At least 15 trampled to death at Germany's Loveparade

[hautechild]

It's absolutely awful and tragic. I hope they conduct a proper enquiry so this doesn't happen again, because it seems so badly organised

 

[*Bianca*]

Oh my I just watched a really disturbing video on youtube. It was shot just after the stampede when people were being rescued, and it sadly shows some of the victims.

How terrible. I will never be going to any such festivals ever again.

 

[Empress Merel]

They should've opened the emergency exits. Which they didn't.

 

[*Bianca*]

Another timeline.

11.30am: The crowds are already building in front of the entrance to the former train station in Duisburg. The only access to the Love Parade is a 120 metre long tunnel, just 16 metres wide. Security staff search each individual visitor behind it. One witness, Oliver B., said: "It took one and a half hours to get 20 meters to the entrance. The sun was beating down. It was an unreasonable demand."

12.30pm: The crowd are getting restless. There are early warnings. A visitor said: "I begged a security worker, they should open everything. Answer: The organiser does not want that." The first people try to break into the venue. There are no toilets or drinks stalls.

2pm: In the 120,000 square metre site, the 16 floats are set in motion. The floats are due to parade for fours hours at an old freight train station. Hundreds of thousands of young 'ravers' party, dance and cheer the DJs. Some 500,000 people have already squeezed into the site.

3.08pm: On the main stage DJ Anthony Rother opens the 2010 Love Parade with the official anthem, ‘The Art of Love’. It is a warm 26 degrees. The bass rumbles up to 95 decibels.

3.32pm: Love Parade presenter Sandy Meyer-Wölden (27) interviews TV star Ross Anthony (36 "The atmosphere is really great!" The mood changes at the entrance at the same time. Here it is too full, way too full. Hundreds want to get out, but the exit is sealed. Sascha Otto (24) said: "I already wanted to go around half past three, but you couldn’t get out. Even there people were afraid. A security man stopped us and said: ‘Don’t go, we want to finally beat the record’.”

3.50pm: Chaos breaks out for the first time at the tunnel. Christian Runkel (27 "The first people already tore the fences down and went up the embankments because everything was jammed in front of the tunnel."

4pm: More and more people are flocking to the party area. Access roads are covered with rubbish. People trudge through broken glass and puddles of beer. Visitor Rolf Salz (47) said: "There was pushing, hustling and shouting."

4.50pm: The site is full, but still people are on the way to the festival from Duisburg's main train station. Up to 500,000 are apparently en route. BILD reporter Frank Schneider tells the newsroom: "There will be a disaster here soon."

5pm: The tunnel becomes a deadly bottleneck: For thousands of people there is no way out anymore. The squeeze is intolerable. Women scream in despair. The situation escalates – mass panic!

5.05pm: Sonja Kokus (27) and Mike Rose (34) get stuck. “We arrived dancing and in a good mood. But it quickly became increasingly close and stuffy, you could hardly breathe. There was pushing from the back, but there was no way forward. Suddenly the first people passed out and then panic broke out. People lay everywhere, it was a horror.”

5.07pm: Finally the emergency exits are opened! The first people flee onto the nearby train tracks. Trains come to a halt.

5.10pm: Fearing for their lives, people sandwiched by the crowds overrun security fences and barge onto a narrow staircase. Dozens cling onto a floodlight pole, and try to climb it to safety. About 15 victims tumble from the stairs back into the crowd.

5.12pm: Panic spreads like a rampaging wave through the crowd in a deadly chain reaction. Women scream and are knocked down. It was a terrible experience for Nils L. (19 "First we were still singing. Then it was too narrow, we all wanted to get out. We climbed up to the bridges. Suddenly, people fell like grapes from the bridge. I resuscitated a friend of mine. Then more people fell like grapes. We saw three dead bodies. One of them was a friend of ours."

5.15pm: Ravers who make it to the festival area are black with dirt. Many are bleeding, hobbling, crying.
5.21pm: Red alert! More and more ambulance crews rush to the accident site. Elena Reinhold (19 "Four still bodies lay beside me. I still don’t know whether they are dead or alive. I fainted in the tunnel, then they pulled me out. I only came to in the medical tent. I am so happy to be alive.”

5.26pm: Victims lie between garbage and debris on the street. Nobody can help 16 young people anymore. They are dead. Trampled, crushed, suffocated.

