Festival tragedy

The following comments reflect the views of DW-WORLD.DE readers. Not all reader comments have been published. DW-WORLD.DE reserves the right to edit for length and appropriateness of content.

Love Parade tragedy

News of the deaths at the Love Parade honestly made me sad. I offer my condolences to Chancellor Merkel, her fellow Germans and everyone else affected by the tragedy. -- Paul, US

Unfortunately the blame must lie with organizers, council and police and whoever signed off on an entrance via a huge tunnel. Surely the crowd could have been channelled far more easily via fencing through there than just letting them into the whole width of it - which meant people had nowhere to go. If the entrance was actually at the other end of the tunnel, this wouldn't have happened once the venue filled up and the crowd could have been stopped before entering. Such a tragedy at an amazing event meant to celebrate music and peace.
-- Simon, Australia

Clearly the authorities are to blame for this tragedy. It is they who have the expertise, the total authority and legal responsibility to decide if a festival venue is safe for the public to attend. This is not within the expertise of commercial festival organizers. The final decision is with city and police experts. There is already ample evidence that the authorities were more interested in corralling the crowd into a small area, the usual State control freak mentality, than planning for crowd overflow and emergency exits and entrances. It is a disgrace that parallels the inexcusable mistakes at Duesseldorf Airport's fire where the rigid application of rules instead of common sense prevented the airport fire service from attending the fire and the subsequent loss of life. No doubt the blame shall be pushed on to others as it was after Duesseldorf, a hapless welder, there as I recall. I speak with some authority as the UK is riddled with the same over-organized incompetence. I hope heads roll over this disaster, resignations should be called for. I was personally closer to this tragedy than was comfortable as my German son was at the festival but, upon seeing the potential for disaster given the mass overcrowding, decided to leave as thankfully did his friends. In closing, I do not wish this to be vindictive of those involved, but hope with respect to all those people who lost their lives that we can learn from this tragedy to prevent its recurrence. -- J. North, Great Britain

I'm a big fan of Germany, but if an investigation is not launched into how a festival of 1 million in an open space that was held in Berlin was transferred to a backwater that has experience of mostly classical music events and has a population of just 500,000 in a confined space that holds just 500,000 then Germany will be deservedly a laughing stock. Germany needs to seriously question the city authorities that licensed this set up. Words fail me. It's not what we expect of Germany at all. To me it seems a disaster that was waiting to happen. -- Fergal Barry via Facebook

It's the organizers fault. In 10 days the Heavy Metal event "Wacken" will take place in Wacken. Let's hope they will organize it much better. -- Markus, via Facebook from Germany

This is good that the investigation has started and I am sure that soon someone will be officially guilty. But this is only the administration part. We all need to ask ourselves: Who will bring back the people who are dead now? I would like to send my appeal to all organizers for such events, please take this case in seriously and do not let it happen again. -- Mesar via Facebook

I think it's the fault of the organizers and the people as well. They shouldn't have used a tunnel for letting thousands of people through it, and people do not know when to stop pushing when they are moving forward in large groups. People get trapped in a closed space, start panicking, and thus, the result. Wacken is much better organized because it's at an open space, if something happens people can simply jump over the fences, and they're off. Unlike a tunnel where they are trapped. -- Lena, The Netherlands

Compiled by Stuart Tiffen
Editor: Chuck Penfold