Loveparade 2010

[chaoskir]

Yesterday in Duisburg (Germany)
During the Music-Parade "Loveparade" died 19 people and 340 have been injured.

In deepest symphaty!
R.I.P.

Comments

[chaoskir]

Now new count from today: 20 dead people!!
It was the wish of the Lord Major of Duisburg. He wished so intensively that the Loveparade will be in Duisburg and I guess there was a lot political pressure because the area in Germany in which Duisburg is one of the very big Cities is called "Ruhrgebiet". The whole Ruhrgebiet (which includes other big cities as like as Bochum, Dortmund, Essen, Bottrop, Oberhausen, Düsseldorf, Mülheim) is the "Kulturhauptstadt Europa's" Cultural Capital of Europe. This means there are such great events as like as the one at the A40 last Sunday. It was called "Stillleben" and in all the Cities of the Ruhrgebiet are events and other activities under the lable: Kulturhauptstadt Europa's.

There has been just ONE way to get into the Loveparade-place and out of it. ONE way for both. In and Out entry. And this one small gate to get to the place and get away from the place was 16 m (52,49 feet) wide. But that alone wasn't the cause that I made the decision not to go. I decided not to go because of this:
1.
The Organisators lead the crowd (per pedes) from the Central station in just two ways to the Loveparade place (every way more than 3 Km (1,864 miles).
2.
The place was just for 500.000 people (the Loveparade is almost every year - in other City's and there have always been more than 1,4 Mio people). So think about what could happen.
3.
And this is the worst thing:
Before you can get to the gate (I wrote above) the two ways to this gate leads from both sides first into a 19 m (62,34 feet) wide and 120 m (393,7 feet) long, dark and not very high or bride Tunnel (I know this tunnel very good because my Mom growd up there and my grandparents lived there too until I was 7 - we were often by my Mom's parents until they moved to two houses nearby our house in Rheinhausen).
This three reasons lead to my decision not to visit the Loveparade. But honestly I've never expected that there will be such a horrible situation.

They closed the gate because the crowd at the place (there was still enough room at the place at this point of time) didn't moved quickly away from the gate. But from the Tunnel came more and more people. They pushed and in the Tunnel the people had to wait more than two hours and there was no air. They weren't able to breath. They fell. Other people were pushed and they kicked and stepped at the bodies at the ground. In panic the people tried to climb up at walls, containers and the police and organisators were not able to handle the situation.

And to avoid more panic they don't stopped the Music and the event. They don't tell any of the visitors what has happend. The mobile phones doesn't worked because the mobile-line-net broke down for more than 8 hours.