I was sitting on a remote beach with my husband and friends when our five-year-old daughter came running towards us screaming. She had a gash on her forehead and blood was streaming down her face. I felt sick and yelped, and then remembered I had to comfort her. My husband and I looked at each other and at her. For a second we didn’t know what to do. Then it clicked that we had to take her to a hospital. But we had no phone reception. We decided to head to where we thought the nearest town was. On the drive, between making up stories to distract my daughter and checking my phone for signal, I kept thinking back to the interviews, below, which I had been working on before the accident. Each of the interviewees makes quick decisions in extreme circumstances for a living. In those few minutes, I had experienced some of the tunnel vision they describe. I began by speaking to Dr Sara Waring at the University of Liverpool who researches decision-making in critical and major incidents, such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Waring stresses that one of the most important things that makes someone good at making decisions in circumstances where they have very little information and very little time, is practice. “The more experienced you get at making decisions, the quicker you get at making them,” she says. Experience equips you to fill in the gaps at the start of an incident when information is lacking, and also to weed out important information when it comes flooding in later on. She also talks about how our relationship with uncertainty affects our abilities. People who are nervous about uncertainty can make quick decisions because they want to get them out of the way, but they often do it without enough facts. At the other end of the spectrum are people who quite like uncertainty and weighing up options. But in an urgent situation you don’t have the time to do that.

Our daughter had five stitches above her eyebrow, the cut is healing well and she’s proud of her scar. But the incident, and our panic, showed me how important planning is to maintaining a clear head.

Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger

Pilot, California

‘I felt my blood pressure shoot up, my pulse spike, my perceptual field narrow’: Chesley Sullenberger. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

We work hard in airline flying to never be surprised by anything. But on the morning of 15 January 2009, 100 seconds after we took off from New York’s La Guardia airport, I saw a flock of large birds approaching the plane I was flying and realised we were going to collide with them. They pelted the aeroplane. It was like a Hitchcock film. Both engines lost thrust. I felt my blood pressure shoot up, my pulse spike, my perceptual field narrow. It was marginally debilitating. It absolutely affected my ability to think and perform.

I didn’t have time to have a conversation with the first officer. We had to collaborate wordlessly. We did three things that made the difference. First, we forced calm on ourselves. We had the mental discipline to compartmentalise our minds and focus on the situation. It was a practised calm that professionals learn over many years to summon up from within and it required great effort to shove such a strong physiological response aside. While I’ve always been a focused and diligent person, I don’t think I have some innate capability to handle a crisis calmly. I believe it’s something people can learn.

The next thing we did was to set clear priorities. We were over Manhattan with so few options. But with 20,000 hours of flying behind me, I knew what the most important things were to do. There wasn’t time in that critical moment to try to devise my strategy, I had to rely on my decades of training. The third was that we load shed – or drop non-essential decisions. Multitasking is a myth: it’s just switching rapidly between tasks, not doing any of them well. So I decided that we were only going to do the highest priority items and do them very, very well.

The wreckage: US Airways flight 1549 floats in the Hudson River. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

We were descending quickly. There were two runways somewhat near, but I knew we didn’t have enough altitude or speed to get to either. The only other place in the entire New York metropolitan area that was going to be long enough, wide enough and smooth enough to even attempt landing a large, heavy, fast airliner was the Hudson river. I made the decision to divert there. I’d never landed on water before.

By choosing the river, I knew I was going to trash the aeroplane. As the captain, I understood I’d be facing a lengthy investigation and that all my decisions would be second-guessed, but I didn’t let that influence me making difficult choices. It was more important I save every life. In my career, I’ve intentionally studied the human performance part of safety. I helped develop our airline’s first leadership team-building course and was a pioneer in changing cockpit culture away from being autocratic. I’ve also read a lot about famous disasters, to understand what to do and not to do, because other people have given us this knowledge at great cost.

I don’t have an innate ability to be calm. It can be learned

There wasn’t time to give the flight attendants and passengers the whole picture. I took three or four seconds to choose my words to them very carefully. I wanted to identify myself as the decision-maker and sound confident – courage can be contagious. “This is the captain,” I said. “Brace for impact.” I knew this was an event that would divide our lives into before and after.

We have a three-page checklist designed to be used when landing from 35,000ft and it usually takes half an hour. But I broke protocol and took only the actions we had time for: from the time we hit the birds until the time we landed was under three-and-a-half minutes.

