Itaewon, Korea: A Crossroad from Seoul to Las Vegas to London, and back again in the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster at Camp Randall Stadium
According to police emergency call logs, multiple calls were made as early as four hours before the tragedy unfolded, as the crowd in Seoul’s buzzy nightlife district Itaewon became so packed that partygoers were unable to move or breathe.
Amos says safe crowds act like a gas; people are like particles that can move around freely. But add too many people—about five or six for every square meter—and the crowd transforms to become more like a liquid. “Where the crowd is a fluid, that’s where we’ve got the potential for problems,” he says. You are a particle at the mercy of physics.
A small push from the back of the crowd can grow stronger as it ripples through the group like a wave. If it reaches a person next to an obstruction such as a wall or fence, then it has nowhere to go. Without an outlet, that force can now crush the people in its path. In the Itaewon incident, a collapse in the crowd may have caused the obstruction, with one or more people falling in the densely packed group. Amos says the force of the crowd can hem in people who are trapped, preventing others from pulling them out.
Amos says people die in crowd crush from asphyxiation. When a person breathes in, they have a contraction in their chest. But when they try to breathe in again, the force of people around them can be too strong, making it impossible for their chest to expand and take in new air. Amos says that a group of five people can cause an equivalent of 694 pounds to break a person’s ribs.
Take the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, a crush that resulted in 97 deaths at Hillsborough Stadium in England. The strength of the crowd broke steel barriers, a feat that required forces on them to exceed 4,500 newtons, Amos says. Gil Fried, an attorney and professor at the University of West Florida with an expertise in crowd management, says metal railings were also twisted after a 1993 incident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium. The destruction was caused by over 1,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.
On Halloween in Itaewon: A teenage girl’s crush in a Seoul-Korean subway crowded with drunken revelers
A fresh graduate from school in her first job, a foreign exchange student excited for his first trip to Asia and a teenager helping raise their siblings after their father died.
The videos taken over the course of that night show the fact that what was supposed to be a fun event was quickly out of control.
Most of the victims are adolescents, with families mourning the loss of their loved ones. Amid the grief, anger has grown with demands for answers as to how things could have gone so terribly wrong.
Halloween in Itaewon is a popular place for young people to dress up and go to bars and nightclubs.
From the Itaewon subway station, the main nightlife strip can be accessed via a sloping alleyway less than 4 meters wide (13 feet), that runs between the brick wall of the Hamilton Hotel and some stores. On weekends, the alley becomes a busy thoroughfare for people coming and going, giving it a convivial atmosphere where friends meet up and party.
By 4 p.m. on October 29, crowds had become “significantly big,” said Park Chang-ki, a parking attendant who worked across the road from the alley where most of the crush took place.
“That alley doesn’t look safe … The caller said that people can be crushed to death. “I barely escaped, I think you need to control this, there are simply too many people.”
According to police logs, the second emergency call came just after 8 p.m., with the caller saying people were being pushed, falling and getting hurt. The caller said that it needed to be controlled.
The Itaewon streets, lined with clubs and bars that are packed with revelers, were shown on camera in a slow- moving wave.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/asia/itaewon-seoul-korea-halloween-crush-timeline-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
The danger of falling: A conversation between Chevalier, Blesi, Chang, and Farmer, a 20-year-old student in Korea
Anne-Lou Chevalier, a French exchange student, and her friends are laughing at the large number of people in the crowd in a selfie video that was taken at 8:41 pm.
But unease soon set in. In a video taken just minutes later, the group’s laughter has taken on a nervous edge as one girl says, “Just try not to fall.” One says, “I’m scared.” She passed out after the photo was taken and was evacuated by the crowd at 8:58 p.m.
By 9:30 p.m., the streets were crammed full; some people reported not even being able to exit the nearby subway station, with new partygoers still arriving in the area.
By now, the danger was obvious. Ian Chang, a 21-year-old university student from Florida, arrived in Itaewon around 9:40 p.m., planning to meet his friend Steven Blesi, another American exchange student – but the crowds were so severe he messaged Blesi at 10:17 p.m., urging him to avoid the area.
It’s not clear if his warning ever reached Blesi – one of the two American victims who died that night, the other being 20-year-old Anne Gieske from Kentucky.
Emily Farmer, a 28-year-old English teacher in Korea, escaped into a bar after being overwhelmed by the crowd. Shortly after, she said, rumors began spreading that somebody had died and patrons were not allowed to leave.
Some began taking desperate measures, including a photo of a man who scaled a wall to escape and cheered on by others.
“At 10:23 p.m. we received more than five reports that people fell, and they could either get hurt or die,” a first responder told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The first person who arrived at the scene said that authorities could see up to 10 rows of faces but could not see their legs. Most of the people in the bottom row were unconscious when workers laid them on the ground.
The police had a hard time reaching those who needed help because of the volume of people. Video posted to social media showed people performing compressions on other partygoers lying on the ground as they waited for medical attention.
One 20-year-old eyewitness, who requested anonymity because she did not feel comfortable having her name published, said when an officer tried to direct the crowds, she heard someone ask: “Is he a real policeman?”
By 11:46 p.m., South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency had reported that dozens of people were receiving medical assistance after suffering from “cardiac arrest,” citing fire authorities. There are police cars on the road and officers are blocking off the area.
At 11:55 p.m., the Seoul metropolitan government sent an emergency alert to residents in the Itaewon area, requesting vehicles to turn away due to “an emergency accident near Hamilton Hotel.”
By 12:30 a.m. photos showed a line of blue body bags on the street as first responders rushed the wounded onto stretchers and into ambulances.
Just after 1 a.m., authorities released the first death toll of 59 killed as they worked frantically to transfer injured people to nearby hospitals, and bodies to multiple mortuaries.
The city government received a lot of missing persons reports during those early hours, and started a days-long effort to identify victims.
By 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, as families across South Korea woke up to the news and began the agonizing search for their loved ones, the death toll had risen to 149.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/asia/itaewon-seoul-korea-halloween-crush-timeline-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
Investigating the Seoul Central Bureau of Investigation after the Aewon-Seoul Emergency Calls on December 20th, 2010 – Security measures have been suspended
“Through this incident, I feel deep responsibility for public safety and we will do our best to make sure such a tragedy as this does not occur again,” he said, announcing a special investigative team and promising transparency.
By Wednesday, that investigative unit raided local police stations across Seoul, seizing internal reports and documents relating to the emergency calls made that night.
Meanwhile, the chief of the Yongsan police station – responsible for the district where Itaewon is located – was suspended and replaced. The investigation is ongoing.