This response seems extremely slow considering there is a police station not very far from Itaewon Station:
A police squad first arrived at the scene of the Halloween crowd crush in Seoul nearly 85 minutes after the incident erupted, police data showed Sunday.
A total of five police squads affiliated with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) were mobilized on the day of the crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district that killed at least 156 people, mostly those in their 20s, according to the data submitted by the SMPA to Rep. Lee Tae-won of the main opposition Democratic Party.
The No. 11 police squad first arrived at the scene at 11:40 p.m. on Oct. 29 under the instruction of Lee Im-Jae, a former chief of the Yongsan Police Station that includes the Itaewon neighborhood. The first call to the police’s 112 emergency hotline was made around 10:15 p.m.
Four other squads arrived at the scene one by one, starting from 11:50 p.m. on Oct. 29 to 1:14 a.m. on Oct. 30, according to the SMPA data.
Lee — temporarily suspended from his post — was also found to have arrived at the Itaewon police substation at 11:05 p.m., some 50 minutes after the crush happened.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
If anyone deserved a Soldier’s Medal it is these three U.S. troops from Camp Casey. I like the comment from one of the survivors that the one large Soldier was pulling people out of the alley like he was picking radishes from a field:
A trio of foreign heroes praised for saving more than 30 lives from last Saturday’s tragic crowd crush in Seoul turned out to be American soldiers stationed in South Korea, some survivors said Thursday.
One of the survivors, known only as a twentysomething man living in Cheongju, central South Korea, told Yonhap News Agency he believes the three foreign heroes are U.S. soldiers serving in Camp Casey in Dongducheon, about 50 km north of Seoul.
The man told local media earlier he was pulled out of the chaos in a narrow alleyway in Itaewon before fainting and being carried to safety.
He said he is convinced the heroic Americans are Jarmil Taylor, 40, Jerome Augusta, 34, and Dane Beathard, 32, after belatedly learning of their interviews with French news agency AFP published Sunday.
He said he went to Itaewon on Saturday to enjoy the Halloween festivities with his friends but fell down in the crowd in the narrow alleyway before being crushed for about 15 minutes.
The Cheongju man, who is 182 cm tall and weighs 96 kg, said a strong black man rescued him from the crowd as if pulling radishes from a field.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
People are eager to blame someone for the Itaewon crowd crush disaster and the Korean police have become the main target:
According to police, 137 police officers were deployed in Itaewon on Saturday night. When asked whether there was enough police presence, Yoon Hee-keun, new head of the National Police Agency, said on Monday it was “difficult” to give a definite answer.
Multiple eyewitness accounts say there was little police presence to control the crowd. Viral clips on social media show people struggling to move quickly.
In a briefing on Sunday, Lee Sang min, Minister of Interior and Safety, said he understood that deploying police officers or firefighters in advance could not have “solved the problem.”
But Professor Choi Don-mook at the department of fire engineering at Gachon University told The Korea Herald there were several ways to respond to a growing crowd.
“When there are this many people, traffic must be closed off. Even if the turnout grew unexpectedly, (the authorities) could have checked CCTVs or even use drones and introduce one way traffic if necessary,” he said.
Minister Lee’s remark has also been criticized by the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, better known as Minbyun, as potentially downplaying the government’s safety management responsibility.
In a viral TikTok, Nathan Taverniti, an Australian survivor who survived the deadly crowd crush, said there was a “lack of planning police force and emergency services.”
“You know how many people were going to that event. Why were you not prepared?” he said in the clip.
Steven Belsi, the father of an American student who died in the crowd crash, told NBC News that the South Korean police should have been better prepared.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but in my opinion the simple thing that could have prevented what happened was to shutdown the Itaewon subway station. The tragedy happened just across the street from the train station. People were undoubtedly moving to and from the clubs and the train station using the narrow alley where the tragedy occurred. Closing Itaewon station may have caused less overcrowding in that area if people had to walk further to get into Itaewon from other stations.
With that all said if people really want to find who is to blame, then determine who started the initial pushing at the top of the slope that caused people to fall on top of each other in the alley.
