Hillsborough

SidBarret

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="ACT Crusader" data-cid="577843" data-time="1462627133">
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Hey sidbarrett, welcome back mate.
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Thanks mate
 
Never really left, was just quietly sitting in the corner of the virtual pub, aka lurking.
 
 
 
One more thing to on the topic - for all those people talking about the crowed pushing forward and therefor being to blame - consider the following, you have 3000 people all "pushing" forward with a 100 newton worth of force. Now a hundred newton sounds a big number it really isn't (about 10kg of force). If one person pushes with that force you would hardly notice it, but multiplying it with 3000 you suddenly get 30 tons pressing again the front barrier - you can also add the force of the crowed simply trying to keep their balance on the terrace. But only taking the 30 ton spread over 30 meters you end up with 1 ton per meter of fencing. That is like parking a small car on each of the people on the front of the crowd. Big crowds are scary things.

jegga

Read the warning at the start, I still can't spoiler properly. <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3pcvfb/saudi_arabia_hajj_disaster_death_toll_at_least/cw5vxtm'>https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3pcvfb/saudi_arabia_hajj_disaster_death_toll_at_least/cw5vxtm</a>
 
 
 
 
 
 
I actually happen to have done a slightly creepy amount of research into the phenomenon of 'crowd crush' and 'crowd collapse' recently, and can probably shed some light here. First I'll say these are not stampedes, but some background info is needed. IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH YOU MAY WANT TO CONSIDER NOT READING THIS.
Basically when people start to move in very high density crowds, each individual physically doesn't have enough space around them to behave like a normal person who acts based on decisions anymore, but rather the entire crowd starts moving like a fluid, forced forward by the pressure of the people walking forwards behind them. We're talking densities of 5+ people per square meter (you can roughly equate 4 people per square meter to being in a tightly packed crowd but still being able to move 360 degrees, just brushing up on people on all 4 sides. At about <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='

'>shockwaves</a> that ripple up and back through the mass of people when a push comes from any given direction... anyone who's been in a moshpit knows what I'm talking about.
These crowd densities aren't dangerous in themselves until you start reaching more than 8+ people/meter2 , however<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.gkstill.com/_Media/density.m4v'>starting at about 5-6 they become extremely risky</a> to facilitate movement in for two major reasons: 1) the risk of hitting a choke point and 2) the risk of someone falling over.
The first one results in what is called 'crowd crush'. This is where you have an extremely large and high density crowd, typical for those seen at events like the Hajj, moving in one direction in a confined space. This can be as wide as a city block or as narrow as a hallway. The crowd will be moving in its desired direction, but as soon as it hits achoke point, such as a blocked entrance, a sharp turn, a single open doorway, or even another high density crowd coming from the opposite direction, the people at the front face a serious problem. They are not merely walking anymore, they are being carried in the crowd fluid and could not stop if they tried (and would probably fall over). Survivors of crushes have described the experience like you're being carried by a river of people. The people at thevery front of the crowd (who are not at dangerous densities) will make it through the choke point, unless it's a blocked entrance of course, but the high density crowd inevitably follows, carried by force. If the choke point is too narrow for the entire crowd to fit through, people literally just plug it up and are unable to squeeze through the gap anymore, and are being evermore crushed by the force of people behind them. For a morbid but good example of this, watch the video of <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='

