Love Parade organisers blamed for mass panic at music festival leaving 19 crushed to death and more than 300 injured
A tunnel stampede which killed 19 people at a German music festival could have been avoided if officials had not opted for a single entrance to the event, it was claimed today.
Up to 342 people were injured in the crush when 1.4m attempted to gain access to the site yesterday in Duisburg, West Germany.
Founder Matthias Roeingh, known by the name Dr. Motte, blamed officials who planned this year's Love Parade which featured techno music DJs and floats.
He said: 'One single entrance through a tunnel lends itself to disaster. I am very sad.'
Grief: People gather to lay flowers and candles near the accident site in Duisburg, Germany today 
Victim: The position of the 15th body to be found by rescuers is marked inside the tunnel among debris
The panic started in the afternoon after police closed off the parade grounds because they were already overcrowded.
They told revellers over loudspeakers to turn around and walk back in the other direction. When panic broke out, people were trampled to death in the tunnel.
Authorities suggested that some of the people killed or injured might have attempted to flee the crowd by jumping over a barrier and falling several yards.
Witnesses described a desperate scene as people piled up on each other or scrambled over others who had fallen in the crush.
'The young people came to celebrate and instead there are dead and injured,' said chancellor Angela Merkel. 'I am horrified by the suffering and the pain.'
German authorities said that those killed at the Love Parade festival were young adults under 40 and that victims hailed from several countries.
Detlef von Schmeling, the police chief in Duisburg, said 16 of the 19 people killed had been identified.
He said they include an Australian, an Italian, a Chinese and a Dutch person. Mr Von Schmeling said their ages ranged from just over 20 to 40.
City officials chose not to evacuate the site, fearing it might spark more panic, and many people continued dancing as sirens of hundreds of emergency vehicles were sounded.
Police commissioner Juergen Kieskemper said that just before the stampede occurred at about 5pm local time, police closed off the area where the parade was being held because it was already overcrowded.
Horror: A woman is struck by grief at the scene of the Love Parade disaster which killed 19 people
Eyewitness Udo Sandhoefer told n-tv television that even though no one else was being let in, people still streamed into the tunnel, causing 'a real mass panic.'
'At some point the column (of people) got stuck, probably because everything was closed up front, and we saw that the first people were already lying on the ground,' he said.
'Others climbed up the walls and tried somehow to get into the grounds from the side, and the people in the crowd that moved up simply ran over those who were lying on the ground.'
Another witness, a young man who wasn't named, told n-tv the tunnel became so crowded that people began falling. 'It got tighter and tighter from minute to minute and at some point everyone just wanted out,' he said. 'People were just pushed together until they fell over.'
Organisers today said the event would never be held again out of respect to those killed and injured.
Foreign Office officials said it was not known last night if any Britons were among the dead at the popular festival north of Dusseldorf. But it is thought large numbers of British fans were in the audience.
Eyewitnesses told last night of the stampede. ‘It was hell,’ said Karl Lowenstein, 21, who was in the tunnel. ‘It was dark and it was full. Something happened – whether someone tripped or someone fell I don’t know.
'But there was a stampede to get to the other end and those who fell, well, many of them never got up again.’
Kevin Krausgartner, 21, said: ‘I have never seen anything like it. I saw 25 people piled on top
of one another in a huge heap. I cried.
‘People couldn’t get any air. I saw the dead there. One person was completely pale and I wanted to give him some water, but a medic said that wouldn’t help him – he was gone. I saw police on the bridge just standing there. They didn’t do anything.’
Questions: Candles, flowers and soft toys are left by a sign asking simply Why? in the aftermath of the tragedy 
Panic: A man manages to climb to safety from the crush as thousands of people gather at the tunnel
'There was no escape,' one Love Parade participant named Marius told the Bild.de website. 'People were pressed into the wall. I was afraid I'd die.'
One woman raver told Bild: 'I was lucky. I found a hole to escape through but two women were killed right next to me.'
Another man described trying to give one of the injured water to be told by a rescue worker 'don't bother with him, he's dead.'
One woman said getting through the tunnel as 'trying to pass through the eye of a needle.'
'The tunnel was too narrow to cope with the number of people taking the short-cut and should have been closed by crowd controllers before the parade even began,' she said.
