20 Killed, 342 Injured as Crowd Panics at German Music Festival

Saturday, July 24, 2010 - Duisburg, Germany.  As approximately 1,400,000 (yeah, you read that right: 1.4 MILLION) people tried to attend the Love Parade techno-music festival, the crowd surged into a narrow tunnel leading into the show grounds.  Panic ensued and fans were crushed to death as they approached a security checkpoint to the event that had been closed.

Emergency responders trying to clean-up the mess.Picture courtesy of The Wall Street Journal

City officials were being criticized almost immediately because they had restricted entry to only ONE path that created a choke point.  People were still moving forward even though the entrance at the other end of the tunnel had been closed.  This lead to a mass panic and chaos as fans were unsure where to go in the claustrophobic environment.  The stampede started around 5 p.m. local time, shortly after police closed the tunnel because the festival grounds were too full.  Police told those in the tunnel over loudspeakers to turn around and walk out from the direction they came.

Crowd crush as patrons try to exit.  Picture courtesy of Yahoo!

German police union leader Rainer Wendt said in an interview on the Bild newspaper's web site that he warned Love Parade organizers more than a year ago that Duisburg was "too narrow, too small to handle this mass of people."

Ariel view of festival grounds.  Picture courtesy of Yahoo!

More pictures of the aftermath here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704719104575389122383665304.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB10001424052748703958904575387401397668776%26articleTabs%3Dslideshow

The Wall Street Times news article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704719104575389122383665304.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB10001424052748703958904575387401397668776%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Yahoo! News groups article here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_germany_love_parade_deaths

To learn more about effective event planning and crow control issues ther are some great resources.  The International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM) (http://www.iaam.org/) regularly discusses this topic as a key component of event planning and security.

A company that focuses on this issue is Crowd Management Strategies (http://www.crowdsafe.com/) an their web site has a wealth of information and [sometimes gruesome] statistics.

Picture courtesy of Yahoo!