As I said before, I don't actually know who shouted fire initially, I think I heard more than one voice shout it. I did not personally see any fire, but there definitely was sparks and smoke, so it is not out of the question that there was also flames. Either way, it was obviously an electrical fault and it is likely that fire would have followed if the situation was not dealt with promptly. I dug out my old SEP manual and I quote "in the case of electrical fire there is likely to be a smell of burning followed by smoke prior to the appearance of any flames."
I assume that on hearing this passengers shout, the cabin crew isolated the electrical supply to the seats and I know that they also discharged a BCF in the affected area. Their reaction may not have been so swift if they had not immediately been informed by the passengers call, though the use of the word 'fire', may possibly have been more correctly replaced by 'smoke' or 'sparks.'
My colleague who went down the back did so to stop people running from the back into the area where the sparks/smoke/possible fire was. This had been happening for some time since the smell had started to get bad. It was mainly people with young children who were running around. I assume that they were moving in the hope that they could find somewhere in the aircraft that was not affected by the smell or that they were expecting everyone to exit through L1 and they understandably wanted to be one of the first. My friend simply stopped any more people coming forward into the affected area, which also kept the area clear for the crew to deal with it. He wasn't simply running about like a mad man shouting "fire, fire, fire", but he was giving people sensible instructions which were helpful to the situation.
I do understand people's comments about the words "fire" possibly causing panic, but at the same time the main focus is to extinguish the fire as soon as possible. I would say that a delayed response leading to an uncontrollable fire would cause significantly more panic.
It is all very easy for the armchair experts to criticise our actions and on reflection maybe some things could have been done differently. However, the bottom line regarding this incident is that everyone got out safely which is the main goal in an emergency. If people want to have a sensible grown up discussion about SEPs then I'm willing to contribute, but I'm not interested in getting into a slagging match. I will definitely be interested to see the recommendations that come out of the investigation into this incident.
Last edited by Potential; 14th Jul 2009 at 21:17.