Destruction: Police examine debris (left) around crushed crowd barriers at the tunnel entrance and (right) Hannelore Kraft the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia places flowers near the accident site in Duisburg
Crowded: An aerial view of the Love Parade site - a former goods station - earlier in the day where hundreds of thousands of people gathered 
Shrine: Tributes to the dead ravers build up near the tunnel as an onlooker contemplates the sign saying Why?
Police and ambulance workers were later seen giving the kiss of life to victims.
Many people continued partying as the air was filled with the noise of emergency sirens, unaware of the tragedy taking place.
Rescue squads had to fight their way through an ocean of people but ten other victims were resuscitated.
A state of emergency was declared in the city last night. Although more than 1,200 police officers were on duty, they said they were powerless to prevent the tragedy.
A police spokesman said: ‘It is a catastrophe that we are struggling to cope with.’
The show goes on: Dusk falls on the Love Parade site but organisers and police decided not to stop the event in a bid to prevent further panic 
Tragic: A composite picture showing sunglasses lost by ravers during the tunnel stampede
Another witness, named as Fabio, claimed he tried to warn police before the stampede that trouble was brewing.
‘A friend and I got out as hundreds more poured in,’ he said. ‘We tried to tell the police to close it down but they didn’t listen. This was 45 minutes before people were killed.’
People had been using the tunnel as a short-cut on the Love Parade, which consisted of 15 floats which set off at 2pm.
Despite the scale of the tragedy unfolding at the entrance to a former freight rail station, the one-day techno festival continued as planned.
Organisers feared cancelling the event would only cause a second panic.
More than 1.3 million revellers had gathered for the annual techno music festival in Duisburg, which is near Dusseldorf.
Popular: Around 1.5million people were attending this year's Love Parade which used to be held in Berlin
It had emerged that police had warned Love Parade organisers that there would be problems with crowd control if this year's event was held in the city centre.
Instead, the festival was moved a mile out of Duisburg to a less enclosed area. But the decision appears to have backfired.
The Love Parade was once an institution in Berlin, but has been held in the industrial Ruhr region of western Germany since 2007.
The original Berlin Love Parade grew from a 1989 peace demonstration into a huge outdoor celebration of club culture that drew about 1.5 million people at its peak in 1999.
But it suffered from financial problems and tensions with city officials in later years, and eventually moved. ( dailymail.co.uk )
A tunnel stampede which killed 19 people at a German music festival could have been avoided if officials had not opted for a single entrance to the event, it was claimed today.
Up to 342 people were injured in the crush when 1.4m attempted to gain access to the site yesterday in Duisburg, West Germany.
Founder Matthias Roeingh, known by the name Dr. Motte, blamed officials who planned this year's Love Parade which featured techno music DJs and floats.
He said: 'One single entrance through a tunnel lends itself to disaster. I am very sad.'
Grief: People gather to lay flowers and candles near the accident site in Duisburg, Germany today
Victim: The position of the 15th body to be found by rescuers is marked inside the tunnel among debris
The panic started in the afternoon after police closed off the parade grounds because they were already overcrowded.
They told revellers over loudspeakers to turn around and walk back in the other direction. When panic broke out, people were trampled to death in the tunnel.
Authorities suggested that some of the people killed or injured might have attempted to flee the crowd by jumping over a barrier and falling several yards.
Witnesses described a desperate scene as people piled up on each other or scrambled over others who had fallen in the crush.
'The young people came to celebrate and instead there are dead and injured,' said chancellor Angela Merkel. 'I am horrified by the suffering and the pain.'
German authorities said that those killed at the Love Parade festival were young adults under 40 and that victims hailed from several countries.
Detlef von Schmeling, the police chief in Duisburg, said 16 of the 19 people killed had been identified.
He said they include an Australian, an Italian, a Chinese and a Dutch person. Mr Von Schmeling said their ages ranged from just over 20 to 40.
City officials chose not to evacuate the site, fearing it might spark more panic, and many people continued dancing as sirens of hundreds of emergency vehicles were sounded.
Police commissioner Juergen Kieskemper said that just before the stampede occurred at about 5pm local time, police closed off the area where the parade was being held because it was already overcrowded.
Horror: A woman is struck by grief at the scene of the Love Parade disaster which killed 19 people
Eyewitness Udo Sandhoefer told n-tv television that even though no one else was being let in, people still streamed into the tunnel, causing 'a real mass panic.'
'At some point the column (of people) got stuck, probably because everything was closed up front, and we saw that the first people were already lying on the ground,' he said.
