Seat Belts Key to Survival in Bridge Collapse Buckle Up, Stay Calm Keys to Escaping Sinking Car, Experts Say By EMILY FRIEDMAN

Aug. 3, 2007

Plunging 60 feet off a bridge in a car sounds like a sure death sentence, but survival experts say people can and do walk away from such a calamity, for a simple reason: They were wearing their seat belts.

“The people who got out without a scratch absolutely had their seat belts on,” says Brian Brawdy, survival expert and a former New York City police officer. “If you’re knocked unconscious because you weren’t wearing your seat belt, you won’t be swimming to the surface.”

Kimberly Brown, who survived the bridge collapse, told “Good Morning America’s” Robin Roberts that had she not been wearing her seat belt, she was certain she would have gone through her car’s windshield.

With four confirmed fatalities, Minneapolis authorities say they expect the death toll to rise as vehicles’ that fell more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River are recovered.

Chances of surviving for those still submerged in the river now almost 24 hours later are remote, experts say. The combination of the impact and the speed at which cars sink give passengers mere minutes to avoid suffocation.

“[Drivers] would have three to five minutes, depending on how much of the water is rushing in and then given the size of the car,” says Brawdy.

While many people may assume that unbuckling a seat belt and attempting to escape is the first thing to do in a sinking car, experts say otherwise.

“You want to make sure the impact is over before you take off your seat belt,” says Brawdy, who warns that drivers and passengers should be certain no other car or foreign object is heading toward their vehicle.

In addition to remaining buckled up, here’s some other tips to maximize your chances of escaping from a sinking car.

Let Some Water Inside the Car

The weight of the engine will make the car nosedive into the water, and with water quickly surrounding the vehicle, passengers must allow the pressure to equalize before they waste their energy trying to open the doors or windows.

“You have to wait for some of the water to get in the car to equalize the pressure,” says Brawdy. “You won’t be able to open the door, and as counterintuitive as it sounds, you’ve got to let some water come in.”

“Wait until the water gets up to your sternum and that’s the time to take as deep a breath as you can,” he says. “The water pressure would have started to balance itself out and you’re going to be able to swim out.”

Don’t Panic

While waiting for your car to fill with water is certainly panic-inducing, experts say panicking could severely diminish your chances of survival. Staying calm and preserving your energy and breath for when you have to swim out will make a huge difference.

“If you panic, you perish,” says Brawdy. “Taking deep breathes is as important as anything. It calms your body. We are using energy when we panic, and then we become tired.”

Losing your composure during a crisis situation will hinder your ability to make decisions that could ultimately be your key to survival.

“You’ve got to think methodically,” says Lt. Joseph Conway of the Dive Team at the Madison, Wis., Fire Department. “Otherwise, what happens first is you’ll hit the water and then you’ll try to get out and you’ll forget you didn’t unbuckle your seat belt. ”

MythBuster Busts Survival Myths

Many of those who fear suffocating in a sinking car are under false pretenses about what exactly happens when your car lands in water, as well as what the best ways to get out are.

“The car takes longer to sink than we think,” says Adam Savage, co-host of Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters,” which aired a segment on how to escape a sinking car. “We had time to try to unroll the window and open the door.”

Another myth about sinking cars is that the car’s battery will immediately fail when it hits the water. Savage says that people should still try to work the electric controls for the windows.

“People think the batteries will short out, but they won’t,” he says. “You easily have a couple of minutes, even if you’re submerged, when the batteries will still work.”

People commonly use the wrong tools and expend too much energy trying to break windows, Savage explains.

“Breaking the window with anything but special tools failed,” says Savage, who tested different methods while submerged in a swimming pool. “Steel-toe boots and a multitool had no effect on the window, but a special hammer tool worked like a charm.”

There are several of these tools on the market. ThinkGeek, an electronic commerce company based in Fairfax, VA, has created a 5-in-1 tool called, The BodyGuard, which can break glass and cut seatbelts and has an alarm, a flashing red light and an LED flashlight. The ResQMe keychain is a similar device. The Life Hammer is designed to shatter glass and strip seatbelts.

There’s something else besides pressure though that might make windows difficult to break, according to AAA spokesman Robert Sinclair: window lamination.

“There is a trend among manufacturers to laminate the side glass windows to cut wind noise and make the interior quieter,” Sinclair said. “But when you need to break the glass … if that side glass is laminated it’s going to be much more difficult to escape.”

The biggest culprits, Sinclair says, are SUVs.

“They tend to be the one using laminated side glass more and more,” he said.

But If you don’t have a special window-breaking tool, improvising may also work.

“The thing you do is you can’t hit it with your fist or a blunt object — a sharp-pointed object is the best for a side window,” says Conway. “You see people kicking, and they’re just going to expend their energy.”

For more information on safety tools «www.saveyourlife.us». To read about a survival pack, «www.adventuremedicalkits.com».

