At least 19 people were killed and over 200 injured on the weekend as a massive crowd crush at the Love Parade Festival in Germany had tragic consequences. One of the victims who died was a 27 year old woman from New South Wales. Held for the first time in the industrial city of Duisberg, in the country’s west, rather than its usual location of Berlin; the crush occured when the disco bunnies attempted to take a short cut through a tunnel which was too narrow to cope with the massive crowd. Officials decided to not inform the throngs of people throughout the city of the deaths, fearing more panic and further crowd crushes if word got out. An estimated 1.4 million people descended on the town of just 500,000 people for the world’s largest doof doof music festival, with questions now being raised about the ability of the city to handle such crowds.
