Crowd surge12/25/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Rumors about a potential threat can have a similarly powerful effect on crowd behavior, he adds.įurthermore, Hutton points to the geography of this district of Seoul. In addition, unconfirmed reports say there was talk of celebrities-or an “attraction”-in the crowd, which drew people in, Asgary says. “This happened at night, when visibility is low,” and people are less alert, he notes. ![]() were moving in opposite directions in a narrow street, which means the likelihood of danger is already high.”Īsgary says the time of day likely contributed to the crush. “This is a dynamic crowd, moving in the space in different directions, especially in the area that was subject to this incident. “In this case, we are talking about a crowd that is not standing or staying in one place,” Asgary says. The crowd’s tremendous size was an obvious issue-an estimated 100,000 people converged on Itaewon-but so was its motion. Still, prior to any full-scale investigation, Asgary notes a few key factors that likely led the Seoul gathering to turn deadly. “There are typically investigations planned and conducted after events like this to go and point out what went wrong in detail.” “In a situation like this, it is hard to say exactly what went wrong,” Asgary says. What went wrong in Seoul to cause such a deadly crowd crush? Scientific American spoke with Ali Asgary, an expert in disaster and emergency management at Ontario’s York University, and Alison Hutton, an expert in the health and safety of mass gatherings at Australia’s University of Newcastle, about the causes of Seoul’s crowd crush, ideal crowd management strategies and what people can do to stay safe during mass gatherings. ![]() (When people do get trampled, that often happens after they pass out from lack of oxygen.) Because of the crowd’s density and motion, people in a crowd crush generally find themselves unable to control their movements as they are swept along by the many individuals around them. The accident in Seoul is what’s known as a “crowd crush.” Such events are sometimes called a “stampede,” but that term is misleading: Most deaths in a crowd crush are caused by asphyxiation resulting from the pressure on the lungs rather than trampling. More than 150 people died, and more than 170 were injured. The tight conditions led to a dangerous surge of people through the sloping streets of Itaewon-especially one narrow alleyway. That Saturday night, tens of thousands of people converged on Itaewon-a district of the city that is known for its nightlife-until the crowd was so compact in many areas that people were unable to move. Most were in their late teens and 20s, said Choi Seong-beom, the chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department.Īt least 90% of the victims had been identified by midday Sunday there were delays in identifying some foreign nationals and teenagers under 17 who did not yet have identification cards, South Korea's Interior Ministry said in a statement.A Halloween festival in Seoul, South Korea, resulted in a deadly crush on October 29. Of the injured, 23 are in critical condition, while 79 others have less severe injuries. The Yongsan fire department said in a statement that the other foreign victims were from China, Iran, France, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Norway, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Austria and Kazakhstan. The embassy did not provide any details about the victims, such as their ages or identities. Gieske was studying in South Korea this semester, Capilouto said. victims who perished in the crowd crush, the university’s president, Eli Capilouto, announced to the school Sunday. The University of Kentucky identified one of its students, Anne Gieske, a third-year nursing student from northern Kentucky, as one of the two U.S. “Our staff in Seoul and colleagues in the United States are working tirelessly to provide consular assistance to the victims of last night’s incident and their families,” the spokesperson said. citizens were among the dead, a spokesperson for the U.S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |