By Carol A. Cates, MSN, MBA, RN
Chief Nursing Officer
Odessa Regional Medical Center
One of my favorite events is the Odessa Junior League’s Annual Merry Marketplace. But between family stuff, jobs, and the pandemic, I haven’t been able to attend for several years. This year I was able to go, and it was fantastic as always. One of the things that I noticed there and have noticed in many venues lately is the crowds. It was so nice to see people and be at an event, but every event I have attended lately seems more crowded than it has in the past. I think because of the pandemic coming to its end, people are wanting to be out and about more, and the crowds are getting bigger.
In the case of Merry Marketplace, that was a good thing supporting a great cause, and the venue managed it very well, so there were no problems. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. That is certainly what the experts are saying about the Halloween crowd surge that killed over 150 people last month in South Korea. They were expecting crowds, but this crowd was bigger than anticipated and the venue was not set up to avoid crowd surges.
Unfortunately, crowd surges are not new. We have seen tragic consequences of crowd surges in the U.S. and across the world that have killed hundreds and even thousands of people. We had one here in Texas at the Astroland Music Festival in 2021 that killed 8 on site, nearly 30 more were severely injured. Two of the injured died within a week of the tragedy. Frighteningly, the worst crowd surge tragedy in recent years was not the one at Halloween in South Korea. That one was in 2015 where a collision of two crowds at the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia resulted in more than 2,400 deaths.
Most people think that crowd surges kill because people are trampled. But that is not the cause of most deaths. The cause of most deaths in a crowd surge is suffocation. People literally get squeezed so hard by the surrounding crowd that they cannot expand their chests enough to get sufficient oxygen.
Another cause of suffocation happens when one person falls and because of the tight space, that fall causes others to fall on and around that first person, again crushing them so hard they cannot breathe, this is called a crowd collapse.
According to experts, when you have large masses of people, especially in a limited space, the physics of how that crowd moves can be closer to how tides move in the ocean than what we think of as the normal movement of crowds. And just like tides, when the flow starts moving in two directions, that is when it becomes the deadliest.
With crowds it is generally because people from one side of a narrow space are pushing to get closer, and people from the other side pushing to get away. That is what happened in the Astroland tragedy. The crowd was pushing to get closer to the stage, while the people at the front were trapped by barriers and had to push back.
There can also be triggers that cause the crowd to suddenly jump into movement. Investigations into the South Korea crowd surge incident are finding that event was likely triggered by rumors of a celebrity at a location at the end of the narrow street where the incident occurred. 93 people were killed at a soccer match in Nepal in 1988 when there was a sudden downpour of rain and hail that caused people to being running for narrow and sometimes locked exits. The most common example of a crowd surge trigger in the U.S. is someone yelling, “He has a gun!”
Venues that attract crowds can do several things to help prevent surges, like controlling how many people are entering and exiting narrow spaces, obeying Fire Marshal maximum number rules, and setting up barriers that prevent and divert large groups from forming. But even with those protections, individuals need to act quickly to avoid being injured if they are in a large crowd that begins surging.
If you are caught in a large crowd, the experts say there are things you can do to protect your safety.
First stay on the edges of the crowd and avoid narrow spaces with limited exits. That way you can move away rather than getting caught in surges if there is a trigger event.
Second, get your arms up. This will help you breathe in a tight space.
Third, just like if you get caught in a tide in the ocean, go with the tide, not against it. You are not going to be able to fight the movement, and you will need to save your energy.
Fourth, try to stay upright. Focus on your center of gravity and avoid falling.
Finally, avoid hard surfaces. Many people who die in crowd surges succumb because they are caught against barriers or walls in narrow spaces.
I hope you enjoy being able to get out there now that the pandemic is ending and go to venues that attract crowds. Just please stay safe while you do so.