The death toll could go even higher with many more people still in the hospital in critical condition:
As of Sunday evening, officials put the death toll at 153 and the number of injured people at 133. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said the death count could further rise as 37 of the injured people were in serious conditions.
Ken Fallas, a Costa Rican architect who went Itaewon with expat friends, used his smartphone to film video showing unconscious people being carried out from the alley as others shouted for help. He said the loud music made things more chaotic.
“When we just started to move forward, there was no way to go back,” Fallas said. “We didn’t hear anything because the music was really loud. Now, I think that was one of the main things that made this so complicated.”
Ninety-seven of the dead were women and 56 were men. More than 80% of the dead are in their 20s and 30s, but at least four were teenagers. At least 20 of the dead are foreigners from China, Russia, Iran and elsewhere. Two of the dead are U.S. citizens, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul confirmed in a statement Sunday.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but no word yet if the two Americans were USFK service members or not. This report says that USFK has not reports of any casualties though they are still accounting for personnel. Once again condolences to all the friends and families impacted by this tragic disaster.
This article correlates with other reports I have read on social media that people at the top of the narrow alleyway adjacent to the Hamilton Hotel started pushing people down. This alleyway slopes uphill this caused a domino effect of people falling downhill on top of those below them:
Witnesses and survivors on Sunday said an overnight stampede that killed at least 151 people occurred after a massive group of people celebrating Halloween surged into a narrow downhill alley and were instantly pushed down by others.
The deadliest stampede in South Korea’s history happened Saturday night in the alley near Hamilton Hotel in the famous nightlife district of Itaewon after tens of thousands of people visited the area for Halloween.
A total of 151 people, including 19 foreigners, have been killed and 82 others injured, fire authorities said, adding the death toll could rise further.
“People kept pushing down into a downhill club alley, resulting in other people screaming and falling down like dominos,” an unidentified witness wrote on Twitter. “I thought I would be crushed to death too as people kept pushing without realizing there were people falling down at the start of the stampede.”
A woman her 20s said the accident occurred after a massive crowd of people were pushed back and forth for some time, which then led her friend to be pinned down under the crowd.
Another female survivor in her 20s, surnamed Park, said the stampede erupted as people flocked into the small street in a short period of time.
“A short person like me could not even breathe,” Park said. “(I) could survive as I was located on the sideline of the alley. It looks like people in the middle suffered the most.”
Other survivors, meanwhile, blamed the owners of bars and clubs nearby, who allegedly blocked people from escaping from the overcrowded alley.
“It looks like the casualties were more severe as people attempted to escape to nearby stores but were kicked out back to the street because business hours were over,” said the survivor who asked not to be named.
Yonhap
That is pretty horrible that business owners would not allow people to exit the alleyway through their businesses thus further contributing to this disaster. It will be interesting to see if they face any charges of liability.
This is absolutely horrible what happened last night in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul:
At least 146 people died and more than 150 were injured in a crowd crush in Itaewon, Yongsan-gu, central Seoul, according to fire authorities at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday. The fire department began to receive reports of patients having difficulty breathing at 10:22 p.m. on Saturday.
Of the 146 people who died, 101 were transferred to the hospital. The remaining 45 bodies were kept on site and later moved to a nearby multi-purpose indoor gymnasium. Identifying the deceased is expected to take some time, according to fire officials. Most of the dead were in their 20s. Officials expect that the number of casualties will continue to rise throughout the day.
Choi Eul-cheon, head of the Yongsan Police’s criminal division, said, “No drug-related reports have been confirmed” in response to a question about whether drugs were involved in the incident.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but rumors being spread was that it was caused by reports that candy filled with drugs was being handed out to people and that a celebrity was at a bar that caused a large amount of people to surge into the alley next to the Hamilton Hotel. There was obviously something going on in that alley to cause so many people to surge into that direction at once. I am sure in the coming days we will find out what happened. Odds are there was plenty of USFK servicemembers at Itaewon last night. No word yet of any of the casualties were US military personnel.
On Twitter there is a lot of videos showing what happened during the stampede and the aftermath. Looking at the videos it appears that most of the victims are young women, which would make sense that they would be crushed in a crowd more easily than larger males. Warning the videos below the fold are graphic.
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