I never thought about the passengers individually, or my family. I was laser-focused on choosing the proper point to land. Right before, I thought: “This is going to be bad.” But once we’d stopped in the water, it was obvious the aeroplane was in one piece.

It was the worst day of my life, but I never thought I was going to die. From a lifetime of experience, I was confident I could find a way to solve the problem.

Karim Brohi

Consultant trauma and vascular surgeon, London

‘It became clear something else was going on when reports of stabbings and gunshots came in’: Karim Brohi. Photograph: Todd Buchanan

I was at home and on duty when the London Bridge attacks happened. I got a call around 10pm and went straight to the Royal London Hospital. Emergency staff live within 15 minutes to be able to get in quickly. In major incidents, my role is to keep the emergency department functioning. We had no idea what was going on in the incident; nobody did. Initial calls were for a pedestrian being hit by a vehicle on the bridge, but it became clear something else was going on when reports of stabbings and gunshots came in.

It’s a challenge when a lot of patients come in at the same time, especially at 10pm. You can’t assign a full trauma team to the first patients, because the next two might be much more critical. I worked with the emergency department consultants who carried out initial rapid assessments on each patient. They were looking for things such as bleeding and head injuries, and deciding whether people had to go straight to the emergency department, a holding bay, or whether they needed something like a CT scan.

We received around 30 patients and were expecting a second wave who had been trapped in Borough Market, but that didn’t happen. It’s important for us to not be flustered by information when it’s wrong because we have to be able to respond no matter what.

My personality is to be calm and quiet. But it’s important I don’t internalise things so that the team knows what I’m thinking. Somebody who gets stressed in situations can often transmit that to the team, but they may be better at vocalising their concerns. There’s a middle ground everybody has to learn. In this work there are no good or bad days. You have to perform at the level required at all times.

Julia Brothwell

British Red Cross team leader, Bangladesh

‘Landing in a disaster area is utter chaos’: Julia Brothwell.

Sometimes I don’t wait for the call. I see breaking news of an emergency and I contact the office to make sure they know I’m available to be deployed. That’s what happened when I heard about the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015. I was at home in Stoke-on-Trent and immediately called my boss and knew to start packing.

I arrived four days later. I’ve worked in the humanitarian sector for 30 years, but for the past six I’ve been part of a global surge team with the British Red Cross responding to rapid onset disasters. Things such as the Haitian typhoon or the Caribbean hurricanes. Right now I’m in Bangladesh working in a camp for the Rohingya refugees. Every new job is a challenge because I never quite know what I’ll be facing. It never just feels like work. It’s more of a vocation and a recognition that I have experience to offer that will improve the response.

Landing in a disaster area is utter chaos. There are a lot of agencies arriving and a lot of equipment being flown in. I took a taxi into Kathmandu and did some practical things, like get a local sim and activate my satellite phone. Office buildings had been evacuated and people were operating out of tents.

‘We were operating out of tents. Every day, we felt aftershocks’: Nepal’s 2015 earthquake. Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

Every day, we felt aftershocks. Some were strong and in the back of my head I’d think: “Is this going to be another quake?” But I had to focus on the work. I was in constant decision-making mode between London, Kathmandu and the teams out in the field. My job was to look at the priority areas that had been impacted and see where first response teams should go. Earthquakes are weird things. They can impact several hundred miles away. There was so much going on with information coming in every five minutes from different people. These are massive operations with coordination between the government and the military, the UN and other NGOs.

Two weeks after the first quake, I was working in our office on the sixth floor of a building when a second quake happened. It was like being on a fairground ride where the floor moves under you. I got everyone out of the office, but we had to get down five flights of stairs. Most people ran without their belongings, but I always have my grab bag with my extra phones, water and spare clothes by the doorway of whatever room I’m in and I grabbed it as we exited.

It’s a scary running down stairs in an earthquake. You’re trying to walk in a straight line, but you’re thrown about. When people at the front got to the exit, they immediately stopped. I was shouting: “Keep moving, keep moving.” I got out and directed everyone to a place up the road where we’d be clear of buildings that might collapse. My priority was getting everyone to safety.

Sometimes I’ve felt so overwhelmed by the scale of a disaster I’ve thought: “What can I do?” But once you bed down, you figure out the decisions you have to make.

I’m not always as effective at making decisions in my personal life. Sometimes, when I’m at home doing things like choosing what colour to paint a room, I miss not having a team to bounce ideas off.

