Tragedy at Germany Love Parade (19 people dead)

[Elano]

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At least 19 people reportedly died at the Love Parade, a well-known dance event in the German city of Duisburg, and more than 340 were said to be injured as the apparent closure of a gate resulted in a suffocating crush of people. Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland was quoted in German press as saying the Love Parade was "one of the biggest tragedies the city has ever experienced," and festival organizers announced Sunday that the event would be  discontinued permanently.

The Love Parade, a techno- and trance-focused DJ-led event, turned deadly late Saturday afternoon as attendees were trapped in a tunnel leading to the main concert site. The exact cause of the crush was difficult to pinpoint, but numerous eyewitness accounts and reports from the German and British media seemed to indicate the tunnel exit was closed when it was determined the event was at capacity. Yet those awaiting to get in continued to move forward even as those at the end of the tunnel attempted to turn around.

The below is from a detailed timeline of events in Germany's Deutsche Welle:

    A bottleneck forms in the tunnel as people continue pushing forward. Simultaneously, others attempt to move in the opposite direction to return to the railway station. The air begins to thin and panic builds as some attempt to escape -- to no avail. Many people are intoxicated or using drugs, and are severely dehydrated.

The BBC has quoted police officials as saying 14 were killed on the steps outside the tunnel. At least six of the dead were said to be foreigners, ranging in age from 20 to 40. It appeared to have been hours before medical personnel could safely navigate the crowd and reach the tunnel, and the concert wasn't immediately canceled as organizers feared a mass panic.

News of the tragedy did not immediately reach those inside or performing at the event. Trance star DJ Tiësto was one of Love Parade's headliners, and the artist noted on his Twitter account that he was not informed of the incident until he was out of the country.

"I want to send my deepest condolences to the families and friends of the people who died today," wrote Tiësto. "I am really upset and sad about this."

Love Parade organizer Rainer Schaller addressed the media on Sunday and said he was permanently discontinuing the dance gathering in the wake of the tragedy. "We are going to discontinue the event in the future and that means to say the Love Parade will no longer take place," Schaller said at Sunday's press conference, which can be viewed on the BBC website.

The Love Parade was established in Berlin in 1989, and this year marked the first time the event was held in Duisburg. Last year's event was scheduled for Bochum but was reportedly canceled over concerns about policing the massive crowd.

The tragedy comes as dance-focused events have fallen under increased scrutiny, especially in Los Angeles. This summer's Electric Daisy Carnival at L.A. Memorial Coliseum and adjoining Exposition Park led to more than 100 hospitalizations. A 15-year-old girl died of a suspected drug overdose after attending the two-day dance event. Dance culture has since been a focus of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which has established a rave task force.

Though the Insomniac Events' Electric Daisy Carnival averaged 80,000 to 100,000 attendees per day, its size and scope paled in comparison to those of the Love Parade. There does not yet appear to be an accurate attendance figure for the German event; some estimates have it as high as 1.4 million.

That number may be somewhat inflated; organizers were reportedly prepared for about 700,000 attendees. The BBC has quoted officials as saying attendance was closer to 350,000; Deutsche Welle estimated it closer to 500,000. It's unclear whether the figures differentiate between those who descended upon Duisburg and those who made it inside the concert venue.

Here in Los Angeles, the Coliseum Commission has imposed a temporary ban on rave contracts, although three events scheduled for the remainder of 2010 were granted approval to continue. The commission — the joint state, county and city panel that oversees the venue — has, however, imposed new restrictions on the promoters of dance events.

Going forward, promoters must enforce a strict age limit of 18 by checking identification, hire a team of emergency-room doctors to work on-site and warn rave-goers about the dangers of the illegal drug Ecstasy, which some rave attendees see as an integral part of the experience. Rong-Gong Lin II has more details in his recent Times story: "Coliseum imposes conditions on three scheduled raves."

Insomniac Events issued a press release Sunday stating that its 18-and-older policy was successfully enforced at Saturday's dance and hip-hop Audiotistic concert, which was held at the NOS Center in San Bernardino. "Audiotistic 2010 proves that Insomniac Events knows how to produce a safe and secure music festival and that an 18 and older policy can be implemented successfully,” said Pasquale Rotella, Insomniac’s chief executive, in a statement.

[Elano]

THEY danced and sang like the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper: the grimy west German town of Duisburg had rarely seen such a spectacle.

