![]() Somebody was on top of me I couldn’t breathe.” He was next to me and went down in the rush. “I can’t stop shaking I think my brother is dead. “I thought I was dead,” said Jim Holstrom, 28, of Cincinnati, who was standing near the front of the crowd with his brother, Dave, 22 Some in the throng who escaped physical injury were emotionally shaken. “The crowd was so thick it took police 15 minutes to reach the dead and pull out the injured. Then the crowd from behind just kept pushing so much that people kept walking over them.” The crowd couldn’t see people were piled up till they got up there. “It was horrible.” Candice Momper, 21, of Covington, Ky., said when she got to the doors, “I couldn’t believe what was happening up there.” “There were people piled up. “The crowd was just pushing and pushing and pushing,” said Buford Meir, 18, of Miamisburg, Ohio. “Witnesses said the doors simply could not accommodate the crush of excited fans rushing for good seats to see the popular rock group on national tour. “The 11 young people were trampled to death, and another 20 injured, immediately after the first two doors were opened to an initial throng of 7,000 youngsters who had been waiting several hours in the near-freezing weather. “This will probably lead to a campaign to end festival seating at future concerts,” said Cincinnati Safety Director Richard Castellini. “Half of the sold-out crowd of 18,000 held tickets for unreserved seating at Riverfront Coliseum. ‘We can make an assumption that one of the major problems was festival seating,’ said Mayor J. It remains the deadliest concert disaster in American history.” (Nager, 1999)ĭec 4: “Officials today blamed ‘festival (unreserved) seating’ for creating a crush at the doors of Monday night’s ‘The Who’ rock concert in which 11 people were trampled to death. Nager: “…11 people were killed outside… building in the crush before a concert by the Who. One person stated afterward that the crush was so great he could not lift his arm in order to scratch his head….” (Chapter 7: The Who Concert Stampede, December 3, 1979,” from pp. “By 7:00 P.M., thousands were tightly packed around the entrance doors…creating a dangerous situation…. However, Safety Director Richard Castelleni maintained in a letter to a private citizen that crowd control problems at Riverfront Coliseum were, and should be, the responsibility of management, not the city: “enforcement of codes and ordinances would and could be handled by coliseum personnel, as enforcement was above and beyond the capabilities of the limited manpower of the fire division and exceeds the service to which a privately owned facility is entitled” (Delaney & Greenfield, 1979, p. The Cincinnati fire division also had raised objections to festival seating, noting that overcrowding and the blockage of aisles tended to occur with festival seating. Such congregations, and the resulting drinking and drug abuse, have been the primary causes of disturbances on the plaza level near the coliseum” (`76 Study Recommended Coliseum Reduce “Festival Seating,” 1979, p. Reserved seats would discourage the arrival of thousands of fans hours before the concert is scheduled to begin, and before the doors are open. Mooney, Jr., of the Cincinnati Human Relations Committee proposed an end to festival seating: “All future concerts should be sold on a reserved seat basis. A Public Safety Study Team, foamed in response to crowd control problems at an Elton John concert in August 1976, reported that the management of Riverfront Coliseum, on its own, was reducing the use of festival seating, and that, therefore, such reductions should be left up to the management. “Concern about the use of festival seating at Riverfront Coliseum had been raised several times in the past. Consequently, people began to arrive early in the afternoon, long before the doors opened for the 8:00 P.M. The remainder of the 18,348 tickets were for festival seating, meaning that a ticket merely entitled the ticket holder to entrance into the building, with seating or standing room in front of the stage determined on a first-come, first- served basis. A total of 3,578 tickets were for reserved seats. Tickets had gone on sale on September 28, and in just an hour and a half, the concert was sold out. “On the evening of December 3, 1979, the popular British rock band The Who was performing at Riverfront Coliseum. It is a multi-use indoor arena with over 100 entrance doors placed at various locations around the building. ![]() “Concert Industry Learned from Who Tragedy…” Cincinnati Enquirer, 12-3-1999.Ĭhertkoff and Kushigian: “Riverfront Coliseum (now called the Crown Coliseum) in Cincinnati, Ohio, opened in September 1975. Don’t Panic: The Psychology of Emergency Egress.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |