Duisburg Love Parade Crush (2010)
On 24 July 2010, 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 a crush near an overcrowded tunnel leading into the festival. Some reports suggested the deaths were caused by people falling off a staircase as they tried to escape the tunnel. However, autopsies showed that all of the fatalities were due to crushed rib cages and suffocation.
A lengthy and detailed approval process, which was essentially a risk and vulnerability assessment, was carried out over many months before the festival was to be held and included input from the police and fire officials and even a world-renowned expert on crowd control. Still, the process was flawed. Estimates and analyses became distorted and misrepresented over time, and the result was that the festival was in fact allowed to proceed at a location that never should have been used and was not appropriate for the number of people that showed up.
Links to coverage and reporting of the incident:
'Love Parade Stamped Was a Tragedy Waiting to Happen':
The DESURBS project is co-funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme under the Security theme.