'>the Station Nightclub fire that happened in <del>2001</del> 2003</a> (NSFW/NSFL). For those who don't want to watch, basically what happened is a fire broke out in a nightclub, and nobody really bothered to run for the emergency exits (plus some other things but another post entirely) but instead all pushed for the front door. When the crowd density trying to leave the club out of the double doors became too great, the people got stuck and knocked over in the doorway, and bodies kept piling on top of more bodies from the flow of people behind until there was a helpless 6ft high pile of people with their heads and arms sticking out the front door packed too tightly for anyone on the outside to wedge them free.
Here's the fucked up part though: people do not die from being 'trampled' as if everyone is wildly running around and stepping on each other, in fact there's literally no way that's possible because people couldn't be running around in high density crowds even if they wanted to. What they die from is compressive asphyxiation (yes, suffocation by crushing) from the sheer force of all of the weight of bodies being stacked on top of them. In the worst of choke points, a completely blocked exit, people can be crushed standing up because they breathe out and simply cannot overcome the pressure of all of the people around them to breathe back in. That happens at densities of about 12+ p/sqm. 'Crowd pressure' has been known to collapse walls, bend steel guard rails, and of course kill a shitload of people.
The next scenario, and in my opinion the much more horrifying one, is crowd collapse. This happens when a high density crowd is moving and someone falls over. If you can imagine yourself in a fluid-like crowd, the pressure of the person behind you pushes you forward, and in turn you exert the pressure on the person in front of you, facilitating the crowd's (the fluid's) movement. If suddenly the person in front of you falls, they are no longer there for you to 'lean on' (to exert pressure on to), and guess what? You fall too. And the person behind you. And the person behind them, and anyone who tries to help someone else up, all just being pushed against their will into the new wall of bodies in front of them. The crowd collapses behind the original hole. Aaaaand now you have a choke point, just made of bodies. Surprisingly even here the main cause of death is almost always compressive asphyxia rather than trampling, as the pressure just gets too great when you have 2000lb of flesh on top of you. The crowd doesn't even have to be moving very fast for this to happen (or even can be stationary in the case of <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.gkstill.com/_Media/animation7.mp4'>a grandstand collapse</a> ), and is especially dangerous when the people are moving down a steep or slippery slope.
Here's the kicker: in both of these scenarios the death tolls are so high because the people in the back of the crowd, propagating the crowd force, are almost always too far away to know what's going on at the crush point. These sorts of crowds are extremely noisy and essentially impossible to stick your head up and over to get a better view, this combined with the fact that the back of crowds are usually at safe densities and people have no reason to panic and just keep walking means that the people at the front have no choice but to be crushed. Or in the case of a fire, where people sometimes are aware of what's happening in the front, they will simply keep pushing because it's either that or wait to die, worsening the crush at the front. Hundreds upon hundreds of people can be screaming for help and for people to stop or turn back... the ones who can hear them are already too stuck in the flow to do anything, and the ones who can do something can't hear.
So now the Hajj. This annual event is basically something any Muslim (who is able) has to do in their lifetime, and involves traveling to Mecca and surrounding areas over the span of four days to perform some religious rituals and visitations etc. The super short timespan of this event and the <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://imgur.com/2hZglhw'>insane amount of people it draws</a> means there's a huge amount of high density crowd movement, and one of the most notorious areas is a city called Mina, by which a particular ritual called the Stoning of the Devil is performed. Basically people need to throw rocks at a particular set of pillars, and so as you can imagine there's a giant potential for dangerously packed crowds when you have to move so many people to such a small location. This particular one happened when one road was closed in Mina and people didn't follow the detour or something (the news isn't very reliable because these events become so political for some reason), and basically two extreme density crowds coming from opposite directions collided in a single intersection, causing the pileup you're reading about above. There was also extreme heat on that day; you'll get people dropping like flies once densities start to get crush-worthy. There has been a crush or a collapse at the Hajj that's killed hundreds of people roughly every two years for the past couple of decades.
In fact, the global rate of crushes has increased exponentially in the past ~50 years or so as cities have become dense and urbanization is commonplace, this is a real problem that you may encounter in your own lifetime. If you do realize you're in a crowd that's heading towards a crush, unfortunately it probably means it's too late for you at that point. However, if you're actually serious about avoiding one of the most horrible deaths you could imagine, whenever you start to notice you're in a crowd that is reaching dangerous densities (4+) and is starting to behave like a fluid, you can work to get out of it. The key is the shockwaves you'll feel travel through everyone as the pressure pushing y'all starts to outpace how fast you can physically move. These are the sorts of crowds that if someone steps on your foot you'll probably lose your shoe because your foot will simply be carried out of it by the movement of the crowd. When you feel a shockwave, absolutely do not fight it. That's one of the quickest ways to fall over. What you should instead do is let it carry you wherever it needs to, and then immediately start moving sideways, and diagonally backwards if that's possible, avoid falling over at all costs though. You simply want to GET OUT of that crowd at that point (even if it's headed somewhere you needed to be) however possible. People may start dying. And you may be one of them.
EDIT: If you do every find yourself in the worst-case scenario and are knocked over, attempt to fall in a rigid fetal position (arms over your face and chest) to attempt to make room for your lungs to breathe. One man <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='

'>survived the Station Fire</a> (NSFW/NSFL) by doing this and having a small supply of fresh air, protected from the fire by a man-made heat shield.

