The Philippine Online Chronicles

It was supposed to be a joyous occasion filled with music and camaraderie but it has turned out to be a catastrophe. For the 20 people who died at the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany they wouldn’t have guessed that a supposedly fun event would turn out to be the thing that would mark the end to their lives.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has now asked authorities to conduct investigations to be able to go to the bottom of the very chilling incident. Over the weekend, the Love Festival attracted over an estimated 1.4 million concert goers for a couple of days of good music and merrymaking. Despite the initial estimates that the concert venues and town facilities could only accommodate 250 000 participants, the event grew larger and larger and the organizers were unable to control the swelling numbers.

Tragedy struck when a massive throng of people tried to force their way into a small underground pedestrian passage way. Chaos ensued and the sea of humanity that was clearly past the capacity of the tunnel became unruly. Many were trapped and hurt and the nineteen people who met grizzly ends to their lives were unfortunately crushed and trampled by the other panicking festival goers.

The breakdown of the casualties is as follows: twelve of those who died were female and eight were male. A majority of the dead were from Germany (11). The others who perished were citizens from Australia, the Netherlands, China, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain.

The Love Festival featured many disc jockeys playing techno music in a wide open public space. This made the event a very palatable to the youth from all over the region who were interested in electronic music. The organizers said that they expected their initial figures of 700 000 to 800 000 attendees to be eclipsed so they ended up opening an additional event site to allow for the excess. The police is disputing this figure saying that less than half of the expected amount actually showed up.

The tragedy struck despite a great police presence in preparation for the event. The local police department deployed 4000 police officers to provide security for the event.

As expected the German press has come down hard on the organizers of the Love Festival. Some newspapers in Germany have even gone as to say that “young people were abused” as a result of the Love Festival. Some have also suggested that the organizers wanted “status” despite not doing their homework on how to keep the concert goers safe for the duration of the event.

The Love Festival has been a yearly event since it was founded in 1989. According to its founder, the festival would forever be overshadowed by the deaths of the twenty people who took part in the Festival. It is not clear whether or not the festival would still be held in the future.

Aside from the twenty people who died in the chaos, there were also more than 340 who had injuries who needed medical attention. According to reports, none of those people are now in mortal danger.