At least 149 people died in the crowd that arose in connection with the Halloween celebration.
The crowd in the Itaewo district of Seoul was already so huge hours before the big accident that many people present sensed the coming danger. BBC’s (switching to another service) according to the accident site, there were around 100,000 people in total.
21-year-old Moon Ju-young said that the situation seemed chaotic in the narrow street where people were packed.
– There were ten times more people than usual on the street, he said.
Arrived at around seven o’clock Raphael Rashid told the BBC that more and more people were arriving.
– When the clock approached ten in the evening, it was clear that there were too many people and something was going to happen. There were tens of thousands of people there: I’ve never seen so many. In the end, there were so many of us on the sidewalks that people spilled onto the road where there were cars.
An American woman living in Seoul posted a video on Twitter just before the incident. The video shows how a huge mass of people starts to pack in the street. The woman later said that she got home safely.
Based on preliminary information, the events started shortly before 11:30 in the evening local time, when people fell on a narrow street in a hilly area near a local hotel and were trapped under the crowd.
“People fell like dominoes”
17 years old Kim Seo-jeong described for the New York Times (you will switch to another service) in a phone interview about his horror experience.
– When we got there at eight in the evening, there were already so many people there that we could hardly move forward.
The woman says that at some point she and her friend decided to give up and return home.
– But we couldn’t even move backwards, because people were pushing us from behind.
At one point, according to Kim, a group of young men pushed their friends down the hill and shouted “Push, push!”
– The person in front of me slipped and fell and at the same time also knocked me over. The people behind me fell like dominoes.
According to Kim, those who fell were under and on top of him.
– I could hardly breath. We screamed and screamed for help, but because the music was so loud in the alley, our screams were drowned in the noise, he says.
Kim and her friends eventually managed to crawl out of the crowd and were pulled in by adults in a nearby tavern.
Bystanders helped with first aid
The doctor sent to the scene among the first Lee Beom-suk arrived in the midst of chaos.
– When I started CPR, there were only two victims lying on the asphalt. The number quickly exploded, and the number of first responders on hand was no longer enough. Numerous bystanders came to help us in resuscitation, he says.
The view is hard to describe in words, says Lee.
– Many of the victims’ faces were pale, I couldn’t feel their pulse or breathing, describes Lee.
The night before Sunday Finnish time, the authorities announced that 149 people died in the crowd, most of whom were teenagers and young adults. Dozens were reportedly injured, 19 of them seriously. Two of the victims are foreigners.
Read more:
Almost 150 people were trampled to death at a Halloween party in South Korea – pedestrians revived victims lying on the street