GM1

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Jesus. 
How the hell could they play the game after something like that? Imagine being a player and trying to concentrate with dozens of dead and dying people just metres away. Fark me.
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I remember watching it on TV and before the game the commentators were suggesting the officials decided the continue with the game as they feared a complete riot if it was called off.

antipodean

That's an excellent piece jegga. The footage of the nigthclub is harrowing.

Nepia

That was an interesting read and at the same time I kind of wish I hadn't read it.
 
No more going to any crowded places for me. In fact, I'm not leaving the bloody house!

MN5

Great read jegs, not unlike water really. It's a bit of a far cry from having a few drops of rain hit you than being caught up in a tidal wave. Exactly the same principle.
 
I gave up moshing about 20 years ago at a Chilis gig but even then there were a few moments of uneasiness every now and again and it was hard work staying on my feet for a lot of the time.

jegga

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Great read jegs, not unlike water really. It's a bit of a far cry from having a few drops of rain hit you than being caught up in a tidal wave. Exactly the same principle.
 
I gave up moshing about 20 years ago at a Chilis gig but even then there were a few moments of uneasiness every now and again and it was hard work staying on my feet for a lot of the time.
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Yeah it backs up what I was saying about that concert , you don't know what's going on at the front . The jury would probably have heard way more detailed evidence about how crowds work which is why they exonerated them .

MN5

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="jegga" data-cid="578088" data-time="1462701276">
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Yeah it backs up what I was saying about that concert , you don't know what's going on at the front . The jury would probably have heard way more detailed evidence about how crowds work which is why they exonerated them .
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Very true but as I and others mentioned the whole "football hooligan" thing would have DEFINITELY meant that people would have gone in with pre conceived notions about what caused it. Even as a youngster in 1989 I thought it was football hooligans trampling eachother to death.

Cookie

While it's probably true to say that a minority hooligan element tarnished the rest, I don't think the average football fan did enough to dissociate from them. Many joined in the chants and abuse that generally made the atmosphere at a lot of matches very hostile - both between rival fans and between fans and the police. 
The police became conditioned into policing crowds with baton and riot shield. When the awful events started to unfold at Hillsborough the police would have been thinking in terms of confrontation not compassion, which obviously made a bad situation a lot worse. 
Looking back it's amazing to think that such a poisonous atmosphere at matches was tolerated, even expected, given they were such large scale public events. Would I have taken my son to a game in 80/90s - no chance. 
Luckily things have changed a lot for the better. I take him to quite a lot of Championship games and a few Premiership matches - and the stewards generally don't stand for any of the shit that used to be considered "normal" back in the day.

sparky

UK-based Ferners, there is a 2 hour documentary about Hillsborough on BBC 2 now.

Crucial

Thanks for the stuff on crowd dynamics Jegga. Certainly made a few points that I wasn't aware of.

sparky

Really powerful documentary, almost unwatchable. It's clear that some of the police officers were heroes and saved many lives, but the officials in the control box froze. Graham Kelly of the FA spread the lie that the crush was spread by Liverpool fans violence while people were dying.

sparky

Why was no emergency declared? Why did so few ambulances arrive when defibrillators were needed? Horrific to see police with their back turned to people dying.

dogmeat

I have been in a crowd crush where people were (badly) injured and it is frightening.
 
My last job in the UK involved managing 3 industrial temp agencies in west London. 
 
We supplied stewards for Wembley. I worked a one day music festival (teeny bop bands mainly - Belinda Carlyle, Wham....)
 
Little girls rushed the stage as soon as the gates opened - 4 hrs before the first act. By the time it got dark I had 200 staff linked arm to arm trying to keep the kids back and away from the crush barriers so they wouldn't get hurt. Nevertheless probably 20-30 girls had to be rescued from the crowd suffering from asphyxiation and crush injuries. Most were unconscious but quickly revived and thought they'd scored because they were then allowed to sit and watch the concert from inside the stage area.
 
This made the crowd even more hysterical. Those at the front were getting crushed, those further back saw some people were being let in and wanted to force their way forward and further back the crowd had no idea what was going on and wanted to find out.
 
Several had to be rushed to hospital and one was in a coma but made a recovery.
 
It was frightening - mainly for the crowd but I was also aware that the crush barriers were about three metres behind us and if the crowd broke through it could get nasty for all concerned.
 