Almost a million Love Parade revellers, many in pink wigs, red hearts on their nipples, bare-chested in the heat, wound their way from the rail station - and into a death trap.

Germany has been left shocked by the events that left at least 19 people dead, including an Australian woman, and 340 injured. It was "the party from hell", one local policeman said.

The arguments have already started. Who was to blame? How could Germany betray its youth?

The Love Parade, an orgy of loud music and extravagant attire, has been staged in Germany since 1989, and was the world's largest techno party. It was a rare moment when young Germans could celebrate en masse and take party drugs in public. The only condition was that it should be free of violence and well organised.

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That changed suddenly on Saturday, when the festival turned into a crazed and deadly stampede. Following the disaster, one of the organisers, Rainer Schaller, announced yesterday this would be the last Love Parade.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the cause of the tragedy, but much is already clear.

Travelling in 700 special trains, the ravers descended on Duisburg on Saturday. On offer was a full night of techno, trance and house music. The 16 motorised floats full of dancers had made their way to the main performance site, a former railway marshalling yard a 30-minute walk from the main station.

Yesterday, the route looked as if it had been ravaged by an undisciplined army.

"I ordered in 9000 extra cans of beer and 1000 cans of alcopops," said Nejat Morkan, cleaning up his kiosk. "They drank like fish before they went to the party, but by the time they came back, nobody wanted to celebrate anything."

The performance site was 230,000sq m in size. Had the crowd been 300,000 or even half a million, that might have been sufficient. But as ravers were warned on the internet days in advance, a million were on the way.

The festival had authorisation for 250,000 revellers instead of the 1.4 million the organisers said attended, the German magazine Spiegel reported yesterday.

"The organisation was very bad," said Patrick Guenter, a 22-year-old baker.

"Quickly there was nothing to drink apart from alcohol, and although the festival was full, they kept letting people in."

MadCat, a German blogger, wrote four days before the disaster: "People are going to be like sardines in a can . . . If panic should break out, then people will die. I'm not going to let my children go."

When Berlin staged the Love Parade in the 1990s, the swelling crowds could spill over into the nearby Tiergarten park.

But the Duisburg site was surrounded by high fencing. "There have been serious management blunders," said Dr Motte, a Berlin disc jockey and a founder of the Love Parade event.

Wolfgang Orscheschek, deputy chief of the German police union, said: "Planning was sacrificed for material reasons."

But Wolfgang Rabe, Duisburg's security co-ordinator, rejected the criticism, saying the number of revellers was exaggerated and the 1200 police were adequate.

Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland defended what he said was a "solid security plan".

The core problem was that the revellers had to pass through a single long railway tunnel to enter the compound. Hundreds of thousands who packed into the poorly ventilated tunnel became stuck for well over an hour.

At the tunnel entrance, some youths tried to scramble up an escarpment. A few tumbled backwards off ladders and fell into the crowd. This appears to have triggered mass panic.

Many people were already fainting because of dehydration, and they too were lying on the ground as the crowd surged forwards and backwards. Doctors reported many punctured lungs and damaged livers and kidneys among the dead and injured.

[Sofa_King_Awesome]

Good

[Muhfukka]

fuckin eurotrash

[Chamillitary Click]

19 Germans died? I dig it.

[westsiderider323]

shouldnt  have been fuckin around

[Fraxxx]

Next time they should ask... anyone before they try to fit 1.4 million people in an area built for 250.000.

19 Germans died? I dig it.

People from all over Europe died, even from Autralia, but knowing that your reply would've been the same I guess.

[Elano]

19 Germans died? I dig it.

you are fuckin pathetic

[bullet_wrongkind]

fuckin eurotrash

[Elano]

fuckin eurotrash

europe own your ass too, stupid motherfucker 

[bullet_wrongkind]

fuckin eurotrash

europe own your ass too, stupid motherfucker 

people r fucken ignorant. this music is for stupid, dancin stupid, actin stupid. jobless, uneducated people. they doin drugs, and infectin themselves with aids. messin in the crowd. just a bunch of fucken losers.

i would say its their own fault.

[westsiderider323]

fuckin eurotrash

[bullet_wrongkind]

fuckin eurotrash

we share all the same opinion

[Chamillitary Click]

19 Germans died? I dig it.

you are fuckin pathetic

You're right. I should only celebrate if it's over 30 comfirmed deaths.

[Elano]

fuckin eurotrash

we share all the same opinion

faggots and lowlifes get along very well