Horrific stampede in Germany
A deadly stampede has occurred in Germany, especially terrible because most of those killed were young people. As Matthias Roeingh, one of the organizers of the event (ironically) called the Love Parade said, “one single entrance through a tunnel lends itself to disaster.”
I have written at length about stampedes before, and I can attest to the truth of what he says. There are certain commonalities in fatal stampedes, and they need to be heeded in all planning of large events:
The situation, as far as I can determine, is a bit analogous to the elements that go into a tsunami, strangely enough. That is, a huge and extremely powerful force (in the case of crowds, the moving people; in the case of tsunamis, the moving water) is initially spread out horizontally. Then, some sort of blockage impedes that horizontal movement and converts it, at least partially, into a vertical one. I haven’t found a website that explains this too clearly, so I’m not linking to any source for it, but it appears that, in the case of a stampede, people become stacked up and those on the bottom are the ones who are crushed by the force of those above….Any sort of bottleneck or narrow passage through which the crowd must funnel itself represents a grave danger, because it potentially impedes that flow of horizontal movement.
See also this.
Bernoulli’s Principle – not just for continuous fluids.
I went to a festival seating type Bruce Springsteen concert in the Seventies. No one hurt, but it was easy to see how people died in Cincinnati at that Who concert. The danger is from something causing the people in the back to move faster than the people in the front can move. Stampeding, or the anaconda effect in which the smaller folk cannot breathe.
I was inside a crowd once that could have become a disaster. My friends and I were in the smallish lobby of a campus theater, completely crammed with students waiting for the second showing of horror shorts on Halloween. With hardly room to breathe, and not liking crowds that much, I was starting to think of leaving. And then the doors to the theater opened to let out the first group of moviegoers. Oops.
I am very grateful for two things: no one in the expanded crowd panicked or pushed. And the young men in our group joined arms with the women and promised they’d keep us from falling. I’m not totally sure they could have made good on that promise if the crowd had panicked, but their promises were reassuring and gave me, at least, the courage not to freak out!
Somehow, over 10 rather tense minutes, a few people got into the theater, a few people got out through the lobby, a few more, a few more; and finally there was room to move again.
Since then I never enter crowded spaces, and I avoid crowds, period. Airplanes are very tough to endure, though, especially if I have the middle seat. I remind myself that if I go berserk, everything will get worse, way worse!
That’s interesting. (I’m deliberately ignoring the human costs.) The behavior of granular systems is an active research area:
Such research might make its way into pragmatic technologies.
Especially given the threat of terrorism, I wonder if warnings similar to those given on airplanes should be distributed at dense gatherings. I wonder: such warnings might actually increase the possibility of mass panic; and I would prefer that the government, with its talent for making everything cumbersome and expensive, did not need to issue regulations.
Exactly what happened in that horrific fire in a night club in Rhode Island a few years back. Everbody tried to leave the burning building from the front door, ignoring two other back exits. Some folks fell or were pushed down, and other people climbed over them to get out. The exit was blocked by fallen bodies! People on the bottom of the pile were screaming for help. Really awful. I still check for exits when I go out to eat or to a club!
Goodness. Dear Lord. Imagine it, “those who fell never got up.” Each time I look at Drudge this evening, the death toll numbers go up, first 10, then 15, now 18. How awful. You think you’re going out for an evening of fun and music, and then you never go home.
How awful.
Recall the disastrous stampede on a bridge in Baghdad a few years back. Hundreds of Shiite pilgrims were crushed or pushed into the river. One Sunni was credited with rescuing seven from the river only to drown rescuing an eight.
Neo, a comment & resubmission are either in your moderation queue or in your spam folder.
I gave a link indicating that contemporary research on dynamics of granular materials might lead to technology that reduces stampede risk.
I wonder … did those who died die because they fell, or did they fall because they were either already dead or at best unconscious due to the press?
I had a similar experience to those listed above. I was exiting a sports areas with two of my daughters, and when we stepped onto a descending escalator (that’s a fun oxymoron) I could see that the people at the bottom of the escalator were quickly running out of space to alight. For one of the few times in my life, I felt a wave of panic overtake me, at least internally. People began to compress against one another. What appeared to be waves of pushing radiated from the center of the escalator. There really was no time to react, and with kids in tow, I couldn’t make a evasive maneuver without abandoning them. I steeled myself for what I thought certain to happen – a stampede that would push me down as those behind me sought escape. To my great surprise, shock actually, security had stopped people from getting on the escalator behind me; I was the last one. I had no idea there was no one behind me, such was my focus upon the crisis below me.
