ACTUAL BODILY HARM.
As soon as the evacuation order is given, you might as well take a baseball bat, or the fire axe, and go into the cabin and pick out a fair proportion of the SLF and beat them silly, putting them in hospital?
I thought we were paid (not a lot) and trained to make reasoned decisions without being panicked into rash action?
Surrounded by the airfields finest yellow hats , I would want to keep my pax aboard, where they won't be struck by exploding tyre debris or affected by the toxic fumes from burning brake assemblies and/or tyres etc.
Is not the criteria "are they worse off aboard or whizzing down the slides" where many of them will end up with injuries as the statistics show, the ultimate justification for the decision whether or not to evacuate?
Or are we as a profession afraid of making a decision which just might be criticised by the armchair generals who pick over the event after?
Most of us recall the horror of the MAN 737-200 with the tail burnt off, but is that a reason to ask ones customers to abandon ship at the slightest pretext?
There are many more examples of intact undamaged 'frames on runways with not a scorch mark visible, apart from the underwear of the participants!
And don't forget the puff of white "smoke" which will be observed after discharging the engine or APU fire extinguisher bottles onto a hot assembly. Now that would be a sad event indeed if the call to jump was made on the basis of that observation!?
So why don't we brief that the evac checklist will only be executed if the pax/crew are worse off by staying aboard rather than the definite risk of injury posed by taking to the slides?