Prosecutors in Germany have launched an investigation after 19 people were crushed to death at a techno music festival in the city of Duisburg amid accusations that organisers had failed to heed repeated warnings by safety experts.
City officials said at a press conference today that 16 of the 19 victims, who were aged between 20 and 40 years old, had been identified. They included a 27-year-old Australian woman from New South Wales, an Italian woman, a 22-year-old Dutchman and a Chinese man. More than 340 people were injured when revellers at the Love Parade, which attracted an estimated 1.4 million people, packed into a tunnel that appears to have been the only entrance into the festival after police closed the grounds due to overcrowding.
The tunnel, 100 metres long and 16 metres wide, had no escape routes. It quickly became hot and airless and scores of people inside collapsed. Others fell an estimated nine metres from a ladder when they tried to find another route out of the grounds. At least 10 people had to be resuscitated. Sixteen died at the festival, grounds, and the other three in or on their way to hospital. Medics on the scene said many died from asphyxiation and crushed spinal cords.
Organisers of the Love Parade, first held in Berlin in 1989, confirmed that investigators today seized documents relating to the organisation of the event as prosecutors launched their inquiry. The Love Parade's head organiser, Rainer Schaller, said he and his team were cooperating fully with the police. He also announced the discontinuation of the event, which had attained a cult status around the world and spawned scores of copy-cat events from Leeds to Rio de Janeiro.
"The Love Parade has always been a peaceful party, but it will forever be overshadowed by the accident, so out of respect for the victims the Love Parade will never take place again," he said.
Among the documents seized by police is the report by a fire service investigator who warned of the danger if crowds were encouraged to move through the tunnel, and suggested it should be sealed.
Other safety experts had warned that the 230,000 square metres of party grounds — on the site of a disused railway depot on the outskirts of Rhur Valley city — were large enough to hold only up to half a million ravers, and not the 1.4 million who did turn up for the event.
A spokesman for the police trade union, Wolfgang Orscheschek, representing the 1,400 police officers who were on duty at the Love Parade, said the victims had been "sacrificed for material interests", insisting that Duisburg's leaders had come under immense pressure from the event's organisers.
"They had no choice but to say 'yes' to the event, despite urgent warnings from security experts that it should not have gone ahead," he said.
Last year the nearby city of Bochum pulled out of the event because of similar safety concerns. Despite misgivings and a campaign by local residents to ban the event, Duisburg's mayor Adolf Sauerland said the "security concept" had been "sound". He said he was unable to comment due to the police investigation, other than to express his sympathy with the victims and their families.
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