As to Kelly’s comment about the Station Nightclub Fire in Rhode Island, that is a classic example of history tragically repeating itself. It is similar in so many ways to the Coconut Grove Fire in Boston in 1942. The impact of the Coconut Grove fire upon building codes is ubiquitous in our daily lives – strict capacity limits in public spaces, doors that open outward, secondary means of egress when revolving doors are in use, collapsable panels on revolving doors, clearly marked exits that are unimpeded by debris, locks, vegetation, etc., fire sprinkler systems. There was clearly no need for the Station Nightclub Fire to have occurred, nor the number of lives lost to have been so high.
The most deadly stampede in my life occured at funeral of Stalin. Nobody knows real numbers, but there were hudreds of victims. Near place I lived these time was a morgue where corpses were piled up directly at the street, rows upon rows, so that relatives could identify them. Half of the victims were children or teenagers. For a week we could not sleep at night because of cries of desperate mothers; they cried aloud, as is customary in Russia, an these cries were alike animals growl. This is probably the worst of my childish memories.
A couple days ago someone at Belmont Club linked the Wiki article about the Station Night Club fire. On that page I found a link to the full video, about 9:30 long. I had only ever seen the first minute or so. While there is nothing in the video that is visually gory, the screaming is pretty harrowing. It also shows just how fast the whole thing happened.
YouTube link
*turfmann – are you, by any chance, an architect? your second paragraph is how I would describe the Station nightclub disaster: as unnecessary, with all the fire code measures already in place.
But panic knows no reason or common sense…
Kathleenie: I know what you are describing. I have experienced same sense of immediate danger emanating from the crowd, an internal certainty that if I’ll not get out this minute, I’ll be stomped on and die. It was in Detroit, during so called Jazz festival. I alarmed my companions and made them leave. Never before or after I had that phobia.
The same thing happened in NYC in the early nineties. Before he was famous Puff Daddy, or P. Diddy or whatever he’s calling himself these days, promoted a concert in Harlem I believe, he over sold the tickets, the place was too crowded, there was a stampede and a number of people died the same way. They were asphyixiated. Puff Daddy of course went on to have stellar career.
Neo says the deaths are especially terrible because most of the dead are young people.
I guess that’s true in Germany, where so few of them are made, except by Muslims. But all the same, it is an odd remark. Am I getting an occasional hint of a backwards slide to your former state, Neo?
The comment regarding how the incident was “especially terrible” because of the youth of the victims also struck me as a discordant note, as well. Such a statement fairly begs one to consider the converse… such a disaster at a nursing home: “The tragedy was less terrible because only old people died.”
I do not know neo remotely well enough to gauge how she truly feels, but it smells like measuring the value of human life by its age. That is one of the great concerns many of us have about government-controlled healthcare.
I think the last couple of commenters are reading too much into what Neo said.
It is especially tragic when young people die in a senseless incident, when they have their whole lives ahead of them. Very few elderly people die in a stampede in a nursing home.
Every single one of us has all the rest of our lives ahead of us. That is no less true for my mother than it is for my son. And I do not think that the comment I referred to is central to neo’s post… it stands well as a newsy account of a tragic incident with some related information. As I said, the referenced comment was just a discordant note for me.
As for your last comment, that seems like a non-sequitur to me. Let’s try this: “It’s less tragic that the disaster happened at a nursing home because such crowd-based tragedies are rare in nursing homes.” Families would find that cold comfort.
How common or uncommon my counter example is wasn’t the point of my comment. I was trying to illustrate why enhancing the enormity of the German incident by the youth of its victims sounded wrong to me.
I just now started a fire in the very room where I’m sitting. I dumped an ashtray into the trash can, and a minute later I smelled smoke. I took the trash can over to the bathtub and doused it with water. I then disabled the smoke alarm so it wouldn’t go off. All is well.
Usually I’m pretty good at making sure there are no smoldering embers in the ashtray before I empty it.
Neo is a wordsmith. So when she hits a discordant (to some of her readers) note, it may be an accident or it may not. Since she is a seasoned and thoughtful essayist, my presumtion is to take her words seriously.
Ricki… glad to hear that you averted a personal tragedy. I had a similar incident in my home once as a result of my son’s smoking habit. It is spooky when something like that happens… it’s like feeling death walk past you.
