If the place where you are is ever on fire, leave that place.
(this icon: never more apt!)
This is something I learned consciously as the Safety Captain, though I would hope that prior to my training I would have had the good sense to do it anyway.
My El stop from work to home is the Grand stop on the Red Line, which is underground. I went down to the platform as usual and walked to the southern end of it, because the first and last train cars are always the emptiest and the first car on the Red Line is usually pretty full. And I noticed the air was...cloudy.
At first I thought, well, nobody else is worried, it must just be brake smoke from the last train, or possibly dust. I mean there were people just standing there in a cloud of smoke. But I looked down the tunnel and saw train headlamps, and between me and the train headlamps was live flame. The track was on fire.
No matter how many inconveniences you are facing -- three flights up to the surface, catching a cab, paying the cab fare home -- if you are in a subway tunnel and it is ON FIRE, YOU SHOULD LEAVE. I know the train is right there, but between you and the train is FIRE, and you are basically in a long unventilated room with only two exits, both of them stairways, which are notoriously dangerous in a mass panic situation.
So I looked around at the people just standing there in the smoke, watching the security guards try to figure out what to do about THE FIRE DID I MENTION FIRE, and I thought, no. Really, no. And I left and caught a cab home.
Seriously. If Flame, Then Leave. No inconvenience is worth your life.
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