5.28pm: The crowd continues to party without a clue inside the festival. DJ Monika Kruse takes to the main stage. In the press area, Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland gives an interview: “We expect 1.4 million people are either here already or on their way." At this point he does not yet know what is going on outside.

5.34pm: Police report that the venue has been shut because of overcrowding. Mobile phone coverage has broken down.

5.40pm: Only now do the first rumours of injuries and possibly even deaths start circulating in the press tent.

6pm: The first reports from the dpa news agency: “At least ten people have died in a mass panic at the Love Parade in Duisburg.”

6.30pm: Police clear the tunnel. Medics and emergency doctors frantically try to save the lifeless victims. One police officer is reduced to tears. The street is littered with objects: Broken pairs of glasses, destroyed mobile phones, ripped clothing and lots of blood. The bodies are covered with white sheets.

6.35pm: Ambulances race to the scene of the disaster. There is talk of 45 injured. Rescue helicopters land on the closed-off A59 Autobahn.
7pm: The main railway station is reopened and the first trains leave the city at walking pace. In addition, 120 buses are pressed into service.

8pm: More chaos, this time in the station. Angry crowds knock over fences and train services are stopped again for an hour.

11pm: The music is switched off. Thousands of ravers are still in front of the main stage. The performance by headline act David Guetta is cancelled. Some start whistling indignantly.

11.08pm: Friends Martina Feike (26) and Petra Otte (45) sit crying on a kerb. Haltingly, Petra reveals: “I held the head of a woman, and stroked her. But suddenly the medics and doctors could do nothing more for her and then covered her with a blanket.” She broke down into tears, and her friend Martina says: “We helped the unconscious who were nearly suffocating on their vomit. The victims looked like zombies, black and dirty under which there was white skin with blood in between. They looked as if they had come from a swamp because so many had trampled over them. They had bloody wounds everywhere.”

11.22: Breaking news from the dpa agency: The death toll has risen to 18. In total, 16 are now reported to have died at the scene with two more succumbing to their injuries in hospital.

11.30pm: The last ravers leave the Love Parade site, leaving just a few people scavenging for empty bottles they can claim a deposit back from. Hearses are still taking the bodies away.

0.30am: At most, 1,500 people are dancing at the aftershow party in the Scania Arena, as opposed to the 8,000 who had been expected. Petr Pavlad (22 “It is unbelievably sad that something like this has happened, but we came especially from the Czech Republic. We didn’t want to sit around and mourn, but instead keep partying a little.”

2am: Police report that the Love Parade site has been completely vacated.

3.30am: While some are still celebrating in Duisburg city centre, news agency ddp reports that the death toll has risen to 19.

bild.de

 

[eternitygoddess]

I was once in a tightly packed space at a concert, and it was a horrible experience for me. People crammed so tightly together you're basically supported by the weight of dozens of people around you. When the crowd moved, it was easy to fall down and not be able to get up because there are so many people piling on top of you. By the time I managed to fight my way out, I had bruises all over my arm.

Death by stampede is a horrible, horrible way to die. What makes concerts a worse location for stampedes to happen is that many of the music goers are inebriated or on hallucinogens, so panic and irrationality takes over faster.

R.I.P.

 

[diesanni]

The ground on which the "party" was held was laid out to take up to 500.000 people. That alone is crazy, considering the masses of people who went to this event before. Closing all other ways to leave and making people go back to where thousands of others are pushing in is beyond irresponsible. And they just had to know what kind of people they'd have to deal with (aka drunks, drugged, panicky...) and know that they'd be difficult to handle. It becomes even more scary if you take a look at interviews and reports published by various involved parties the days and even weeks before. It's like they knew what would happen and just went along with it, praying for the best... and a lot of money.

 

[Nicolasa]

and even If it's hard to look at, what the police should have done? going into the crowd? this would have failed, just more people in there. i know it's inapprehensible though.

Several options come to my mind but all of them start with disrupt the festival. Thus, the police could have opened all the railings which enclose the compound, blocked the exit of the tunnel, removed people from the end, gave clear directions, etc.

 

[Nicolasa]

God... I just read the deaths have risen to 20.
The balance: 20 deaths and 511 injured of which 42 still in hospital and 1 in critical condition.

My thoughts are with all of them and relatives.

