Not fewer than 36 people died and 47 injured in a stampede during New Year’s celebrations in China’s Shanghai historic waterfront area yesterday.
The chaos occurred about a half-hour before midnight. It is the worst disaster to hit one of China’s showcase cities in recent years as people unable to contact friends and relatives streamed into hospitals yesterday, anxious for information. China’s President Xi Jinping has demanded an investigation into the incident. Investigations are likely to examine whether there were enough police on duty to manage the huge crowds.
The deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square in Shanghai’s popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when Shanghai was home to international banks and
trading houses. According to reports, the area is often jammed with people during major events.
At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought out photos of unidentified dead victims, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at the photos broke into tears when they recognized someone.
The incident centred on a stairway leading to a viewing platform near the waterfront, as people tried to get up and down the steps, state broadcaster. CCTV said. A local resident, identified as Sarah, told AFP news agency
“people were screaming… and people [started]jumping off the staircase to get clear.”
She added: “There was a quiet, and then people on the stairs fell in a wave.”
Gaby Gabriel, an American photographer living in Shanghai, told the BBC: “It was a tremendous amount of people moving in all different directions. “It seemed some people were trying to move away from the river and some
people were trying to go towards the river and there was no order whatsoever, no guidance.”
However, Shanghai police denied social media reports that a stampede was triggered by people stopping to pick up fake money thrown from the balcony of a nightclub.
In a statement, police said that video footage showed that the bills had been thrown after the crush took place. Shanghai’s city government said that the identification process for victims of the crush had begun.
Cai Lixin, a district police commander, said in quotes carried by Chinese media that there had been more people on the streets than during China’s 1 October national day celebrations, but fewer police had been deployed.
“There were no formal events planned yesterday, so we did not arrange for as many police officers as last year’s national day,” he said.
A traditional new year fireworks display on the Bund had already been cancelled due to official fears of overcrowding, the Shanghai Daily reports.
However, despite the cancellation, state-run Xinhua news agency said there were “far more” people in the Bund area on Wednesday night than originally predicted, with a crowd size similar to the countdown in 2013. According to the Shanghai Daily, close to 300,000 people turned up for New Year’s Eve celebrations a year ago. During a news conference on Thursday, Shanghai police said that about 500 additional officers had been mobilized following the crush.
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