Ashley Phillips and Thomas Dilworth contributed to this report.

December 30, 2007 — Millions of Americans will pay too much in taxes next spring and miss a chance to beef up their retirement savings.

That’s because less than 40 percent of those who qualify for a deductible Individual Retirement Account (IRA) make the full contribution, according to the latest numbers from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Why don’t those millions of Americans take full advantage of the IRA?

“People often wait until the last moment and sometimes don’t have the money to make the full contribution,” according to a spokesman for the Financial Planning Association (FPA).

What should the average person do? Don’t wait until the tax-filing deadline next April. Act now on his or her next IRA contribution, which can be a maximum of $4,000 for those under age 50 and $5,000 for those over 50.

Joy Kapur came up with an unusual New Year’s resolution last year for Maharani, his Indian restaurant on Post Street: to paint 1 million hearts to hang on the walls.

Kapur, 66, had undergone successful open-heart surgery. He had a longtime spiritual belief in the power of love. So he started painting hearts on every piece of paper or canvas he could find, and hanging them in the restaurant. “It is very easy to paint a few hearts, but to paint 1 million hearts is something else,” he said.

Kapur’s heart project was a novel take on a common practice - New Year’s resolutions made by small-business owners.

While millions of Americans make personal vows each year to exercise more, eat less or otherwise improve their lives, countless entrepreneurs also are making resolutions to improve their businesses.

Sixty-nine percent of small-business owners plan to make New Year’s resolutions for their enterprise, according to a recent survey by the small-business division of American Express.

More than half - 56 percent - are making resolutions connected to boosting their profitability. About one-third are resolving to be a better boss, get to know their customers better or make more time for their personal lives.

Do such resolutions work?

Sometimes.

Or - just like with those personal weight-loss resolutions - sometimes not.

“Many businesses make resolutions, but few follow up,” said Alice Bredin, a small-business adviser in Cambridge, Mass.

Several Bay Area small businesses learned over the past year how to turn their resolutions into reality - and are in a stronger place today because of it.

Resolved: Attend a trade show

Two years after starting a business making healthy frozen meals for young children, San Franciscan Jill Litwin resolved that 2007 would be the year she introduced her products at a trade show.

Litwin - who works with a mentor to write goals for her Peas of Mind company each year - knew the show she wanted to attend. It was the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, which draws supermarket buyers and distributors from around the country.

But simply renting a booth would cost $4,000. Outfitting it with high-quality displays would be another $10,000 to $12,000, which was more than she could afford.

So Litwin came up with a creative do-it-yourself solution. A designer friend used PVC pipe and Velcro to create a beautiful booth for free. Litwin drove it down to Anaheim in her jeep. Her mother flew out from Milwaukee to help staff the booth.

“The booth turned out beautifully, and we had so many compliments from people who had been exhibiting for years,” Litwin said. “Had these experts had a chance to see behind our facade, they would have been shocked.”

The upshot? Litwin landed a national distributor, which had been her second goal for the year.

Resolved: Buy a farm and

update the Web site

Every year Helen Russell and Brooke McDonnell write a list of about 10 goals for their business, a gourmet coffee roasting firm in San Rafael called Equator Estate Coffees & Teas that serves restaurants such as the French Laundry. And every year they accomplish about five of them.

Last year, the list included buying their own coffee plantation. After numerous trips and an immense amount of paperwork, the two women took possession of a 37-acre farm in the highlands of Panama. “Just to open a checking account there, our paperwork must have been 2 inches thick,” Russell said.

Another resolution turned out to be even tougher to achieve. Russell had vowed to overhaul the company’s Web site, which featured out-of-date prices. She hired a designer and photographer.

Halfway through the process, the photographer quit, and Russell realized the designer was not giving her what she wanted. “We were not paying enough attention at the beginning,” she said.

Russell hired a second design team. What had started as a $20,000 project mushroomed into a $35,000 one. She ended up spending nights and weekends working on it.

“Creating a Web site is a lot of work when you’re a small business without a marketing department,” she said. “You’re constantly proofing text and bringing people together to answer e-mails from the Web designer. It was an odyssey to get it done.”

Russell finally got the site completed in November. She hasn’t promoted it to her mailing list of customers yet, but already Equator’s Web business has doubled from five to 10 orders per day.

“You have a better shot getting something done if you put it on paper,” Russell said. “You put your resolutions down, then you can see how things shake out.”

Resolved: Get some help

Cyndi and Ken Burkey have run a Sebastopol business making colorful glass tiles since 2002 but had never turned a profit. At the start of 2007, they resolved to become profitable and to expand the market for their company, Marin Designworks Glass Tile.

But those resolutions were so general that they would have been meaningless - if the Burkeys hadn’t reached out for help.

