It was only the fourth time that Love parade was held outside Berlin, and it was already a talking point in media if Duisburg could possibly held the helms. Apparently, it didn’t and the event has now turned into a major tragedy of 2010. It isn’t that German governance and municipal authorities could not organize the grand musical event by putting forth state-of-the-art technical assistance and management. But it has miserably miscalculated couple of crucial things.
On the day itself, everything was running according to the plan, including the placement of security forces and support staff. The proceeding was not extravagant as that was seen three years back in Essen where 1.6 million people turned up. The actual event of parading up to the concert’s place was omitted and there was no dancing around live music playing trucks on the menu. But surprisingly, the place where the main event was going to be held had only a single entrance and a single exit. Adding to the woos were the fact that the venue was a desecrated rail-way station and the entrance was small, dark tunnel!
Whilst the music started to play loud and crowd started to gather, the police was too busy enforcing discipline by lobbying people into a single line, which might have triggered panicky situation. The tunnel-effect was perhaps scaring the crowd even more than the police as they frantically started to look for more avenues. In the whole rush, 20 of them dropped off never to be lifted up again, and some 350 were maimed. In the post-mortem of the event so far, alcohol, drugs and adrenaline are excluded what perhaps must be accounted for in studying the psychology behind the stampede.
Firstly, in the whole scenario, Duisburg municipal corporation had underestimated the total turn-up to 300,000~700,000 going by the place chosen for the main event. Secondly, it had stopped all the trains approaching and leaving Duisburg, because of over capacity and they stuck to that even after the tragey hit. As a result, many of the visitors who were informed about the stampede were left stranded on the station, roads, and anywhere they found place. Had there been a good estimate of visitors and proper channeling of them through multiple gates, the tragedy could have been avoided. And even after the mishap, had the trains started shuttling, much of inconvenience to panic-stucks could have been saved.
Then again it was unfortunate accident and I must admit that the technical assistance provided by the organizers and city municipal corporation was outstandingly swift. For emergency, 15 helicopters were deployed and more than 1000 ambulances were bustling on the streets. Immediate tents were raised to provide first-aid to injured ones and oxygen masks were also supplied. To avoid a major stampede at the venue itself, the music was allowed to run without interruption, so those unaware about incidence remain unaware. Being a resident of Duisburg, my sympathies to affected, it was definitely one of my terrible evenings in the city.
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Heartfelt condolences to the families of the ones who suffered…
Could have been averted if the authorities had planned a bit better. Who thought of using a tunnel for a million people??