Originally Posted by
Capt Jeff
No such thing as "3L" door. Two doors at the front: Forward Entrance Door (1L), Forward Service Door (1R). At the back: Rear Service Door (2L), and the Aft Entrance Door, which is at the tailcone/aft airstairs. Only ONE door on the right side of jet (1R). All three doors (1L, 1R, and 2L) have evacuation slides. If the aft tailcone is jettisoned, an evacuation slide is activated. Otherwise, rear airstairs are available through the tail.
In addition to the doors, there are four overwing emergency exit "doors," two on each side. On the Mad Dogs I flew (for 18 years... MD-88/90), the emergency overwing exits were not connected to any warning or status light system... which means that if someone decides to open them, you have no indication in the cockpit. The reason it took so long for the left forward (1L) door to open is probably due to the crew performing the Emergency Evacuation checklist... shutting down engines before commanding an evacuation. That implies to me that the people evacuating through the overwing exits did so without direction.
Oh... forgot to add that the overwing exits on the DC-9 and variants do not have slides... the passengers are to slide off the flaps at the trailing edge of the wing.