Ricken Patel, a Canadian who helped found Avaaz with Eli Pariser, the former director of the American political group MoveOn.org, said: "Paul Conroy's rescue today is a huge relief but this must be tempered with the news that three remain unaccounted for and with our respects for the incredibly courageous activists who died during the evacuation attempts".
It seems that first attempts to direct the crowd towards the upper end of the ramp started around 16:40,19,155 but were not very effective.6 It is true that evacuation attempts take some time, but there was also a lack of efficient means of communication (such as loudspeakers or megaphones).
For example, when the 'Titanic' sank slowly, evacuation attempts were largely controlled by social norms, while selfish rescue attempts dominated, when the 'Lusitania' sank quickly, see B.S. Frey, D.A. Savage, and B. Torgler, Interaction of natural survival instincts and internalized social norms exploring the Titanic and Lusitania disasters, PNAS 107, 4862-4865 (2010).
On the day of the eruption, several evacuation attempts were made, but a severe storm restricted communications.
"Paul Conroy's rescue today is a huge relief but this must be tempered with the news that three remain unaccounted for and with our respects for the incredibly courageous activists who died during the evacuation attempts," said Avaaz Executive Director Ricken Patel in a statement.
Justin Bronk, a military analyst from the Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC a Chinook helicopter could hold 70-75 refugees if an evacuation was attempted.
An attempted evacuation of the 17% of voters who marked their ballots ends in failure, as the government forgets to tell the troops blocking all the roads to let the refugees through.
But Bajwa said a helicopter evacuation would be attempted.
If this were so, the opportunity to attempt an evacuation had been missed.
