EMBATTLED OFFICIALS in Duisburg have refused to comment on claims they ignored safety warnings ahead of Saturday’s ill-fated Love Parade, at which 19 people were crushed to death.
The state prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into the organisers of the event in the western German city, near Düsseldorf. At a press conference yesterday, the organisers announced the end of the techno music festival out of respect for the dead and over 340 people who were injured during a stampede along a tunnel and up a ramp approaching the festival grounds.
“A terrible tragedy happened yesterday; we will do everything possible to clear up what happened,” said festival organiser Rainer Schaller at a heated press conference in Duisburg town hall.
“The Love Parade was always a peaceful event, a joyous party. Out of respect for the dead we will no longer continue. This means the end of the Love Parade.”
Sitting beside him, the clearly overwhelmed mayor Adolf Sauerland appeared unable to answer questions in any detail, saying it was “impossible to put this tragedy into words”.
Crisis team manager Wolfgang Rabe dismissed heated accusations by journalists that the 250,000sq metre site, a disused freight railyard, was too small for the reported 1.4 million party-goers. For weeks, local coverage was dominated by concerns about the first-ever enclosed site for the techno music festival, in a city of 490,000.
The event was cancelled last year in the nearby city of Bochum amid security concerns.
Mr Rabe insisted “adequate measures were in place to deal with crowds of over one million”, although officials were not able to supply any attendance figures.
Officials for Duisburg’s fire service and police union said yesterday their concerns had been overruled or ignored. “The dead were the victims of material interests,” local police union spokesman Wolfgang Orscheschek told a local newspaper.
The claims were denied by the police spokesperson and by acting police commissioner Detlef von Schmeling. He took issue, too, with “tunnel of death” reports in the German media.
“No one died in the tunnel,” he said. “Of those who died, 14 people were found in the area of a blocked-off staircase and two near a wall.” However, an inspection of the site yesterday revealed at least three white outlines of bodies in the last stretch of the tunnel – a 100-metre long structure from the 1950s with no emergency exits.
Before increasingly incredulous journalists yesterday, one city official claimed the incident occurred because members of the crowd “failed to heed the security plan”.
Neither police nor organisers have accepted responsibility for allowing the crowd to build up for up to an hour outside the site. Panic spread among the crowd around 5pm and dozens were trampled. Among the 19 dead, aged between 20 and 40, were two Spanish women, an Italian woman, a Dutchman, a Chinese man, a Bosnian and an Australian.
“Our concerns – particularly about the tunnel – were always politely but firmly pushed to one side,” said Nicole Abassi, who lives in the street leading to the tunnel. “The tunnel is oppressive enough when one person walks through, but thousands were trapped in there.”
Duisburg officials denied overruling security concerns to allow the parade go ahead as a key event as part of this year’s Ruhr 2010 capital of culture. Just a week ago, over 3 million people partied without incident on a nearby motorway as part of the events.
“It’s clear fundamentals were overlooked,” said Fritz Pleitgen, head of Ruhr 2010. “Too much attention paid to the grounds themselves, and not enough on the approach roads.”