A horrific stampede at last weekend’s Love Parade music festival in Duisburg, Germany has left 19 dead (including a 27 year old Australian woman) and over 300 more injured. The largely avoidable tragedy occurred after police refused entry to thousands of punters, blocking off the festival’s only entry point at the far end of a tunnel. As human traffic accumulated and panic mounted, the tunnel bottlenecked as punters surged forward toward the entry point while others turned the opposite way to escape. The panic grew again as the air in the narrow 100 metre tunnel started to thin out and people were forced to scramble over each other to escape.
The head of the festival, Rainer Schaller, said the event would not be held again, “out of respect for the victims and their families” while German-born Pope Benedict XVI expressed “deep sorrow” and called for an immediate investigation. And though candles and a makeshift remembrance board now mark the tunnel’s entrance, sadness has quickly turned to anger as the public demand answers for the tragedy.
An investigation is now underway with a German newspaper claiming that “the mayor had been warned in writing in October 2009 that the grounds were too narrow for the expected crowds but that their concerns went unheeded”. Germany’s police union chief, Rainer Wendt, concurred saying: “At the end of the day, the city and the organisers are to blame for this tragedy…I warned one year ago that Duisburg was not a suitable place for the Love Parade. The city is too small and narrow for such events.”
