For those readers who might have spent the last couple of days on the Matto Grosso, or who just returned from Outer Mongolia: a panic occurred during the latest 'raver' Love Parade in Duisburg, resulting in, at the latest count, 21 dead, and over 500 injured. A party venue suitable for about 250,000 visitors, according to experts asked, was forced to try to take anything up to 1,400,000, depending on whose figures you might trust. When kids going into the venue came up against kids trying to leave it (both entrance and exit were the same) it came to a jam-up and people panicked.
What really pisses me off are the attempts to transfer guilt and responsibility from different responsible institutions to anyone and everyone - main thing is: it weren't us!
One of the first ones I heard was an expert in panicking, how it occurs ,how to avoid it, and so on. He was one of the ones who developed the security measures used for the occasion. In a television interview he said, paraphrased: " if people had stuck to the rules developed for this occasion, the emergency security plan would have worked"... I listened to this with increasing incredulity - what on earth are emergency security plans supposed to be for? Certainly not for the law-abiding, calm, reasonable citizens - they don't need emergency plans - where they are the plans are superfluous. Emergency and contingency plans should be about how to help those unfortunates who don't abide by the rules when the going gets tough. If that's the attitude of an expert to the job, then I consider it weak.
Next up was the local police force, who argued that they had warned the organizers that their contingency plans were insufficient; that the escape routes were too narrow, that the venue was unsuitable, and so on and so on. They blamed the organizers for what happened. Again, I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing - who, if not the police, or other authorities, would be in a position to ban the event if they were of the opinion that security wasn't up to scratch.
I could continue the litany, including the local politicos, such as burgomasters and the like, who also hurried to blame others, or exonerate themselves by pointing out that others had made fatal errors. If we get down to basics, in my opinion, then all have part of the blame, and all for ignominious reasons - the organizers for not reacting well enough to the warnings that did follow, the police for leaving it at warnings, the local politicians who might have put their desire for positive headlines before founded doubts as to the suitability of the venue, those institutions responsible for allowing this parade to take place in spite of the warning voices, and all this conglomerate led to: 'business as usual' and 21 people dead. A tragedy that, according to all appearances, was eminently avoidable. It's things like this that get me down, and shake my belief in the basic intelligence of us humans.
Instead of looking for a scapegoat, we'd all be better served if the responsible parties, regardless of who they, in the final judgement, are, joined together to analyze what went wrong, and how the lessons learned might serve to make guidelines for the future idiot-proof.
The deceased and their families should be in the prayers of those who believe in a God, and in the sympathy of those who don't
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