I’m surprised that people would take a comment that a tragedy is especially terrible because young people are killed to be controversial, or to mean I don’t value the lives of the old. Of course I do. But I would think it a universal truth that there is a special poignancy and sorrow connected with the accidental and seemingly unnecessary death of young adults and/or teenagers who have (at least theoretically) their entire lives ahead of them.
It is also pretty much a universal that when a very elderly person dies, especially one who has declined and suffered in extreme old age, that the mourners—although very sad—are usually comforted by the fact that the deceased has led a rich full life and was ready to go. Is this really a controversial statement? And does this have anything to do with not valuing that person’s life, or with deciding it’s ok to off them? Or not mourning their death, if accidental and/or do to negligence in a nursing home? Certainly not. But it does not have the same sharp poignancy as these deaths in the German stampede.
Converts are watched, Neo. Eventually they may be canonized, but they are watched. Their perseverance despite being monitored is one of the qualities that make converts important out of proportion to their numbers.
Young people will soon reproduce or they have done so and are caring for the next generation. In utilitarian terms, all else being equal, they are of greater value to humanity than old people.
Nevertheless, it (appropriately) is considered shameful for a young person to use their strength to crowd aside an old person.
I, too, ALWAYS check the exits anywhere I go. I was involved in the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire in Cincinnati area years ago…..exits have ever since become a very important part of my life. Any small crowd can become panicked in mere seconds. It’s not a pretty sight under the best of circumstances.
I respectfully disagree, Neo.
I suggest you are tiptoeing toward Ezekiel Emanuel’s Quality-Adjusted Life Year logic for distribution of health care. I do agree that the event was a stupid waste of young lives. But that does not make it “especially terrible”. It makes it stoopid.
To Tom, I have one thing to say: Lighten up, Francis!
The death of one of my twenty-something children or my grandson would be far more devastating to me than the death of my 75+ year old mother, for the reasons Neo stated in her comment above. It has nothing to do with a quality adjusted life.
Neo… I find it interesting that you feel your thoughts on the relationship between the impact of death to the age of the victim to be “universal.” Quite obviously, it is not so universal… even within the small sample of people commenting on your blog. Here I am speaking about the death of young ADULTS vice old adults. I offer my own thoughts on the death of children at the end of this (unfortunately lengthy) comment.
Statistically speaking, young adults have more time ahead of them to do whatever they set out to do (good or bad). That ambiguity makes assigning a *special* value or poignancy to the loss of their time problematic. And yes, it is mostly young people who create and raise the next generation… an indisputably valuable contribution to society. The loss of a young adult is a terrible thing.
But the older generation brings wisdom and continuity to life. What is the value of that compared to youth? Is it universally considered to be less? Might it be at least equal? I fear that in today’s society, wisdom and continuity does tend to count for less than smooth skin and a long road ahead.
As for valuable contributions, it is no less possible for a person in his/her 60’s or 70’s to make an extraordinary contribution to society… a little research would likely find countless scientific discoveries made by wise older men and women BECAUSE of their wisdom and the skills they sharpened over their lifetimes. Would it not be especially “poignant” to miss a cure for cancer that was about to be discovered by a seasoned researcher because he died in an accident in his mid 60’s?
And as for the young “having their life ahead of them,” a person in his 60’s or 70’s could have 20 or 30 years ahead of them given today’s medical technology. That certainly seems like a substantial loss of potential time to me. It probably does to the elderly as well.
In the last paragraph of your most recent comment, you go straight to the very old and infirm to draw upon the concept of taking comfort from the end of their suffering. Yes, many of us do take comfort from that concept when we lose an elderly friend or family member after a decline… because that is all we have to take comfort from. However, using that extreme in this discussion strikes me as a “false dilemma”… the young and “full of promise” compared to the “old and suffering.” There’s lots of old who aren’t suffering so much (yet). Lumping them in with the “old and suffering” to comfort ourselves if they die in an accident seems a little premature to me. I would be just as likely to feel a poignant loss for a dear, elderly friend who still had good years left.
I think your feelings of the “universal” poignancy in the death of young adults is an outgrowth of our naturally sharpened feelings for infants and children. These are humans who depend upon us for their safety and their lives. This fills us with a sense of deep commitment and obligation. Even if they die from something unavoidable, we feel a special poignancy to their deaths because we felt RESPONSIBLE for their lives. We feel, in some way that we failed them… again even if it was unavoidable. As with so many elements of childhood, I think that as a society we’ve allowed that element of childhood to creep into young adulthood.