 

[cloudyshambles]

this is a tragedy! it's all over the media here as you can imagine. i cannot believe that they chose this location for an event like this!!
my thoughts go out to those who lost friends and relatives there

 

[Nicolasa]

^I can imagine... In Spain there is a special media coverage due to the death of two Spanish friends. It's heartbreaking to know their personal stories, testimonies of the rest from friends who also were at Love Parade...

 

[Nicolasa]

Scandal of Duisburg - police had real safety concerns
FESTIVAL GIVEN GREEN LIGHT JUST HOURS BEFORE START

There were known safety concerns before the festival, with police and the fire service highlighting flaws on several occasions. But rather than cancel the Love Parade, the warnings were ignored and political pressure may even have been applied on critics.

So the biggest techno party in the world was turned into a cruel drama of death.

As the man in charge of the city, Adolf Sauerland is one of those most responsible for the tragedy.

He dearly wanted to bring the glittering event to his city, fighting for it for three years. In the end, the Mayor of Duisburg possibly bent the rules when it came to safety.

The charges against the politician: The 55-year-old is said to have exerted political pressure to make sure the Love Parade took place. At the end of 2009, when Sauerland was proudly announcing that the festival was “possible” for Duisburg, experts had already made their concerns known!

• Rainer Wendt, chairman of the German Police Union: "I rejected Duisburg as unsuitable for the Love Parade a year ago and was insulted for it as a spoilsport and safety fanatic. But the authorities were obsessed with the idea of doing something for this troubled town.”

• Other police chiefs are said to have come under pressure. When representatives expressed real doubts in the autumn of 2008, Duisburg CDU member of parliament Thomas Mahlberg stepped in.

According to the DPA news agency, he wrote a letter at the beginning of February to the then-North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Ingo Wolf to urge him to replace the chief of police!

• The former director of the Duisburg Building Code office was also among opponents of the event. She is said to have refused to sign authorisation for the festival in March of this year. She was later replaced.

• Reports by the ‘Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger’ newspaper suggest the director of the fire service warned in a letter to the mayor in October 2009 that the party area at the old freight depot was "not physically suitable” for an event of this size.

And according to an ‘insider’, the Duisburg City Council signed the required approval giving the Love Parade the green light just hours before it started on Saturday.

The authorities evidently deliberated until the end over whether they should cancel the techno festival.

Now the mayor wishes he did not know so much about the preparations for the Love Parade. When he was asked on Sunday if he was involved in the planning, Mayor Adolf Sauerland replied: “Personally? No!”

And he also wishes he did not know about the safety concerns of the police and fire departments.

"I did not know of any warnings,” Sauerland told the ‘Rheinische Post’ in Düsseldorf. Apparently in the planning of such events, there are always critical opinions which are taken very seriously. The city has to consider whether the requested events can be performed. "And that’s exactly what we did conscientiously in this case too," Sauerland explained.

He is refusing calls for him step down immediately.

After Sauerland was heckled and insulted at the site of the tragedy on Sunday evening, the dad of four kept a very low profile on Monday. His family have been placed under police protection in the meantime and his website has been taken down. In the afternoon came a terse statement – he understood the calls for his resignation but he wanted to stay in office.

Love Parade organiser Rainer Schaller (41) spoke about the catastrophe for the first time yesterday – and blamed the authorities. “Police operational control gave the order to open all the barriers in front of the western tunnel entrance at the Düsseldorfer Street," he said.

Schaller, founder of fitness chain McFit, vehemently denied that security concerns were overlooked for profit. He said: “We never put pressure on reducing safety. As things are we have fulfilled our obligations. The whole concept was co-ordinated at every point in weekly meetings with police, the fire department and the city. We have never earned money from the Love Parade – that was not our aim.”

Schaller added: “As organisers we have a big responsibility and I am incredibly sorry. I am shocked and stunned."

The former WDR (West German Broadcasting) director and head of the European Capital of Culture Ruhr.2010 project, Fritz Pleitgen, has backed the organisers. “The decision made by Adolf Sauerland and the others responsible was made with safety as the top priority,” Pleitgen told the ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’. "But obviously not everything was considered, or it would not have come to this disaster.”

When asked if Ruhr.2010 had put pressure on the city of Duisburg, Pleitgen replied: “Definitely not.”

UPDATE

Warnings over potential safety problems were reportedly made by the local building regulation authority four weeks before the Love Parade festival took place. According to the 'Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung' newspaper, Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland and the authorities were aware of these warnings.

