Another Crowd Disaster - Cambodian Crush, 375+ dead

[Broomstick]

We've mentioned crowd disaster before, the most recent being one at a Cambodian water festival on Monday (if I have the date correct). Apparently, panic broke out on a crowded suspension bridge (the exact cause is not clear at this point) and the crowd stampeded. The result...

... well, as the say, a picture says a thousand words. I don't know what the audio is saying, but it's pretty obvious this is a disaster.

WARNING: graphic video of crowd stampede showing injured people and dead bodies. Watch at your own risk.



Some of the deaths resulted not only from people being crushed but also from electrocution from loose wiring for the bridge lights, and people falling/being pushed into the water below.

It's amazing how tangled together these people are, and how hard it is to extract them from the human knot even at the edges of the crowd. Some of the survivors were trapped for hours next to dead bodies, and over 700 people who survived were injured to one degree or another. Many are missing/unaccounted for, and many dead and injured not yet identified.

Clearly, once you're caught in something like this you're fucked and it's luck that will see you survive or not. Not surprisingly, the smaller you are the more likely you are to be injured or killed in such an event, although even the biggest and burliest human being has no guarantee of survival.

The aftermath - discarded shoes, clothing, personal effects - is also typical of what is seen after such a stampede. People lose things in the crush, and in the struggle to escape.

Be careful in crowds, and avoid lingering in choke points.

[ShadowDragon8685]

My goodness...

I was going to ask just how shoddy the bridge inspectors had to be for the wiring to electrocute people, but judging from those hanging neons which I presume were for the festival, even if the wires were all fastened properly people probably grabbed onto them trying to climb or hold on and they got pulled out.

I was confused at what I was seeing at first. It looked like people tugging on the hands of people who were standing in a crowd. Then I realized that it was human beings (and former human beings) who had been compressed together so tightly, so contorted together, that no one individual could free him or herself, likc a compression packing job like... I dunno, ramen or something.

Jeeze, that's horrible. And it looks like a good reason to stay the hell off crowds and bridges and especially crowded bridges.

[xt828]

Has there been anything about what caused the initial stampede?

I have to admit that I found it a bit odd that the Cambodian government was comparing the casualties to Pol Pot's legacy.

[Broomstick]

My goodness...

I was going to ask just how shoddy the bridge inspectors had to be for the wiring to electrocute people, but judging from those hanging neons which I presume were for the festival, even if the wires were all fastened properly people probably grabbed onto them trying to climb or hold on and they got pulled out.

Yes, the forces involved are quite amazing and destructive, and damage to the bridge no doubt occured. We had an earlier and quite lengthy thread about death-by-crowd, Here is the link. The event there was on a MUCH smaller scale, but gets into some of the physics involved later on in the thread along with pictures of thinks like reinforced concrete walls pushed over and destroyed by a crowd surge and steel railings/fences/walls bent, broken, or ripped out of the ground by the same.

I was confused at what I was seeing at first. It looked like people tugging on the hands of people who were standing in a crowd. Then I realized that it was human beings (and former human beings) who had been compressed together so tightly, so contorted together, that no one individual could free him or herself, likc a compression packing job like... I dunno, ramen or something.

Yep. It's a pretty horrible sight, once your brain processes what's going on, but reports of people being trampled to death in crowds usually aren't as explicit, which sometimes leads to internet tough guys going hur, hur, charge 'em with murder. The video shows just how helpless people are in such a situation.

Jeeze, that's horrible. And it looks like a good reason to stay the hell off crowds and bridges and especially crowded bridges.

It's a reason to be cautious in crowds, any crowds, even ones that aren't that big if you're going through a choke point like a doorway or gate.

[Broomstick]

Has there been anything about what caused the initial stampede?

Only speculation. We may never know what exactly triggered this.

I have to admit that I found it a bit odd that the Cambodian government was comparing the casualties to Pol Pot's legacy.

It's a mass casualty disaster. Cambodia's been relatively peaceful since they got rid of Pol Pott and his buddies, so that's what they compare it to. Sort of like the US tendency to compare things to 9/11. It's a national tragedy/disaster compared to another national tragedy/disaster.

[Hillary]

That's just horrible. I remember being involved in a surging crowd once on my way to a football match at Highbury. It was a cup match against Liverpool, so the queue for the turnstiles was pretty big and after a while I became uncomfortable and decided to give it a miss. However, I couldn't get out of the queue we were so packed in - I was even dragged round a corner against my will by the sheer force of the crowd. And I'm a big chap - 6 ft and well built.

There were kids being pulled out of the crowd and two girls were sobbing near where I was (they were too short to see what was going on and were clearly terrified) but nobody could do anything - we couldn't even give them any breathing space it was so packed. We got lucky though - nobody got injured, I got into the match and thought little more about it.....until 6 months later when 94 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at Hillsborough. Now I know just how lucky I was that night.

It always seems inconceivable that this sort of pressure could be exterted entirely by a group of people. You'd think it would be easy to solve - people at the back stop pushing and soon enough there's no pressure at the front. Somehow it doesn't work like that and you get a situation like this.

Truly horrible.

[Alyeska]

Crowd management specializes in preventing these sorts of catastrophes. You create lines with significant sharp turns in them and have people maintaining crowd control to prevent things from getting out of hand. The shorter a distance between sharp turns the harder it is for the crowd to exert force.

[Broomstick]

Understood - but that might be difficult to set up on a bridge at short notice. Historically, bridges have been a location for this sort of crowd crush because people funnel into them and they act as choke points. Much more difficult for this sort of thing to happen in, say, an open field (though probably not impossible).

[Pelranius]

Crowd stampedes at open fields have included a gift giveaway at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II (killed quite a number of people, at that point people began to whisper about his reign being cursed).

[ShadowDragon8685]

It also seems probable that very same effect was behind melee-dominated warfare. You get enough guys together and throw them at somebody, the guys at the front won't be able to stop even if they want to. And then of course someone got the bright idea to give all their guys shields and put them in a formation that helped to deflect the incoming wave whilst magnifying the effect at the tip of their own incoming wave, and you've got a phalanx.


That's pretty horrible, really.