There were appeals to the crowd to stop pushing but it made no difference even after we said people were getting hurt. There was even the threat of cancelling the show but the crowd reaction immediately demonstrated the folly of that idea.
 
This was a couple of years after Hillsborough which I saw unfold on TV. It was on a much smaller scale, but it did give me an understanding of how crowd dynamics work. 
 
There was no need to mob the stage. In fact if you got too close you couldn't see the stage as it was about 2.5 metres above the ground, but no way did the girls at the back realise any of that or that they were inadvertently causing people to get seriously injured. They just wanted to get closer to their heroes, and they were with their mates and this mob mentality took over. 
 
This was on the Wembley pitch - across the full width so no choke points. If it had been in the stands.....
 
Football had a real hooligan issue in the 70's and 80's but it was restricted to a handful of clubs and even for them it was a minority causing the issues. Liverpool never had a reputation as a problem club. Apart from Heysel I would have said their reputation was for good humour and passionate support - You'll never walk alone not We're Millwall and we're scum.
 
Hillsborough was shocking and totally unexpected, but the cover-up and the lies were in some ways even worse and totally unnecessary.
 
Mistakes were made by Police on the day. They should have just admitted this, but the culture amongst police in the 80's was in many ways as unsavoury as the hooligans. False evidence, lies, intimidation etc were way too common.
 
Too many lives lost and ruined.

sparky

Daniel Gordon's Hillsborough documentary: 
<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bgnkn'>http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bgnkn</a>

Siam

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="rotated" data-cid="577525" data-time="1462551027">
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Genuine question - was it established if there was a rush of patrons without tickets that entered the ground and to what degree?
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Rotatated, on the BBC doco they had the mechanical engineer whose job was to test the turnstiles and basically ascertain what happened at that Leppings Lane entrance
 
He stated that the numbers who entered were not dissimilar to the numbers allocated tickets for that stand. 
 
So, as pointed out in this thread, it seems that the "non ticket holders" reasoning from the Police and government was also a lie

Siam

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="sparky" data-cid="578152" data-time="1462746547">
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Daniel Gordon's Hillsborough documentary: <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bgnkn'>http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bgnkn</a>
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Brilliantly made documentary, rivetting and analysis backed up by interviews with Police and evidence
 
Shame on the Police, Government and Authorities for perpetuating bald faced lies while people were grieving

MajorRage

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Siam" data-cid="578274" data-time="1462767862">
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Rotatated, on the BBC doco they had the mechanical engineer whose job was to test the turnstiles and basically ascertain what happened at that Leppings Lane entrance
 
He stated that the numbers who entered were not dissimilar to the numbers allocated tickets for that stand. 
 
So, as pointed out in this thread, it seems that the "non ticket holders" reasoning from the Police and government was also a lie
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Isn't this irrelevant?
 
As didn't the whole issue happen as the turnstiles weren't quick enough to deal with all the late comers arriving at once, and subsequently they opened up an exit allowing a free-for all push? Thus, many people without tickets may or may not have pushed in?
 
As an aside, I still remember the day this happened, and it being introduced to us as students in small-town NZ intermediate school. The teacher had written on the board "Hooliganism". So the links were already there.
 
I guess it's like if the police did something which caused an horrendous accident involving the Christchurch boy racer community. My initial thought would be to blame the boy-racers themselves due to (perceived, at least) reputations the negative media about this sector of society over many a year. That's what these guys have been facing, and it seems like the South Yorkshire Police and subsequent Government led enquiries have been using as a smokescreen to hide their inadequacies and poor decison making.
 
You can see why the people are elated about this result.

dogmeat

The Sun leading with an article headed "THE TRUTH" accusing Liverpool supporters of
 
<ol><li>robbing the dead</li>
<li>pissed on the cops</li>
<li>beat up a cop giving the kiss of life</li>
</ol>didn't help either

Siam

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MajorRage" data-cid="578285" data-time="1462769532">
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Isn't this irrelevant?
 
As didn't the whole issue happen as the turnstiles weren't quick enough to deal with all the late comers arriving at once, and subsequently they opened up an exit allowing a free-for all push? Thus, many people without tickets may or may not have pushed in?
 
 
 
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Rotated asked a question about ticket holders and I thought I'd found an answer to his question in the BBC Doco - that's all the post was about Major Rage.
 
Yeah I remember taking on the "hooligans" explanation. Had no reason to doubt it at the time either

The Silver Fern

Hillsborough