Stampede survivors blame barricades

Abidjan – Survivors of a stampede in Ivory Coast that killed 63 people, most of them children and teenagers, after a New Year’s Eve fireworks display at a stadium said on Wednesday that barricades stopped them from moving along a main boulevard, causing the crush of people.

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara ordered three days of national mourning and launched an investigation into to the causes of the tragedy but two survivors indicated why so many died in what would normally be an open area, the Boulevard de la Republic. An estimated 50 000 people had gathered in Abidjan’s Plateau district to watch the fireworks.
“Near the Justice Palace we were stopped by some people who built wooden blockades in the street,” 33-year-old Zoure Sanate said from her bed in Cocody Hospital. “They told us we must stay in the Plateau area until morning. None of us accepted to stay in Plateau until the morning for a celebration that ended at around 01h00 [01h00 GMT].”
“Then came the stampede of people behind us,” she said. “My four children and I were knocked to the ground. I was hearing my kids calling me, but I was powerless and fighting against death. Two of my kids are in hospital with me, but two others are missing. They cannot be found.”
Another hospital patient, Brahima Compaore, 39, said he also was caught in the pile of people stopped by the roadblock.
“I found myself on the ground and people were walking on me,” said Compaore. “I was only saved by people who pulled me onto the sidewalk.”

Thugs

Local newspapers are speculating that thieves set up the roadblocks so that pickpockets could steal money and mobile phones from the packed-in people.
Ouattara pledged to get answers. Some observers wondered why police did not prevent the tragedy.
“The investigation must take into account all the testimonies of victims,” he said Wednesday. “We will have a crisis centre to share and receive information.”
The Ivorian government on Wednesday promised that an investigation into the circumstances the stampede would be wrapped up by the end of the week.
Ouattara also postponed the traditional New Year’s receptions at his residence, which had been scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
The leader of a human rights organisation said that deadly incidents were predictable because the police and civil authorities had not taken adequate protective measures.
“The situation is deplorable,” said Thierry Legre, president of the Ivorian League of Human Rights. “It is our first tragedy of 2013 but in 2012 we could already see possibility of such a tragedy because there are not adequate authorities patrolling our roads and waters.”
On the first of three days of national mourning, prime minister Daniel Kablan Duncan gathered the special crisis team set up after the tragedy.
The investigation, including the autopsies, “will be completed this week” and its results divulged immediately, he told reporters after the meeting.
He argued there had been no shortcomings in the security set-up for the celebrations, which he said drew some two to three million revellers, but said lessons needed to be learned from the stampede.
The exact cause of the stampede remains unclear but officials have admitted that the presence of tree trunks on the ground near the site and insufficient public lighting may have contributed to the scope of the tragedy.
People whose loved ones have been missing since the fateful night continued to mass around to the central morgue in Abidjan as identification of the bodies remained under way.
The United Nations mission in the troubled country made one of its medical teams available to assist with the emergency operation and also offered to help with the investigation, a statement said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “has learnt with deep sorrow of the heavy human toll of the stampede,” the statement said, adding that he offered his condolences to the victims and their relatives.

Big concert

Legre said the New Year’s stampede “exposes our weak and dysfunctional civil protection system. This must be corrected immediately. The government cannot invite people to this kind of public gathering without taking adequate precautions to protect their safety and their lives.”
He called on the government “to implement measures to avoid such tragedies in the future by reinforcing the civil protection system”.
Just one night before the New Year’s incident, there had been a big concert at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium where American rap star Chris Brown performed. That Sunday night event was for the Kora Awards for African musicians. No serious incidents were reported from that event.
In 2009, 22 people died and over 130 were injured in a stampede at a World Cup qualifying match at the Houphouet Boigny Stadium, prompting FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to impose a fine of tens of thousands of dollars on Ivory Coast’s soccer federation. The stadium, which officially holds 35,000, was overcrowded at the time of the disaster.
– Nampa-AP

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