2010 Accident
At the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg, the number of people attending allegedly reached 1.4 million – the original expectation was around 800,000 – whereas police believed around 400,000 people were present. 21 people were killed, and more than 500 injured, in an incident near an overcrowded tunnel leading into the festival. At least 20 casualties resulted from suffocation, caused by crowd pressure.
So far nobody has been held financially responsible for this tragic event and the gathering of at least twice the capacity of people at the Duisburg grounds, and German authorities are no longer searching for those who took large profits.
Safety experts and a fire service investigator had previously warned that the site was not suitable for the numbers expected to attend. Rainer Schaller, the festival's organizer and chief executive officer, later said the festival would not continue in future, thus ending the festival.
A preliminary investigation of the ministry of the interior placed heavy blame on the organizers around Rainer Schaller. Schaller in turn claimed that errors by the police in controlling streams of visitors led to the accident.
Read more about this topic: Love Parade
Famous quotes containing the word accident:
“Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)