The newspaper claimed there was a meeting between Love Parade organisers Lopavent, the fire service, the public affairs office and department head Wolfgang Rabe. Mayor Sauerland was supposedly given minutes of the meeting, and he would have known of its contents.

According to the report, Councillor Rabe applied pressure for the festival to go ahead. “The mayor would like the event and therefore a solution must be found.”

Rabe reportedly asked the building authority "to collaborate constructively on the emergency exits strategy”.

bild.de

 

[Nicolasa]

daylife.com

 

[heelscatchfire]

This is terrible news, what an awful way to go. My thoughts go out to the friends and family.

 

[Nicolasa]

Germany plans memorial for music festival victims

BERLIN — A memorial service will be held for the 20 people crushed to death in a mass panic at the Love Parade techno festival, German officials said Tuesday, as hundreds of people lit candles, left notes and placed flowers at the site of the tragedy.

People in the western German city of Duisburg gathered to express their grief near where the victims died and 500 others were injured in a jammed tunnel that was the lone entry to the annual festival meant to celebrate peace and love.

Some cried and clung to loved ones. Many lined up to sign a condolence book placed between two red candles in the middle of the tunnel.

People also expressed deep anger at city authorities, particularly Mayor Adolf Sauerland, whom they blame for failing to adequately plan for the event. Organizers have come under fire for allegedly trying to squeeze as many as 1.4 million revelers into too small a space and for allowing only one access point onto the grounds.

One note read: "Sauerland, resign! You failed."

Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Christian Wulff will attend the ecumenical ceremony at a church in Duisburg on Saturday, according to their offices. Merkel's office said she would interrupt a summer vacation to attend.

The mayor, however, will not attend given the anger toward him, according to a report by the local Rheinische Post newspaper. The newspaper also said he has received death threats.

The cause of death for all 20 victims was chest contusion, meaning they were crushed to death, said Hannelore Kraft, the state governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Duisburg is located.

There has been some confusion about what exactly triggered the mass panic, and some have speculated that the chaos began after some of the victims fell to their deaths from a ramp they had climbed to escape the crush of the crowd.

But the results of their autopsies, announced by Kraft, ruled that theory out.

The last person to die was a young German woman who was buried beneath several others. She was unconscious for two days in the hospital before succumbing to internal injuries late Monday, according to Dr. Martin Pfohl, a physician at the Bethesda hospital in Duisburg.

The Love Parade was once a Berlin institution, but was held for the last time in the capital in 2006 after suffering from financial problems and tensions with city officials over cleanup costs.

It started rotating around the cities of the Ruhr industrial region in 2007, though last year's designated host, Bochum — a smaller city than Duisburg — canceled it over concerns that the event lacked the infrastructure to cope.

Organizers said Sunday that the Love Parade will never be held again.

ap.org

 

[LagerfeldBoy]

So sad
And I thought the EDC festival I attended here in Cali was bad enough with it's "issues". May the people that suffered from this unfortunate catastrophe R.I.P.

 

[diesanni]

I just watched another report on this and can simply not understand why the police refused to open up the security gates/exits. Maybe they really couldn't see what was going on in the middle of the crowd (in a dark tunnel after all!), but when people come up to you, begging you for help because they've seen others nearly suffocating, stumbling and crushed, how can you not at least consider it might be true indeed?! It all would be less shamefull and sad if it weren't for that wide open space right behind the "security" barriers that could have so easily served as an emergency exit. But of course you have to keep people under control, corall them up like cattle to keep them from doing unexpected things. Which some of them will do if you don't because they think they need to. It's a vicious circle.

(Sorry for the rant...I just needed to get this out.)

 

[Nicolasa]

The memorial service for the victims is to be held on Saturday, 31 July at 11:00 (GMT+1) in Duisburg's Salvatorkirche church.

 

[Nicolasa]

21 white crosses are set up in front of the former freight rail yard in the western German city of Duisburg July 31, 2010, to commemorate the 21 stampede victims of last week's "Love Parade".

A mourner injured in the stampede at the Duisburg "Love Parade" holds a white rose outside the tunnel in Duisburg July 31, 2010.

People release 511 white balloons that stand for the injured and 21 black balloons representing the 21 killed people in the stampede at the "Love Parade" in Duisburg July 31, 2010.

daylife.com

 

[Nicolasa]

Disaster Investigation

Love Parade Report Calls Organizers to Task

A new report examining the causes for the Love Parade disaster, which saw 21 people trampled to death by a dense crush of visitors, has cast doubt on the security plan drawn up by event organizers. Police at the event, however, continue to deny any fault.

They are still coming. Every day, individuals and small groups continue to make their way down Duisburg's Karl Lehr Strasse --- through the overpasses at the entrance to the former freight rail station to the spot where many of the 21 victims of the 2010 Love Parade lost their lives.

They carry candles, wreathes and notes of condolences. It is quiet; almost two weeks after the disaster, the street still has not been reopened to traffic.

But such reverential silence is far from the norm in Duisburg these days. On Wednesday, representatives of a law firm commissioned by the city to investigate the degree to which city leaders might be culpable for the disaster presented their findings. And, not surprisingly, it triggered yet another round of finger-pointing, protestations of innocence and speculation about the future of Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland's political career.

The city "had no … responsibility for the security of the event as a whole," the 37 page document reads. There are, it goes on, "no indications at present" that city employees failed to fulfil their legal responsibilities "thereby contributing to or even causing the accident."

Finding Fault with the Organizers

The report, put together by the law firm Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, did, however, find fault with the event organizers Lopavent. The document accuses Lopavent -- a company set up by Rainer Schaller, who founded the German fitness studio chain McFit, for the purpose of staging the Love Parade -- of having violated security guidelines. "We cannot exclude that these violations became relevant in connection with the accident," the report concludes. Duisburg police are likewise taken to task for having parked several vehicles on the ramp which served as both and entryway to and an exit from the event site. Most of the deaths occurred in a crush of visitors at the base of the ramp.

It is unclear to what degree the new report will exonerate the city, given that it was commissioned by the municipality itself. And it is far from the final word in the attempt to identify whether any person or party can be held culpable for the disaster.

Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia -- the state where Duisburg is located -- told the German public television station ZDF on Wednesday night that "at no time" did the security plan created by Lopavent for the event work correctly "and at some point completely collapsed." In reference to accusations that the police had not responded well once the entrance to the event site became dangerously congested, Jäger told the domestic affairs committee of the North Rhine-Westphalian parliament on Wednesday that "it is shabby to first call the police for help because the event has gotten out of control and then try to pass the buck to them afterwards."

The head of the German federal police union (GdP) accused city officials of scapegoating the police. "The police and other experts were pushed up against the wall with polical pressure during the preliminary planning," said Konrad Freiberg. "Their objections and reservations weren't taken into consideration and critical voices were muzzled. The political ambition of city leaders and the economic interest of the organizer to adorn the city with such a mega event, suffocated any professional discussion over the risks."

The deaths occurred in the late afternoon of July 24 as thousands of partygoers were trying to enter the event site. The site had been given a permit for 250,000 visitors, though the organizers had been expecting up to twice as many. Event plans had foreseen all visitors approaching the entrance ramp from either end of a series of overpasses, with the main ramp being planned as the only entrance and the primary exit.

The Effort Failed

When a knot of people developed at the top of the ramp in the late afternoon, police were called in to establish barricades to prevent a crush of visitors at the bottom of the ramp from growing in size. The effort failed, with many of those who died trapped in a dense crowd at the base of a narrow staircase leading out of the entry ramp.

The relevance of the report's mention of the police vehicles parked on the ramp appears to be called into question by video images of the disaster, taken by 16 security cameras set up around the site. The images show that, whereas the base of the ramp was hopelessly overcrowded at the time of the deaths, congestion in the middle of the ramp, where the police vehicles were parked, was limited.

Pressure on Duisburg Mayor Sauerland to resign has been high since the disaster, with some colleagues from his own party, the Christian Democratic Union, even calling on him to quit. He has so far refused -- and several city politicians have begun questioning the need to jettison him. On Thursday, Green Party officials in the city government suggested they would not support efforts to vote him out of office.

In addition to the 21 people who lost their lives, a further 500 were injured. Twelve days after the tragedy, only one young woman remains in the hospital, according to Duisburg police.

spiegel.de

 

[Nicolasa]

Aerial shot of the site of the love parade to the left and a map of the area to the right. The event site spread from the highway on one side and the train tracks on the other. The only entrance: The tunnel from the west to the east . The main ramp in the middle of the tunnel led to the parade grounds. A smaller side ramp is located to the left of the main ramp. It was not open continuously and was initially intended as an exit but was turned into an entrance ramp to alleviate pressure in the tunnels.

spiegel.de