For myself, I feel that the grief for the death of a child is shattering whether it is my own (my failed responsibility) or another’s (our society’s failed responsibility… a society that I am part of). The death of an adult is tragic… but I don’t feel that young adulthood makes that death “especially terrible” compared to the loss of the elderly.
I understand where you are coming from. I wanted to explain where I was coming from. Peace.
butch: “Francis”???
Clay: Thanks.
I was in a similar crowd situation at the cathedral in Vienna Austria on Christmas Day. Made the mistake of trying to exit via the main door rather than one of the sides, and got caught in the jam of people leaving pushing against a crowd trying to come in. No one was hurt, but it was very uncomfortable for me at least. The other people in the crowd seemed to take the crush in stride.
The physics of a stampede sounds interesting, respectfully of course. So many people really do die that way. What is also interesting is the psychological processes involved. Much like civil unrest, war, and other quirks of human nature. A stampede is a small example of all of those things to a degree? I have some belief that no matter how good science becomes at understanding the events, even (or more so?) the people who actually know what these things are about are just as subject to them in similar situations. Odd.
I also noted that you suggested the deaths were more tragic for the ages of those deceased. This is strange to me. Would it have been better had they been octogenarians and above? I can see, in cases where choices have to be made, where qualitative(s) might come into play (either by choice or resource limits). But I cannot see how the grief or tragedy would be less by any demographic measure. An emotional sense, by you while writing or a thought picked up and transferred here without a thought?
I feel like I’ve fallen among a group of hyper-rational Randites, determined to get out the logical scales to “prove” that their logic trumps the mere emotion of their opponents. The increased regret at the death of a young person vs. the death of an old person is an emotional reaction. We feel it is against Nature for children to die before their parents. We even have a word for such a death: “untimely”. All the arguments in the world will not convince almost all of humanity that the death of a child is a calamity far worse than the death of a parent.
Morally, there is no difference – we don’t have stiffer penalties for killing a young person rather than an old one. But to pretend that to be “fair” we should simply aim for a level-headed “neuter” position when considering the level of regret appropriate in either case is absurd. It’s like expressing surprise that a person feels more upset over the death of a family member than over that of a stranger. Aren’t they both equally dead? Well, yes, but the emotional reaction is naturally different.
From Clay:
As for valuable contributions, it is no less possible for a person in his/her 60’s or 70’s to make an extraordinary contribution to society… a little research would likely find countless scientific discoveries made by wise older men and women BECAUSE of their wisdom and the skills they sharpened over their lifetimes. Would it not be especially “poignant” to miss a cure for cancer that was about to be discovered by a seasoned researcher because he died in an accident in his mid 60’s?
According to Isaac Newton, 23 or 24 was “the prime of my age for invention”. Einstein’s Nobel Prize work was done at 26. When they figured out the structure of DNA, Crick was in his mid 30s and Watson in his mid 20s.
In order to evade Neo’s spam filter, I have not given hyperlinks, but the above is easy to verify.
The statement that ‘the heart has reasons that reason knows not of’ can also be valid the other way. We may–afaic sometimes we should–overrule reason but IMO we shouldn’t ignore it even at its most inhuman.
Two posters to this thread have used the word “children” to bolster the arguments for assigning greater horror to the deaths in this event. One even drew a parallel to the feelings he would experience over the death of his “20 something children.”
These were NOT children. I followed the link to the article that Neo included in her article. It said:
“Police said those killed were between the ages of 18 and 38.”
38 year old children? 30 year old children? 25 year old children? Where does childhood stop? At the age of 18, a young man or woman can vote, buy a house, or pick up a gun and cross the ocean to defend our nation. We don’t let children do that. Those are the provinces of adults. In my mind, this seems to circle back to my belief that we are allowing our feelings and beliefs about real children (I’m talking infants, toddlers, grade schoolers and the like) to creep into our feelings for young adults who died a senseless and tragic death.
This seems to be a visceral issue… one of those things you feel in your firmware. You either picture these people as children and that enhances the horror, or you see them as adults and you do not feel the added horror of losing children.
If we are really talking about a true emotional difference regarding the death of a young adult (or as Neo originally categorized them… “young people”) and an elderly person, then let’s stop calling these young adults “children.” That just muddies the water.