'Others climbed up the walls and tried somehow to get into the grounds from the side, and the people in the crowd that moved up simply ran over those who were lying on the ground.'
Another witness, a young man who wasn't named, told n-tv the tunnel became so crowded that people began falling. 'It got tighter and tighter from minute to minute and at some point everyone just wanted out,' he said. 'People were just pushed together until they fell over.'
Organisers today said the event would never be held again out of respect to those killed and injured.
Foreign Office officials said it was not known last night if any Britons were among the dead at the popular festival north of Dusseldorf. But it is thought large numbers of British fans were in the audience.
Eyewitnesses told last night of the stampede. ‘It was hell,’ said Karl Lowenstein, 21, who was in the tunnel. ‘It was dark and it was full. Something happened – whether someone tripped or someone fell I don’t know.
'But there was a stampede to get to the other end and those who fell, well, many of them never got up again.’
Kevin Krausgartner, 21, said: ‘I have never seen anything like it. I saw 25 people piled on top
of one another in a huge heap. I cried.
‘People couldn’t get any air. I saw the dead there. One person was completely pale and I wanted to give him some water, but a medic said that wouldn’t help him – he was gone. I saw police on the bridge just standing there. They didn’t do anything.’
Questions: Candles, flowers and soft toys are left by a sign asking simply Why? in the aftermath of the tragedy
Panic: A man manages to climb to safety from the crush as thousands of people gather at the tunnel
'There was no escape,' one Love Parade participant named Marius told the Bild.de website. 'People were pressed into the wall. I was afraid I'd die.'
One woman raver told Bild: 'I was lucky. I found a hole to escape through but two women were killed right next to me.'
Another man described trying to give one of the injured water to be told by a rescue worker 'don't bother with him, he's dead.'
One woman said getting through the tunnel as 'trying to pass through the eye of a needle.'
'The tunnel was too narrow to cope with the number of people taking the short-cut and should have been closed by crowd controllers before the parade even began,' she said.
Destruction: Police examine debris (left) around crushed crowd barriers at the tunnel entrance and (right) Hannelore Kraft the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia places flowers near the accident site in Duisburg
Crowded: An aerial view of the Love Parade site - a former goods station - earlier in the day where hundreds of thousands of people gathered
Shrine: Tributes to the dead ravers build up near the tunnel as an onlooker contemplates the sign saying Why?
Police and ambulance workers were later seen giving the kiss of life to victims.
Many people continued partying as the air was filled with the noise of emergency sirens, unaware of the tragedy taking place.
Rescue squads had to fight their way through an ocean of people but ten other victims were resuscitated.
A state of emergency was declared in the city last night. Although more than 1,200 police officers were on duty, they said they were powerless to prevent the tragedy.
A police spokesman said: ‘It is a catastrophe that we are struggling to cope with.’
The show goes on: Dusk falls on the Love Parade site but organisers and police decided not to stop the event in a bid to prevent further panic
Tragic: A composite picture showing sunglasses lost by ravers during the tunnel stampede
Another witness, named as Fabio, claimed he tried to warn police before the stampede that trouble was brewing.
‘A friend and I got out as hundreds more poured in,’ he said. ‘We tried to tell the police to close it down but they didn’t listen. This was 45 minutes before people were killed.’
People had been using the tunnel as a short-cut on the Love Parade, which consisted of 15 floats which set off at 2pm.
Despite the scale of the tragedy unfolding at the entrance to a former freight rail station, the one-day techno festival continued as planned.
Organisers feared cancelling the event would only cause a second panic.
More than 1.3 million revellers had gathered for the annual techno music festival in Duisburg, which is near Dusseldorf.
Popular: Around 1.5million people were attending this year's Love Parade which used to be held in Berlin
It had emerged that police had warned Love Parade organisers that there would be problems with crowd control if this year's event was held in the city centre.
Instead, the festival was moved a mile out of Duisburg to a less enclosed area. But the decision appears to have backfired.
The Love Parade was once an institution in Berlin, but has been held in the industrial Ruhr region of western Germany since 2007.
The original Berlin Love Parade grew from a 1989 peace demonstration into a huge outdoor celebration of club culture that drew about 1.5 million people at its peak in 1999.
But it suffered from financial problems and tensions with city officials in later years, and eventually moved. ( dailymail.co.uk )
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