Inside a Life-Threatening Crowd: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster from the Perspective of Eyewitnesses
Anna Sieben (1,2), Armin Seyfried (2,3), ((1) School of Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, (2) Institute for, Advanced, Simulation, Forschungszentrum J\"ulich, J\"ulich, Germany, (3), Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering

TL;DR
This study analyzes eyewitness statements from the 2011 Love Parade disaster to understand crowd behavior, emotional experiences, and dynamics that contributed to the tragedy, emphasizing internal perspectives often overlooked in crowd analysis.
Contribution
It provides an inside perspective on crowd dynamics during a disaster, highlighting behaviors, emotional states, and physical interactions from eyewitness accounts.
Findings
Crowd focused on limited escape routes and tried to reach them at all costs.
Helping behavior was frequently observed despite fear and chaos.
Falling and transversal waves caused dangerous crowd pressures and pile-ups.
Abstract
During the Love Parade disaster in 2011 in Duisburg, Germany, twenty one visitors were killed and more than five hundred injured in a very dense crowd on the route to and from the festival area. Approximately nine hundred visitors who had been among this crowd were subsequently interviewed by police officers as eyewitnesses. This paper content analyses a random sample of 136 of these witness statements, focusing on how those present perceived the crowd, how they behaved, how they experienced the event emotionally, what happened to their bodies, and which collective dynamics they described. This approach provides a perspective from within crowd dynamics which are usually observed from a top-view perspective. Almost all the attendees became strongly focused on the staircase and the pole the only visible ways out of the crowd. In some cases, they tried to reach these destinations by all…
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Taxonomy
TopicsEvacuation and Crowd Dynamics · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Media Influence and Health