The Burkeys sought free advice from a nonprofit organization called Pacific Community Ventures and took a class in entrepreneurship at a Small Business Development Center. They realized that they needed to market to high-end architects and designers, not just tile showrooms.

They also came up with some more-specific resolutions - to spend one hour every day on strategic marketing, to keep better track of accounts receivable and send out monthly billing statements, and to make a few follow-up phone calls every day to clients.

They’re ending 2007 in the black for the first time - barely.

“We felt so busy, we didn’t feel we had the time to ask anyone for help,” Cyndi Burkey said.

“But when you’re in the middle of something, you don’t have clarity. Without help from (Pacific Community Ventures) and the entrepreneurship program, we wouldn’t have been able to come this far.”

Resolved: Do better with

last year’s resolutions

Suzanne Tucker, owner of a San Francisco firm called Marketing Solutions, resolved last year to call every client she’d had over the past two decades.

She made it only a quarter of the way through her list.

“The list was too long and I was too ambitious,” Tucker said. But, she added, “I’m going to do it again this year. Staying in touch with one’s clients is the most important marketing any business can do.”

And Monica Michelle, owner of White Rabbit Portrait Studios in San Mateo, was one of many small-business owners who resolved to improve the balance between their work and personal lives - with results that were little better than Tucker’s.

“As a business owner and a mother, I have made many resolutions, most of them involving trying to balance my career, motherhood and my marriage better,” Michelle wrote in an e-mail.

“I am finding this very amusing since I am writing this in between editing a wedding album, getting dressed for my next photo shoot, taking care of my husband and trying to remember exactly where I left the baby wipes.”

Bredin, the small-business adviser, said that it’s not enough simply to resolve to work less or spend more time with family. People need to make concrete changes in their business style and structure - or else end up facing the same resolutions a year later.

“Most people who say they want to take more time off need to take a long hard look at their work habits - their use of technology, their ability to delegate, or their willingness to get rid of customers who are not profitable,” she said.

Kapur, the restaurateur with the million-heart goal, didn’t have to work on his delegating skills to pursue his resolution. His 26-year-old son, Rishi, already was handling the day-to-day management of the restaurant, leaving the elder Kapur free to create hearts.

After a couple of months of painting as many hearts as he could, though, Kapur was still at only a few thousand. “I was dismayed, but I did not give up,” he said.

He took a 2-foot-long canvas with 5,000 of his hearts to a nearby print shop, which shrunk it and turned it into a narrow strip of wallpaper border. Then he hung 200 of those strips throughout the restaurant - reaching his million-heart goal. He also printed up decks of cards with hearts on them that are available at Maharani.

Kapur’s son - whose own resolutions include modernizing the decor and menu of the 18-year-old restaurant - hasn’t been exactly thrilled with the heart project.

“I get nightmares every so often about the hearts,” Rishi Kapur said. “But I support him with it if he says he wants to do it.”

Meanwhile, Joy Kapur has a new resolution for 2008.

“My coming year’s resolution is to have 1 billion hearts in the restaurant,” he said.

“I don’t know how it will happen, but I’m working on a book right now that will have a billion hearts in it. We may have different minds, but we all have the same heart. I want to tell the whole world: ‘We can live in peace if we live in the heart.’ ” Small-business resolutions

Here are the most common New Year’s resolutions by small-business owners and the percentage that make them:
Resolution Percentage
Be more profitable 56%
Be a better boss 36
Get to know customers better 36
Make personal time for me 36
Get outside help I need 25
Do something to benefit the environment 22
Establish an emergency-preparedness plan 16

Source: Survey of 627 owners/managers of U.S. companies with fewer than 100 employees, by American Express Considering some resolutions for your business?

Small-business adviser Alice Bredin offers the following tips to make resolutions work:

– Choose a limited number of resolutions so you’re not overwhelmed.

– Set specific goals - such as “increase revenue by $50,000″ rather than simply “increase revenue” - so you can tell when you’ve hit your mark.

– Write down the steps and timetable needed to reach those goals.

– Make business and personal resolutions at the same time, so they don’t contradict each other. “Say your business goal is to double your revenue but your personal goal is to take weekends off,” said Bredin, CEO of Bredin Business Information in Cambridge, Mass. “Then you need to add another business goal, which is hiring a senior-level support person to take on some of your workload.”

– Share your resolutions with someone else. “Talking them through with someone, even for just 15 minutes on the phone, will make them more attainable,” Bredin said. “Even if it’s your sister, it’s good to have someone help you think out loud.”

– Get key employees involved. “Employees’ goals need to support the owner’s goals,” Bredin said. “If employees are high enough to be invested in the success of the business, meet with them and say, ‘Here are my goals for the business this year. Here’s how I see you fitting in. What other goals do you have?’ ”

– After three or six months, review the progress on your resolutions and determine whether you need to change tactics.

E-mail Ilana DeBare at idebare@sfchronicle.com.