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[bacasper]

Woodstock could never happen again - at least not by trying.

WTF, one entrance/exit tunnel for 1.4 million people, and they closed it??? Sounds like police negligence to me.

Grim Questions Follow German Stampede

By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: July 25, 2010

BERLIN � A deadly stampede at a German music festival over the weekend has raised accusations of negligence aimed at event organizers, politicians and the police, who on Sunday defended their actions in one of the deadliest public events in recent years.

The stampede, at the Love Parade festival in the western city of Duisburg, left 19 dead and 340 injured on Saturday as participants crowded into an underpass that was on the way to the entrance. Victims were crushed against the walls of the tunnel and trampled underfoot, investigators said, and many of those who died were suffocated.

On Sunday morning, the tunnel was closed to the public, but dozens of people had gathered outside it, most of them silent, whispering or sobbing. Some had laid flowers, other had lit candles. There was a white T-shirt propped up by a stick. It read: �19 dead, 360 injured.�

The prosecutor of Duisburg has called for an official investigation to determine why so many people had become trapped inside a 200-meter long tunnel. There were 5,000 police officers to handle security at the event, which was held at a former freight railroad yard.

At an angry and other emotional news conference on Sunday, Wolfgang Rabe, head of an emergency task force, said the police had first tried to close the tunnel a half an hour before the chaos broke out on Saturday.

�Apparently some tried to enter the area by climbing a fence along a ramp and then fell,� Mr. Rabe said at the news conference, which also included Detlef von Schmeling, Duisburg�s deputy police chief.

Mr. von Schmeling said several people had fallen from the ramp. But, he added, �I can�t confirm that there was such pressure that such an accident was inevitable.�

Christoph Gilles, a police spokesman, said: �We are working with the organizers and collecting evidence in hopes of reconstructing the events. But it will be labor and time intensive.�

The chaos began in the late afternoon as the exit from the tunnel was closed by the police, who cited safety reasons; there were already 1.4 million people on the site.

The entrance to the Love Parade itself, apparently the only such entrance, had been sealed beyond the tunnel exit to prevent further congestion on the festival grounds.

After the tunnel exit was closed, the crowds inside panicked. They could not turn back because the tunnel behind them was still packed thick with people trying to get in.

To compound the problem, revelers inside the festival, told by loudspeakers to exit, piled into the tunnel, causing even more congestion and panic.

Video footage shot from attendees showed shocking scenes of panic, with people scrambling to climb ladders, or being pulled up to nearby ramps. In the scramble, people were crushed, leaving behind dead bodies and personal possessions: broken spectacles, shoes, bags.

�There were piles of injured on the ground, some being resuscitated, others dead and covered with sheets,� said Isabel Schl�sser, 18, who attended the event, according to Reuters. �It was way too full in the afternoon. Everyone wanted to get in.�

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