Distress of Mt.Fuji climbing – Episode of lost child –

August 2013.

At Mt.Fuji during the high mountaineering season, there was such a lost child.

Three people who visited Japan from England and challenged Mt. Fuji climbing during the sightseeing. Parents were in 50s and their daughters were in twenties.

Their daughter was missing around the seventh station on the way to descending. It was two o’clock that her tired parents asked for help at the administration center of fifth station. It was that her dad went back to the middle of the descending road and her mother had been waiting for their daughter for an hour in the square in the fifth station.

There was no accident report, but it may not be just a lost child. Such uneasy air flowed.

I will talk from the results.

Their daughter descended a little more than her parents and was waiting at the square in the fifth station. That was also very close to where her mother kept waiting.

Her mother who took a rest at the management center went again to the square and found her daughter safely.

At least three “normality bias” works in this lost child case.

※ Although I mentioned last time, “normality bias” is “a psychology that does not try to recognize danger in the mind’s heart.”

1 Their daughters who felt somewhat bad in the seventh station thought that parents would soon come later, recognizing the danger that parents are tired and their attention is distracted, she hurried ahead by herself.

2 Parents in danger of suddenly losing sight of their daughter. First of all, they went ahead but they did not look for their daughter who would be waiting right down. Next, they thought that their daughter was late and waited on the spot.

3 Mother and daughter in the square open space of the fifth station were waiting for them without looking for themselves, recognizing the danger that they had to search in the vast extent away from the mountain path unless they could meet here, they would look for each other.

Both of them are just careless, but before that, there is a work called “normality bias” in the heart of people, they do not want to recognize the danger. If three people were aware of the danger a little more in each position, there is a high possibility that this incident never occurred. It was a lucky lost child as an ending, but there were many things to learn.

In the same year, the number of people who climbed from Yoshida route, accidentally got off to climbing entrance of Subashiri, who was at a loss and talked with a clerk was 1070 people. There was such a tragic drama that only one of the four people got lost in the Subashiri route, who had the key of the car.