Crowd Disasters: Causes and NDMA Guidelines

A series of crowd disaster incidents have led to deaths of more than 400 people recently. On October 01, 2022, a human crush occurred in a football stadium in East Java, Indonesia that killed 135 people.

Causes

• Structural collapse of makeshift bridges, railings, temporary structures, railings of the bridges.
• Difficult terrain (famous religious sites built on top of hills that are difficult to access).
• Narrow streets with very few entry/exits, absence of emergency exits, etc.
• Fire/Electricity: Fire at illegal and unauthorised structure, non-availability of fire extinguishers in working condition.
• Crowd Behaviour: Wild rush to force the way towards entrance/exits, crowd forcing to entrance/exits a venue after the start/closing time.
• Security: Under deployment of security staff and deployment of untrained staff; lack of adequate rehearsals and briefing of security personnel on crowd control.
• Lack of Coordination between Stakeholders: Coordination gap between agencies (e.g. Police and other agencies.

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Guidelines

• Understanding Venue, Visitors and Stakeholders: It requires understanding of type of event (religious, youth festival, school/university event, cricket/sports event, music concerts, political gathering).
• Crowd Management Strategies: The various elements of crowd management strategy are:
• Capacity planning includes a long term perspective for infrastructure development.
• Individual behaviour in a crowd is sometimes influenced by the behaviour of others. Research has shown that understanding of crowd behaviour has led to community-based approach to crowd control.
• Risk Analysis and Preparedness: This includes identification of threats, assessment of risks, planning and developing appropriate course of action.
• Information Management and Dissemination: In the absence of necessary information, people may panic leading to undesirable behaviour.
• Safety and Security Measures: The organisers should ensure authorised use of electricity, fire safety extinguishers and other arrangements as per the safety guidelines.
• Facilities and Emergency Medical Services: The need is to ensure availability of trained first-aid staff, kits, adequate stretches, emergency life-saving medicines and devices, ambulances, mobile hospitals/teams, hospital disaster management plans, etc.
• Transportation and Traffic Management: The guiding principles in transportation and traffic management should be to use public transport as much as possible and minimize the impact of undesirable crowd and traffic.