THE MAYOR of Duisburg has resisted growing calls for his resignation amid claims he brushed aside police concerns about the venue for Saturday’s Love Parade, where 20 people were crushed to death.
During a visit to the accident site on Sunday evening, Adolf Sauerland was booed and attacked by locals and is now accompanied everywhere by two bodyguards.
A report prepared earlier this month and leaked to the media yesterday put the maximum occupancy of the venue, a 25-hectare (62-acre) disused freight yard, at 250,000. Shortly before Saturday’s disaster, Mr Sauerland told journalists at the party that 1.4 million visitors had been counted so far, a figure he has since declined to repeat. The leaked document also apparently promises to set aside safety regulations that would otherwise have ruled out the designated site.
Duisburg’s fire and police service said they warned the mayor in writing last year that the freight yard, with its single approach road, was unsuitable for a mass event like the Love Parade.
“I warned them that Duisburg is not a suitable location for the Love Parade. It’s too small and too cramped,” said Rainer Wendt, head of Germany’s police union. “The mayor was under immense pressure; he didn’t want to be a party pooper.”
Shortly after 5pm on Saturday afternoon, thousands of party-goers were packed into a narrow concrete tunnel and approach ramp – the only way in and out of the venue. As the crush intensified on the ramp, bounded by sheer concrete walls, eyewitnesses said about a dozen people climbed over a barrier and scaled a narrow staircase only to fall back into the crowd.
That reportedly triggered a mass stampede that left 20 dead – 12 women and eight men – and, at last count, more than 500 injured.
Some 43 people are still in medical treatment, according to police, with one still in a critical condition. Seven foreign nationals died including victims from Spain, China, Holland, Australia, Bosnia and Italy.
The mayor’s office and the Love Parade organisers now face charges including negligent manslaughter. All planning files have been seized by the state prosecutor and responsibility for the investigation has been transferred from Duisburg police to Cologne. Investigators have said their inquiry will take “weeks if not months”.
“If the city is to be accused of anything, then we will accept responsibility,” said Mr Sauerland yesterday. “For now the priority is working through the terrible events and bringing the various pieces of the puzzle together into one picture,” he said.
The mayor and his team have made themselves highly unpopular in Duisburg for declining to admit responsibility for any part of Saturday’s disaster. Mr Sauerland told public radio he would “give answers as soon as we’ve given answers to the state prosecutor”.
Earlier, one of his organisation team blamed the victims for “not following the rules”.
“The accident didn’t happen because the tunnel was too tight or because there was a mass panic,” said Prof Michael Schreckenberg, an expert in mass panic at the University of Duisburg and involved in planning the event. “This happened because some people behind the tunnel tried to get into the festival venue faster than others.” German newspapers were almost universally damning in their verdicts yesterday.
"This was no tragedy as the [organisers] would have us believe," wrote the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeinedaily. "No one is innocently at fault . . . The scandal is that everyone was warned: the city, the police, the organisers and advisers."