Event incidents of crowd disasters
What will happen if a person finds himself in a panicking crowd? In short, nothing is good, and he risks not only getting serious injuries but even dying. However, such descriptions are not particularly frightening because you do not see the real consequences.
If you are not impressed by such articles, then it is worth telling about real cases when dozens, and sometimes hundreds and even thousands of people, were killed in a large crowd.
7 event incidents of crowd disasters
1. The Victoria hall disaster, 1883
On June 16, 1883, a show for children was held at the Victoria Hall Concert Hall in Sunderland, England, where magic tricks were shown. At the end of the show, it was announced that children with tickets that have certain numbers would be given gifts. When the artists began handing out gifts from the stage to the children in the stalls, worried that they would not receive presents, other spectators of more than 1,100 people rushed to the stairs to get to the first floor. However, the stairs were too narrow, and a bottleneck was formed, in which the crush began.
As a result of the crush, 183 children aged 3 to 14 died from suffocation and crushing, and this disaster is the worst in terms of the number of children killed in a crowd in the history of the UK.
2. The Khodynka Tragedy, 1896
Few people have not heard about the crush on the Khodynka field, which occurred on May 18, 1896. Then, on the occasion of the coronation ceremony of Emperor Nicholas II, about half a million people gathered on the Khodynka field in the northwestern part of Moscow, primarily to receive gifts that were distributed at such events.
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A rumor spread through the crowd that the barmen were handing out gifts only to their relatives and friends, and there would not be enough for all of them. Then the crowd rushed to the pavilions, and a stampede began. It got even worse when the gift distributors, believing that the crowd would demolish the pavilions, began throwing food directly into the crowd, making it even more aggressive.
When the stampede ended, 1,389 people were counted dead from suffocation or under the feet of the crowd, and about 1,300 people were injured.
3. The Iroquois Theater fire, 1903
On December 30, 1903, a popular musical was shown at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, which about 2,200 people gathered to watch. Despite the fact that there were only 1,602 seats in the hall, the rest either sat in the aisles or stood there. At 3 p.m., one of the lamps was short-circuited, which caused the curtain to light up. The fire quickly engulfed the hall, panic began. In a panic, the crowd rushed to the exits, but many passages were blocked because the hall was crowded.
On that day, 605 people died from suffocation and being trampled, and another 250 were injured.
4. The Estadio Nacional disaster(Lima football disaster), 1964
On May 24, 1964, a match between the national teams of Peru and Argentina was held in Lima, the capital of Peru, as part of the qualifying round for the Summer Olympic Games. At the end of the match, the referee first scored and then canceled the goal against the national team of Argentina, which caused a flurry of negativity from the fans. In a fit of anger, they rushed onto the field to challenge the judge’s decision, and then the police decided to push back the crowd by throwing tear gas at it.
People began to choke and panic; a stampede began. Fans tried to leave the stadium through the gates, but they were closed, and the panic intensified. As a result of the stampede, 328 people died, and about 4,000 were injured.
5. The Mecca tunnel tragedy, 1990
Every year during the holiday of the end of Hajj, tens of thousands of Muslims flock to the holy place for them — the city of Mecca, located in Saudi Arabia. On July 2, 1990, when the pilgrims who arrived in Mecca were moving through the 550-meter-long Mina tunnel, the ventilation system allegedly failed in it, as a result of which people began to suffocate and rushed to the exits in panic. But a strong crush began since the passage was narrow, there were too many people, and the oxygen was quickly running out. On that day, 1,426 people died due to suffocation or under the feet of a panicked crowd.
6. Mina stampede,2015
2015 was the darkest year for the pilgrims of Mecca because then there was a stampede on the Jamarat Bridge, which turned into a kind of bottleneck. People crowded on the bridge to perform a traditional ritual, throwing stones at an 18-meter stele symbolizing the devil.
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On that day, at 9 a.m. on September 24, 2015, too many people had accumulated on the bridge — from 6 to 7 people per square meter. It is not clear exactly what happened; apparently, one part of the pilgrims collided with another in an attempt to get on the bridge, resulting in a stampede. To this was added the strongest heat of 40 degrees. With such a density and temperature of the air, people began to fall unconscious and suffocate.
Those who were still alive were trampled by the crowd. As a result, 769 people died, according to official data, and according to other sources, from 1958 to 2121. More than 1,000 people were also injured. Since then, the flow of pilgrims has been regulated so that this situation does not happen again.
7. Incidents in Datia, 2006(Ratangarh Temple stamped ) and 2013(Madhya Pradesh stampede)
In 2006, tens of thousands of people gathered near the Datia Palace, located in central India, to celebrate a Hindu religious festival. Many of them crowded onto the bridge, which was clearly not designed for such a crowd, and there was a rumor that it was about to collapse. This immediately caused panic, which turned into a stampede, because of which 50 people were suffocated, trampled, or thrown off the bridge.
In 2013, the situation was repeated when a rumor about the bridge’s collapse went the same way, but this time 115 people were already killed, and more than 100 were injured.
