About Me

I ramble about a number of things - but travel experiences, movies and music feature prominently. See my label cloud for a better idea. All comnments and opinions on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the opinions/position of my employer (past/current/future).

16 July 2007

Bomb Scare

I went to watch the new Harry Potter movie (see here) at the Musgrave Centre, in Durban, and half way through, the entire centre was evacuated due to a bomb scare. It was a hoax, but two points are worrying, and could have been fatal!

1) The general lack of panic: everybody I came across seemed to treat it as a hoax, and got into their cars, and then a massive traffic jam, and before clearing out. Some people even went to the loo before evacuating! If this was real, I am sure most of use would not have survived!

2) The general lack of information from the centre management. The security staff did not give much detail, just asked people to leave the centre. This was probably the reason why people were so apathetic in their approach: they had no real motivation for evacuating!

Don't get me wrong - the staff were courteous, and Ster-Kinekor did refund the tickets. But, in the age of terrorism and other such inflated fears, I am not sure the response was the most appropriate.

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