Dr. Mabuse – I assure you that I am not hyper-rationally weighing the value of life on scales. This is a visceral issue for me, too. My mother is still reasonably healthy (not yet in the “failing” state that Neo described). I do not believe that I would feel significantly less grief for her “untimely” death than I would for my 27 year old son’s. Does that make me a hyper rational Randite?
gs – you raise valid points that tend to indicate fewer significant contributions by older people to society. I was thinking of articles I have read in magazines such as Discovery in which people in their late 50s and 60s still seem to be in the forefront of their fields. But I freely confess that I can dredge up no specifics to bolster that memory. So that reduces my comment to unsubstantiated anecdote.
Clay, IMHO the decline of creativity with age has been seriously overestimated in recent decades but is real nevertheless.
part off topic..
the whole movie of soviet story is up online…
“Anyone who thinks communist socialism is less evil than Hitler’s National Socialism needs to scrape up the courage to watch The Soviet Story:”
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2010/07/socialism-laid.html
which i would suggest seeing before one sees
Oliver Stone: ‘Jewish-Dominated Media’ Prevents Hitler from Being Portrayed ‘in Context’
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/alana-goodman/2010/07/25/oliver-stone-jewish-dominated-media-prevents-hitler-being-portrayed-c#ixzz=
sine they love heidekker and others, they are going to have to clean up their heroes..
so they will use the media to do so. as i said, the progressive Jews separating Jews from the rest in the holocaust facilitated its repeat…
that the progressives have hated jews since they are the resevoir of judeo christian thought which was completely against the desires of people like Moses Harmon and his newsletter Lucifer Bringer of Light..
his daughter and others created modern feminism… (and falsely associated other actions in history as if they were inspired by the same thing to give them historical certainty going back to before cave men times – plays a good vanity card too)
Stone said that his upcoming Showtime documentary series “Secret History of America,” seeks to put Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.”
probably the same context that zinn and durante gave. I doubt it will be any different than his other soviet active measures adopted for the screen….
“Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support,”
Stone said that, “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30 [million killed].”
Of course someone will crow up, as a Pavlovian response that what i said about the way the people of the Jewish faith did things was for a different reason. [same people who have yet to go back and read what has been changed]
anyone here wants to go into soviet story, the whole movie, and hear what they tell you happened to the German concentration camps after the war?
FDR signed them to Stalin who continued using them to exterminate Jews and others…
“The Jewish domination of the media,” responded Stone. “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”
they have EXACTLY the same attitude of the german people through the arguments of disparate impact.
that is, their success (not everyone else) is proof of their evil / just as mens success (not womens) is proof of their evil / whites success (not others), is proof of their evil
and all of them are slated for what end under progressivism and have been acted upon for 100 years?
the people who said they would never scapegoat, turned their whole male population into the oppressor group and the women did the scapegoating. (other groups are a lot smaller)
The director, who recently met with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, also slammed the U.S. policy toward Iran as “horrible.”
“Iran isn’t necessarily the good guy,” said Stone. “[B]ut we don’t know the full story!”
The Scarface screenwriter had even more encouraging words for socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who Stone called “a brave, blunt, earthy” man. The director has recently been promoting his Chavez-praising documentary called “South of the Border.”
When the interviewer pointed out that Chavez has had a less-than-stellar record on human rights, Stone immediately dismissed the criticism.
“The internet’s fully free [in Venezuela],” said Stone. “You can say what the hell you like. Compare it with all the other countries: Mexico, Guatemala, above all Colombia, which is a joke.”
as in germany, you can be sure that after events, these will make sure your given the right minds.
or rather, you continue to have the right minds which you dont want to change…
sorry about the diversion… no place else to put it
By basing his case on the maximally productive ages of Newton, Einstein, Watson and Crick, gs seems to be positioning himself to head up CMS after Berwick. Thanks for the strawmen.
TV reports I am seeing say that the old train station venue had a capacity of about 250,000. The estimated number of people inside and trying to get in was 1.4 million. There was one tunnel for access and that led to a ramp that accomodated fewer people than could get through the tunnel. Quite a few attendees were pretty drunk when they arrived at the tunnel. This whole thing was a massive planning screwup. Heads will roll.
1) The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife…
2) As one guy says:
Andre Aahrle, whose company Special Security Service says it handles about 1,000 big events per year, said Germany’s current requirements are already enough.
“The rules are absolutely sufficient, but only if they are respected,” Aahrle said.
As is often the case with things like this — someone ignores not only the rules but the reasons for the rules. I’m a big fan of flexible rules — but that does require a modicum of sense and rational consideration when you choose to violate their strictest intent.
Research continues:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25624/