That story is almost (not entirely) completely unlike what I experienced when I was on the 32nd floor of a Jakarta office building and we had a big quake.
The whole building emptied out, and everyone docilely walked down the stairs in the stairwell. I was pretty scared and would have preferred it if everyone had marched along at a pretty good clip.
But no. This being Indonesia, all the females were wobbling along in delicate high heels, and so they had to mince at a s-l-o-w pace down all the steps. (The option of taking off the damn shoes and walking barefoot seems not to have occurred to anyone.) I of course was in flats, and ready to hot-foot it out of the building. Everyone was being quite polite, however, and walking in single file, no pushing, shoving, or telling anyone to hurry up. I think it must have taken a full half hour to GTF outside.
I WANTED to rush by everyone, since my natural speed was two or three times as fast as we were going. But I didn't want to be rude, especially as a bule surrounded by Indonesians. I thought to myself at the time, "Great, I'm gonna die because I'm too polite."
The part about congregating right next to the building, though? Yeah, that's EXACTLY how it was in my experience too.
