UBA building fire: Safety expert explains why people delay escape in emergencies — Adetooto

A United States–based Nigerian safety expert, Johnson Adetooto, has said one of the key lessons highlighted by the recent fire incident at United Bank for Africa’s Afriland Tower in Lagos is not only building systems, but human behaviour during emergencies.

Adetooto, a PhD researcher in Civil Engineering at Purdue University, United States, said evacuation research shows that people rarely evacuate immediately when danger exists, but only when the danger becomes believable to them.

Reacting to public discussions around the UBA fire, he explained that confusion, delayed movement and unsafe escape attempts often stem from how people process emergency cues, not just from the presence or absence of alarms or exits.

“Occupants usually delay action while they try to confirm what is happening, follow others, or finish one last task,” he said.

“This hesitation can be deadly, especially in high-rise buildings where smoke and time pressure reduce options very quickly.”

Adetooto said his research focuses on “pre-evacuation behaviour” — the critical period between the first sign of danger and the moment people start moving to safety.

According to him, factors such as stress, fear, social influence, unclear information and poor wayfinding can shape evacuation decisions in the first few minutes of a fire.

“The goal is practical,” he said. “We want to reduce hesitation, prevent people from taking wrong routes, and increase the chances that they choose safe exits quickly.”

The safety expert warned that evacuation outcomes are shaped as much by human systems as by building systems, noting that similar patterns were seen in other tragedies, including the Usindiso building fire in Johannesburg.

He said lessons from such incidents should guide safety planning across Nigeria and other African cities, stressing that evacuation design must reflect real human behaviour, not ideal assumptions.

Adetooto advised banks and other high-occupancy organisations to combine alarms with clear voice instructions, ensure stairwells are never blocked, improve exit signage, and run realistic drills that account for human tendencies like confirmation-seeking and helping colleagues.

He also called for regular after-action reviews following emergencies to update procedures until safe responses become automatic.

“Fire safety is not a poster. It is a behaviorally informed system that must work in the first two minutes,” Adetooto said.