The tragic February 20 fire at the Station in Rhode Island was one of the worst club tragedies in U.S. history, and the deadliest fire in the U.S. since Waco. Only four days earlier, another 21 people were killed in a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. While this is probably more a horrible coincidence than any kind of trend, both tragedies touched on fears that nearly everyone who's ever been inside a crowded dance club or concert has experienced at one time or another - how on earth will we all get out of here if something happens?
In this half-hour special, we'll look at the recent history of concert tragedies and we'll explore the science of the human herd. We'll answer such key questions as: Why can't the same 300 people who entered a club through one door make it back out through the same door in an emergency? Why do people continue walking on top of people who are dying on the floor beneath them? How do people get stuck jammed inside doorways, like a deadly farce? And what should *you* do in a crowd emergency?
A history of crowd disasters: Starting with Rhode Island and Chicago, and then quickly recounting some or all of these:
- Coconut Grove (Boston, 1942 - 492 dead in fire.
- Beverly Hills Supper Club (Kentucky, 1977 - 165 dead in fire)
- The Who in Cincinnati (1979 - 11 dead)
- Public Enemy in Nashville (1987 - two crushed to death)
- Happy Land Social Club (Bronx, 1990 - 87 dead)
- AC/DC in Salt Lake City (1991 - three crushed to death)
- City College of New York (1991 - nine crushed to death at basketball game sponsored by Sean Puffy Combs and Heavy D)
- Smashing Pumpkins in Dublin (1996 - one crushed to death and scores injured)
- Minsk, Belarus, in 1999 (54 killed in stampede at rock show)
- Pearl Jam in Roskilde (2000 - nine crushed to death, and an inadequate sound system is blamed).
And, perhaps to show that this isn't solely a disease of Western pop culture, we might also point to Mina, Saudi Arabia, were 35 were killed in 2002 and another 14 were killed in 2003, all of them crushed to death by the crowd at religious pilgrimages. We can quote any number of crowd safety experts who will tell us that in many of these cases, the same mistakes were made over and over again, as if we never learn from our past tragedies. Once the most recent disasters are off the front pages of the newspapers, these experts will tell us, we'll no doubt be headed for another tragedy.
Why it happens: In this act, we look into greed, stupidity and other such things that are probably a bit of obvious ... but we spend most of our time looking into basic human behavior, and how we often fail ourselves in crisis situations. What we may find is that us humans are to some extent wired to fail ourselves in these situations. Police refer to what they call the "escape mob" mentality: "In their attempt to secure safety by flight, members of an escape mob may lose their power of reasoning" . This can mean running for the obviously wrong door, or it can reach the point where a group of people try to get through an open door at the same time and, as a result, no one makes it through.
We will address how the psychology of rumors propels a crowd to tragically wrong action, as for example in Chicago last week when one patron reportedly "terrorist attack." We will talk about the overwhelming physical power of a crowd. Five people moving together with full force can exert a force of 700 pounds -- easily enough to kill someone caught in their way, and also enough to make it impossible for someone in front of them to open that swings inward. And we will talk about the overwhelming emotional power of a crowd: Your power of reasoning, self-control, etc., can be quickly overwhelmed by the contagious power of what everyone else is doing.
What others have done about this and what you can do: We look into a variety of legislation that has been attempted:
- Cincinnati outlawed festival seating after the Who tragedy, and went 23 years without a general-admission concert event before an exception was made in summer 2002 for Bruce Springsteen.
- A California state senator, Nell Soto, introduced a bill in 2000 requiring venues to have an emergency plan and to submit lists of any injuries to the state, but the bill was shot down after strong opposition by Clear Channel, the North American Concert Promoters Association, and others.
- The British government's wrote an Event Safety Guide that doesn't have the force of law, but that is used as a guideline for many venues and promoters.
- The Roskilde Festival announced a major overhaul after the Pearl Jam incident, and the following year the watchdog group Crowd Management Strategies proclaimed Roskilde the "world's best run rock event."
And what can you do? With the help of crowd safety experts, we will offer basically instructional video showing what to do in various crises: fire, stampeding crowd, out-of-control moshpit, blocked doors, etc.
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