Crowd control failure...again: https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/03/1-killed-9-hurt-in-stampede-at-glorilla-concert-in-new-york.html

brucek

Well-Known Member

This type of panicked crowd stampede happens way too often. I don't know any details...but my observation is that many venues only let people exit out the main entrance...not using any "fire" exits, so that the exit is a big crush in the best case...and a crush in a panic. Venues that allow the public to spill out of all exits are much quicker and safer to exit from.


Stay safe and help protect the public from their selves

Bruce
 
I saw this this morning. It is sad. Certainly looks like good procedures and staffing were not in place or executed to provide for a safe expirence for everyone.

~Dave
 
@brucek it may not be a case of "letting" people exit out the main entrance. Going out the way you came in is basic human instinct. Most people don't take stock of any alternatives unless they are pointed out to them.
 
The Amory is diagonally across the street from our theater. This is indeed a sad and unfortunate event. The management there has been called into question several times as there is often a police presence needed for concerts there. The ups and downs of theater: the Rochester Broadway Theater League just bought the venue directly across the street from the Armory this week. How this all will affect attendance the rest of the season is a question.
 
I had my first experience with crowd crush a few months ago at the New Year's event downtown here in Sarasota. The annual "Pineapple drop" where they lower a giant festive pineapple from a crane to ring in the new year. On schedule, the pineapple dropped, everyone sang together, and then everyone in all 4 directions from that intersection started flooding out -- but everyone was trying to exit against each other based on whichever direction they had parked in, so you just kind of had to fall into a train of people headed in whichever direction you were trying to go and the crowd built up a 2-3 city block mass of people in each direction trying to crisscross each other's paths. One woman collapsed drunk on the corner of that intersection and with the trains of people stacking up around her, nobody more than 5ft away from her could see what the "hold-up" was until some guy started loudly shouting that a woman was on the ground and they needed a paramedic. There were lots of police, firefighters, and paramedics staffing that event, so they were able to get to her pretty quickly but with these trains of people trying to push past each other, even a minute or two of the trains coming to a complete stop caused an intense crowd crush and once they got to her, it was still another 4-5 minutes of everyone packed together before things started moving again. Thankfully nobody was hurt from getting stepped on but one celebratory firecracker in the crowd could've turned that into a mass casualty incident in a heartbeat.

Lots of drunk people tightly packed together and poor egress planning is a recipe for things to get ugly quickly. There's a very fine line, a razor's edge thin, between things being okay and things suddenly getting out of hand in these situations.
 
The (fairly) recent tragedy at Brixton Academy was a case in reverse, of a crush forming as people tried to get in to an already full venue.
 
You know, a game, that in hindsight was rather grotesque, that kids would play in my high school in the late 70's , was when kids were gathering in front a a classroom door waiting to enter, someone would yell out "Who Concert" and everyone would crush through the door as fast as they could.

As an adult, it is hard to hear about anyone getting hurt/killed at an "entertainment" event. It just goes to show how little clue I used to have...
 
I had a similar experience to Mike's in New Orleans a NYE back when I was in college. We were on Bourbon Street and we were just walking forward and it was crowded, but we still could move about relatively freely. At some point, almost imperceptibly, the crowd just kinda stopped. There was a group of us on this sidewalk, but everyone from one building to the other across the street were packed shoulder to shoulder and no one was moving because no one had any room to move. Then at some point EVERYONE shifted and the entire crowd surged in one direction, essentially just floating. I remember thinking I had to keep my feet under me, but the feeling of being essentially lifted in a sea of people and just flowing was disconcerting to say the least. We managed to find a sidestreet where the crowd thinned, but it wasn't until years later I learned just how dangerous that situation really was.
 
You know, a game, that in hindsight was rather grotesque, that kids would play in my high school in the late 70's , was when kids were gathering in front a a classroom door waiting to enter, someone would yell out "Who Concert" and everyone would crush through the door as fast as they could.

As an adult, it is hard to hear about anyone getting hurt/killed at an "entertainment" event. It just goes to show how little clue I used to have...

I sought out a copy of the book "Are the Kids All Right?: The Rock Generation and Its Hidden Death Wish" to read about the tragedy at that show after playing the arena a few times and it is a good lesson in what can go wrong.
 
Seems like a good time to remind everyone looking for more understanding of these events, and how to prevent them, that the Event Safety Alliance is here on the 'Booth and posting each of their podcast episodes as they are released. Steven Adelman and Danielle Hernandez are deeply knowledgable on these sorts of things and I guarantee you'll learn something that's probably applicable to what you're curious about.

Event Safety Podcast Episodes on ControlBooth
 
If you get a chance attend one of Eric Stuart’s crowd safety classes. It will change your perspective on crowd managment. I did it last September. Usually hosted by the ESA. Yup, even I the rigger learned how to be better at my job by attending a crowd safety class.

For instance Bruce mention panic in his OP. Is trying to escape a perceived threat to your life by running away panic? Isn’t that a reasonable response given the circumstances?

And I will never look at escalators the same way again.
 
If you get a chance attend one of Eric Stuart’s crowd safety classes. It will change your perspective on crowd managment. I did it last September. Usually hosted by the ESA. Yup, even I the rigger learned how to be better at my job by attending a crowd safety class.

For instance Bruce mention panic in his OP. Is trying to escape a perceived threat to your life by running away panic? Isn’t that a reasonable response given the circumstances?

And I will never look at escalators the same way again.
I can think of a couple things that would make them poor egress choices regardless of direction (up or down) but this strikes me as more complex than it might appear. Is there any characteristic of the device or the people using it in emergency that particularly makes a path with an escalator, a "non-exitlator"?
 
You know, a game, that in hindsight was rather grotesque, that kids would play in my high school in the late 70's , was when kids were gathering in front a a classroom door waiting to enter, someone would yell out "Who Concert" and everyone would crush through the door as fast as they could.
Make that "very late '70's," as the event happened 12/03/79. I was almost there, but decided as a poor college student I shouldn't/couldn't afford the $10 ticket price. But yes, I remember inevitably some idiot would yell "Who concert" and start pushing playfully whenever there was a crowd, for several years after.

Everyone I know who went returned unscathed, physically at least.
 
I can think of a couple things that would make them poor egress choices regardless of direction (up or down) but this strikes me as more complex than it might appear. Is there any characteristic of the device or the people using it in emergency that particularly makes a path with an escalator, a "non-exitlator"?
Search "out of control escalator Rome" for a good example of why you don't want to test the capacity on those.
 
The (fairly) recent tragedy at Brixton Academy was a case in reverse, of a crush forming as people tried to get in to an already full venue.
That's what happened here in Cleveland back in the 90s when that Green Day concert at the old Nautica Stage was suddenly cancelled. My friends and I were inside and everyone had to wait around for what seemed like forever until extra police crowd control showed up to disperse the crushing crowd outside the gates and then file everyone that was inside, out of the emergency gate on the opposite side of the grandstands. It wasn't until later on that evening that we found out what happened and some people got injured. Thankfully no one died.
 

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