in crowds are downright amazing. There’s documented proof that when a group of people get together and are put in a stressful situation (I hesitate to call the events that I experienced today a crisis); they react in ways that are completely irrational and often unexplainable. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is a readily accessible instance to justify such a point.

Katrina was and will forever be considered a true crisis, I think for the obvious reasons. Granted Katrina is slight overkill as a point of reference in respects to the point I will eventually make, however conceptually it directly correlates. That being said, ordinary people who spent their lives, up until Katrina and most likely post Katrina, working, living and maintaining some kind of social ordinance, created mass-chaos in the face of adversity. Enter the horror that was those tragic events. Those same people now found it acceptable to loot, rape, kill and act as an unrecognizable uncultured group of individuals; a modern day Lord of the Flies, if you will.

I say all that to preface that when people in a group are put in crisis-type situations, they collectively act in ways that would be considered socially unacceptable by any standard. To bring it down a notch, I was personally in what I would qualify as a crisis situation several years back. It only involved 2 people, but how many people really qualify as a crowd? More than 2? 4?

I came home to find my best friend extremely ill and to spare the details in the middle the end result is that she had a brain aneurism and eventually had brain surgery. When I walked in, took one look at her, realized the left side of her body was paralyzed and she was in convulsions. I uttered the phrase “hospital time” and set a plan in motion. My instant reaction was to change my clothes, which I did. Uh, I don’t know about you, but it seems like the furthest thing from logical is to take any amount of time to change your clothes in such a situation. To this day, I cannot justify or explain why that was my initial reaction. I jokingly explain that if I am faced with a crisis, I will need to change my clothes and that’s when we all know, it’s bad. Point being, you never know what how one will react to a crisis.

Bottom line, there’s no sliding scale or standard deviation to indicate how a person and/or a group of people will react given the occurrence an out-of -the-ordinary event. Psychologists as far back as Freud and Jung, refer to it as crowd psychology and in some instances an anomaly.

Why the elaborate build up, you ask? -Especially since I specified that I personally, would not qualify my experience today as a crisis by any stretch of the very definition of the word crisis.

Crisis: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially: one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.

To bring it full circle, the buildup was merely an attempt to justify my initial statement that people in crowds are downright amazing.

This morning, I found myself at the new Lewisville Bridge in full running attire, bib number securely pinned to my shirt and anticipating the 5K commiserating the opening of the new bridge. Let’s start at the amount of runners participating in this particular 5K. There were so many people registered to run that in an attempt to prevent mass chaos, they had scheduled heats of 500 runners separated by 45 minute spaces. I was scheduled for heat 4 running at 8:45am. There were a total of 5 heats. That averages out to 2,500 runners. Add in the spectators and the companies representing in tents and it’s fair to say there was somewhere around 5,000 people in a collective and confined area. That undeniably and unequivocally qualifies as a crowd.

Now, on to the “organized” parking situation. I had a pass to park very close to the race. Since my run started at 8:45am, I arrived at 7:45am giving plenty of time to park and make my way to the starting line with time to spare to stretch and possibly have a warm-up run. My parking area ended up being full by the time I arrived which led to being detoured, getting slightly lost, and eventually parking in a parking lot that was not designated as 5K parking. I said screw it parked and started to follow the crowd of runners that were walking towards the race. Let me just say, that I was so far away from where it started, that I questioned the existence of a bridge.

After walking close to 20 minutes, I arrived at the entrance and any initial frustration had subsided – momentarily. I was met by a police officer who was refusing passage to the starting line on the basis that a storm coupled by lightening was quickly approaching. The only heat to have made the run was the first heat. Everyone else was delayed.

The sky didn’t look too bad at that point. Grey, yes – but gave leniency to the passing thought that the clouds would move over not giving way to a storm. I have run several 5Ks in the rain before and was relatively unaffected by the thought. The event coordinators calmed curious minds by saying that the bridge was being evacuated and that they would most likely resume the heats at 10am. My running mates decided not to wait it out; a brilliant thought in hindsight. I decided that since I had paid $30 to run it, bought new running pants and shoes for this race, the fact that I would have to almost walk a 5K back to my car, that I had gotten up early and that I was already there – I would wait it out and see if I could get in a run at 10am. A lot of people were leaving but equally as many had my same thought to wait it out.

What happened in the next 15-20 minutes is the purpose of the build-up and ultimately this story. As I was talking with some of the waiting runners, I felt a few sprinkles on my face and knew that inevitably the sky would open. I did not, however expect it to monsoon. As my running mates accurately referred to it later, the sky looked ominous. And it did. In an instant the quickly moving rain clouds turned into a grey-green sky. Alas, I was committed to my initial desire to wait it out. The sprinkling turned to soft rain and the sky was giving no indication of retreat. That’s when I questioned my dedication to the wait.

All the while, the event coordinators were on megaphones saying the race would most likely resume at 10am. A conflicting story was coming from the police car speakers indicating that a storm was inevitable and to evacuate. Some of the waiting runners had given up on the idea of the 5K and were heading to their respective parking spots. I still waited; hope is unrelenting. The sky had gone from its ominous silence to an all out barrage of downpour. Big fat offensive rain drops littered the pavement and all of my hope of successfully participating in this 5K had subsided.

Now, there were easily around 2,000 people still out there and some of the 1st heat runners were just finishing their 5K. The cops then manned their speakers and in what was an unmistakably direct statement shared by a tone of panic saying, “THIS IS A CRISIS!! SEEKS SHELTER!!” To which I thought, this isn’t a crisis… it’s friggin rain. I’ll be wet when I get to my car; annoying yes, but definitely not a crisis. Plus I had no desire to change my clothes. Definitely not a crisis.

