NFPA Journal - July/August 2012 - (Page 70)

A BETTER PLAN ready for Anything from Justin Bieber crowd crazes to music festival mishaps, recent events worldwide underscore the critical need to address inadequacies in emergency management and crowd control 2011 Severe weATher AT mUSic feSTivALS The indiana State fair tragedy was only one example last year of mother Nature quickly turning concerts into calamitous situations. heavy winds, for instance, toppled tents, lighting scaffolds, and video screens at a Belgian music festival five days after the indiana event, killing five and injuring more than 140. Strong gusts also brought down a stage at the Ottawa Bluesfest in canada last July, resulting in multiple injuries. Though nobody was hurt, a storm during a festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma, caused a lighting rig to slam to the ground prior to a scheduled performance. 2010 crOwd crUSh AT mUSic feSTivAL Attendance at the Love Parade, an electronic music festival in duisberg, Germany, swelled to more than 1 million people, according to news reports, surpassing the 300,000 reportedly permitted at the site, a former freight railway station. A knot of attendees eventually formed near a portion of a parade route that passed by the main entry ramp to the festival area. To ease the knot, festival organizers blocked the entrance to the ramp—which also served as the event’s primary exit—with the intent of thwarting attendees from entering in nearby tunnels. instead, the influx of visitors toward the ramp eventually created a crowd crush that killed 21 people and injured more than 500. 2009 crOwd iNcideNT AT ceLeBriTY APPeArANce Some 3,000 fans apparently became delirious with Justin Bieber fever while awaiting the teen pop singer’s public appearance at the roosevelt field mall in Garden city, New York. Screaming fans began pushing and shoving, resulting in the hospitalization of five people for minor injuries. Two members of Bieber’s record label and management were criminally charged for not adhering to a police request to send a Twitter message urging the crowd to disperse. charges were later dropped, and the men instead pled guilty to fire code violations, according to the AP. 2008 BLAck fridAY reTAiL eveNT The promise of sales lured more than 2,000 would-be shoppers to the walmart in valley Stream, New York. minutes before the 5 a.m. opening, unruly customers waiting outside began banging and pushing on the sliding-glass doors, which eventually buckled under the pressure. A seasonal worker was trampled and killed as frenzied shoppers stormed the store. “when they were saying [shoppers] had to leave, that an employee had been killed, people were yelling, ‘i’ve been in line since yesterday morning,’” one witness told the Associated Press (AP). “They kept shopping.” Officials attributed the death to the store’s inadequate security. following the incident, the National retail federation issued “crowd management guidelines” that recommend employee training for handling throngs of shoppers. 2006 crOwd iNcideNT AT reLiGiOUS ceremONY hajj, the annual pilgrimage to mecca, Saudi Arabia, has been the scene of numerous crowd incidents resulting in injuries and deaths. during the final days of hajj in 2006, for example, pilgrims participated in a ritual that has them toss stones at specific walls. more than 300 people were killed and hundreds were injured in a crowd crush that began when a swarm of pilgrims improperly exited a stone-throwing site and disrupted the flow of visitors entering the area from a nearby bridge. —Fred Durso, Jr. From 5 top: An aerial view of the Love Parade in Duisberg, Germany, before the crowd crush; a tent mangled by a severe storm at the site of an open-air concert in Belgium; a policeman stands inside the broken door of a Wal-Mart in New York where a seasonal worker was trampled to death by frenzied shoppers during a Black Friday event. 70 NFPA JOURNAL JULY/AUGUST 2012 Photographs: AP/wide world

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2012

NFPA Journal - July/august 2012
Contents
First Word
Mail Call
In a Flash
Perspectives
Firewatch
Research
Heads Up
Structural Ops
In Compliance
Buzzwords
Outreach
Electrical Safety
Wildfire Watch
Fenway at 100
Crowning Achievement
Safety at Center Stage
Firefighter Fatalities in the United States, 2011
What’s Hot
Looking Back

NFPA Journal - July/August 2012