Brett Lovegrove

Former head of counter-terrorism, City of London police, London

‘I had a number of situations where I didn’t shoot but could have done’: Brett Lovegrove. Photograph: VisMedia

On the morning of 7 July 2005, I was at work at the City of London police. At 9am, I’d just opened a conference on hostile reconnaissance and was leaving the room when I was met at the door by someone saying: “Sir, we need you up in the command room. A lot of people are dead, we think it’s a bomb attack.” I raced upstairs.

I was charged with delivering emergency responses to save lives and mitigate further attack in the Aldgate area. I’d been in the police force 27 years and I’d worked and continue to work with crisis leaders on looking inside themselves to find out what past experiences shape how they make decisions. It’s to make them understand their inner strengths and vulnerabilities. When I was a young firearms officer in the Met police, I had a number of situations where I didn’t shoot but could have done and it was important to me to understand why. The only way I could do that was to take myself into a dark room and look at what I had relied on. I found it was a mixture of my role models and how I’d been brought up. I learned a lot from my father and, although we sometimes have different views, I have an appreciation of diversity and making decisions for the right reasons by seeing the person and not their background. I strongly believe crisis leaders need to make fast and difficult decisions based on what’s right and not let their own prejudices come to the fore in their response.

Armed response: counter terrorism officers after the London Bridge attack. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

That morning in 2005, in addition to what had shaped me as a youngster, I was well-trained in command crisis from years of experience. I walked into the room which had about 20 people and a control panel with screens. A lot of people were talking on headsets and to each other, but it wasn’t panicky. I’m naturally a very calm person but in that situation, it’s crucial to remain so for your staff’s benefit so that they don’t become distracted by the panicking leader.

Everybody was trying to paint a picture of what had happened and where, how many people were dead and injured, and the extent of the damage. They were also finding out our points of contact at the scene from the other forces and services, as well as cordoning off roads. Reports were coming in of explosions elsewhere.

There’s no manual to teach you what a major incident is

Very quickly, at about 9.05am, I declared a major incident. Doing that made more assets [police, fire, ambulance] available to us. Things that dictate a major incident are a number of people inexplicably dead and injured. There’s no manual that teaches you what a major incident is, but if you don’t know from all your training, you shouldn’t be in a command position. I was clear it was a suspected terrorist attack. Some reports came in saying it might be a power surge. But terrorism or power surge, people were dead and there was a hole in a train, and I had to focus on that.

My job was to understand what was happening and how we were rolling out the response, which we had practiced often. And then to make sure we had enough people ready for any attacks that might happen subsequently.

When you’re in a situation like that, you’re too busy to feel anything. You’re so focused on the need to think of everything. Commanding isn’t just about managing what you’re dealing with at the time, but also being able to plan for the future. Focusing on death and destruction is a distraction. There is plenty of time to mourn later.

Keeley Foster

Deputy Assistant Commissioner, London Fire Brigade

‘The wind was pushing the fire in the direction of the buildings’: Keeley Foster. Photograph: Philip Wolmuth

The heat this summer made it a very busy one for the London Fire Brigade. In July, I was in charge of a large grass fire near Heathrow that required 97 firefighters and 15 fire engines. I got there at 4pm and was bombarded with information. If you take too much on board you’re going to be overloaded and your stress levels will go up. So it’s about processing that information, prioritising it, and allocating it to the right people at the right time.

The fire was mainly in fields. These fields were bordered by the airport, houses which we evacuated, and warehouses with flammable contents. The wind was pushing the fire in the direction of the buildings.

I was in a command unit next to the site, which is basically a mobile office in the back of a lorry. I’m naturally calm but the way you lead the people around you is important, too, and you have to change your leadership style to handle different people in different ways. Because you’re being directive you can so easily alienate people and once they feel out of the loop, they might not feed you the information you need.

Blazing squad: a firefighter controls a large grass fire near Heathrow. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I had a huge amount of pressure to put the fire out, keep my people on the ground safe in extremely hot weather, protect the houses and prevent any loss of life. And then also as a commander in London, there’s pressure to keep the city moving. In this case it was to not close the southern runway of Heathrow airport. It was vital we had Heathrow representatives on board so they could be part of the process.

I like working under pressure. I’ve been in the service for 16 years and one of my first large fires was in a care home. I vividly remember turning up and hundreds of people being in the street. Most residents were out of the building, but we knew there would be people with mobility issues who we needed to look for. When you face going into a large building on fire for the first time, there is a rush of adrenaline. You’re there and you’re performing the work that you’ve trained so long for.