But there were those few people in the crowd, who I can only deduce had been lucky enough to never experience rain, who panicked. I’ll spare them some leeway given that the cops were selling this situation as a “crisis” and to “seek shelter”. My adrenaline was slightly elevated until I remembered that it was just water. I wanted to take a damn megaphone and say, “what did we all come here to do?”, and in my head the crowd roared, “RUN!” and I say, “right, so let’s RUN!” – like leading a horse to water.

Instead people started running the wrong way on the same street that other panicked runners who’d made it to their close parking spots, were frantically trying to evacuate. Children were crying. People were getting into cars with other people they didn’t know again “seeking shelter”. People were running in circles to nowhere trying to figure out where they should be running to. Other people took off running to their cars. I was in that group of people. Cars were honking moving to the wrong side of traffic to avoid hitting panicked runners moving in droves on the wrong side of the street. People were cussing and yelling. I continued running towards my car. After all, I came to run and the downpour of angry rain motivated me to double time it.

I think I was heading for a personal all time 1-mile record when this guy who was in the group of people running, stopped and crawled under a car. I stopped, stooped over and said, “what the hell are you doing?!” He answered, “Taking shelter!!” I replied, “How does getting under this car make any sense? Is this even your car?” He says, “No, but I am going to wait it out here!!” His tone was heightened and panic dripped from his quivering expression. I still had no urge to change my clothes. Nope, still not a crisis.

By now, a few other people had stopped to inveigle him from under the car with no success. I was drenched and begging for the comfort of my enclosed car, but was easily ¼ of a mile away. I gave up on the deranged runner clinging to the underbelly of a car that wasn’t his and accelerated my pace. The thought occurred to me in that moment, that there might actually be causalities because of the improper evacuation methods assumed by what we generally consider to be figure heads – the police. After that fleeting thought, I thought more rationally, expecting that the 5 o’clock news would report one casualty.

Headline: Man run over at the Lewisville 5K. Last words “seek shelter”.

I chuckled.

As I turned onto the street where I was parked, I saw a sea of red break lights. I knew that if they were as “organized” about getting us parked initially, that I was in for an hour of dead-stopped traffic coupled with car loads of people reveling the thought of how they narrowly escaped this crisis. A story I’m sure they’ll tell over their dinners this evening where they somehow played the role of a hero saving the life of at least 1 person.

Screw that! My dinnertime story will be short.

Crowds of people are amazing. No. No, I didn’t save anyone. I tried. But he wouldn’t release his taloned grip from what he thought was the security of the underside of a vehicle that wasn’t his. What? No. I didn’t try as hard as I could of to coax him out. It was pointless, can’t you see? Yes, I just left him there. I refuse to feel badly. How dumb could you be to get under a car on a bridge in a lightning storm? Yeah, he died. The owners of the car ran him over when they were frantically trying to, one seek shelter and two evacuate on the command of the police. Yes, I see the irony in that given that the dying mans last words were “seek shelter”, what’s your point?

As I sat in the predicted dead-stopped traffic, there was no reveling in my successful escape. I was more in a state of quandary. A quagmire. Entrapped by the thought that a situation that shouldn’t have happened in the way that it did, did. It was a well designed domino effect of self-produced chaos; initiating from an ill thought out heeded warning by the police. I can actually pinpoint the self destruct of a crowd of 2,000 people from that one instant.

I guess on some level, I should be thankful that I wasn’t run over, that I didn’t feel the need to change my clothes, that rational thought won over irrational, and that I made it safely home after what was supposed to be an otherwise uneventful 5K, outside of its normal satisfaction. But I can’t help but think that the power of a crowd supersedes any one individual and furthermore, rationality. It gives credibility to the reasoning that groups of people die in fires when in a panicked moment bum-rush the exits preventing anyone’s ultimate escape.

It only takes one person to react irrationally. It only takes one person to freak out, outwardly express that emotion evoking a similar, while otherwise unwarranted reaction from onlookers and the dominoes line up in true perfection. It is justified by a direct example of today’s events.

Crowd or what could, in this instance, classify as mob mentality is truly scary and inexplicably unpredictable.

While I felt nothing towards the idea of terror, fear or panic today, there was enough of a presence in a handful of others, to involuntarily result in a crisis situation.

As I stated at the top of this semi-pointless rant, I don’t consider heavy, or if you want an extreme, torrential rain a crisis. Yet, even as I write down my refection on today’s events, it seems likely that it should be properly diagnosed as a crisis situation. Maybe not at the same level of a Katrina, but nonetheless, my attempt to prove that this wasn’t a crisis has proven that it was – by very definition.

Crisis: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially: one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.

At this point, what I am left with is the begging question – are there true crisis situations or is it the irrational, unpredictable reaction of others in a group that IS the crisis?

This, I may never know. But what I did take from my experience is this: if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck it’s safe to say that there’s a very high probability that it is in fact, a duck. In which case, when the likelihood that that every credible resource – the weather channel and my eyes which could clearly see that rain was inevitable, in this case – says that something’s a bad idea… it probably is. Heed personal intuition.

My final thought is this – had we all taken heed of what seems like a blatantly obvious outcome now (i.e. the rain resulting in the 5Ks cancellation), would there have been a crisis? Furthermore application of such question to any situation denoted in history as a crisis – would it have still been a crisis?