On January 4, at the Akashi City Fire and Disaster Prevention Center, Yosuke Takada, the fire department chief, explains the accident. ⓒEPN Shin Seon-yeong On July 21, 2001, a stampede accident occurred on an overpass in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, killing nine children aged 0 to 9 and two women in their 70s, and injuring 247 others. The so-called ‘crowd avalanche’, in which the balance supporting each other collapsed for some reason and collapsed at once, is estimated to have occurred on two occasions, right after the end of the fireworks display that day, at 8:45-50pm and 8:50-55pm. (Akashi City Accident Investigation Report). Takada Yosuke, fire chief of the Akashi City Fire Bureau, was on a day off on the day of the accident. He is watching TV at home when a breaking news comes on. The content was that someone was climbing onto the roof of the overpass at JR Asagiri Station near the seaside (Okura Coast) where the fireworks festival was held. It was reported that something was going on, rather than an accident. He thought, ‘There must be an injured person, I must go,’ so he hurriedly headed to the scene. The place he arrived was near JR Asagiri Station. The overpass connected Asagiri Station and the beach, but the crowd avalanche occurred not at Asagiri Station in the north, but on the beach side in the south. The problem was that there were too many people in the south. People still unaware of what had happened continued to gather at the southern steps of the overpass. It took a long time before people were removed and traffic was cleared. “There was an empty lot in the north, so I parked my car there and set up a relief tent, but it took a very long time to enter the south where there were many injured. In the end, the number of ambulances and crews in the south was insufficient. For the first time in this accident, a patient classification table called ‘triage’, which prioritizes treatment based on the severity of the injury, was used. I tried to transport cardiac arrest patients first, but I couldn’t easily move the ambulance because I didn’t know where they were. One ambulance transported four children in cardiac arrest at the same time. When I moved to one medical institution, there were not enough doctors.” A ‘triage’ patient classification table that prioritizes treatment by injury severity. ⓒEPN Shin Seon-yeong Although they planned the route for transporting the injured, they said they did not anticipate a situation where there would be such a large number of injured or the ambulance access road would be blocked by people. There was insufficient preparation for which hospital to transfer the injured to and how many. However, in response to the overpass accident later, the firefighters were not investigated or prosecuted and tried. Commander Takada explained the reason as follows. “The activity of firefighting is to go to rescue people when a disaster occurs. As firefighters are experts in firefighting, they are responsible for providing guidance on building equipment and handling firearms in advance. But in Japan, the public organization that specializes in congestion guarding is the police, not the fire department.” After the accident, the Akashi City Fire Department created a category called ‘large-scale disaster’. In the event of a mass disaster, ambulances and crews are mobilized at once. A certain number of doctors are on standby at each hospital or brought by helicopter. After the overpass accident, there were several cases of group injuries, although not crushing deaths. Many citizens are attacked by capsaicin spray at the subway station, inhaling smoke from a fire in a mansion, or mass food poisoning at school. Unlike before, all ambulances and crews were mobilized. “If there are multiple injured people in a traffic accident, in which order they will be taken to the hospital, we train every year by changing the type of accident.” The accident investigation report is kept at the Akashi City Fire and Disaster Prevention Center. ⓒEPN Shin Seon-young Fukuda General Affairs Bureau Technical Director (right) and Matsuoka General Safety Countermeasures Director, who worked at City Hall at the time of the 2001 accident. ⓒEPN Shin Seon-young “Protection of people’s lives is an administrative task” Shigeo Fukuda, director of technology at the Akashi City General Affairs Bureau, was also on active duty at the time of the 2001 accident. At the time, he worked in the department managing Okura Coast, the site of the fireworks festival. As the manager of the overpass where the accident occurred, I was in the tent of the festival management headquarters on the south side of the overpass that day. At 8:46 p.m., he felt something uneasy, but he knew exactly what had happened when he saw the wounded being carried on stretchers. A crumpled baby car was seen inside the overpass that was closed to curfew. He has been involved in the maintenance of artificially filled Okura Beach and surrounding recreational facilities for decades. I was investigated by the police three times about why the overpass was structured like this, but it was not the subject of the investigation. In Akashi City, the department head, deputy head, and section manager of the economic department in charge of hosting the festival were indicted and sentenced to probation. Akashi City changed the location of the fireworks festival, which had been near City Hall until the previous year, to Okura Beach for the first time this year. The reason was that ‘the scenery is better’. Prior to the accident, on December 31, 2000, at 12 o’clock at night, there were already signs when fireworks were set off as a countdown event for the year to come. That night, six 110 (Korean 112) calls came in from around 12:12 to 12:41, saying that the overpass was congested. Private company security guards and police were put in to control traffic. Around 1:00 a.m., the crowd was cleared. At that time, there were no stalls under the stairs, and the time was much later than the day of the accident, so it did not lead to an accident. The fireworks display on a summer evening was different. Nevertheless, the security company submitted the same plan as the one submitted during the countdown to the New Year, as if copied. Neither the police nor the person in charge of Akashi City properly checked. In April 2002, the year after the accident, Akashi City established the current ‘Comprehensive Safety Countermeasure Office’. Masanori Matsuoka, head of the Akashi City Comprehensive Safety Countermeasures Department, explains the role of this organization as follows. “Originally, the department hosting the event and the department in charge of safety measures were divided. However, the event department prioritizes box office performance over safety. In the wake of the pedestrian overpass accident, our Safety Countermeasures Office has changed to make sure to check when a big event is held. In the past, safety was discussed in each department, but an organization dedicated to safety comprehensively was created.” What to check specifically? Director Fukuda said, “The most important thing is to figure out how many people will come.” Director Matsuoka gave an example. “At crosswalks, the signal changes in a matter of seconds, and if the width of the intersection is how many meters, we calculate in advance how many people can cross at one time. If the capacity is exceeded, we will guide you through another route.” Even if the event is not hosted by the city, it is also managed by an organization within the jurisdiction or when the city lends land. More than half of Akashi City employees joined after 2002, the year after the accident. Nevertheless, the city designates the day when the overpass accident occurred as ‘Civil Safety Day’, and invites the bereaved family to provide training to new employees. Regarding the Itaewon disaster in South Korea, Director Fukuda said, “There is nothing more painful than citizens being sacrificed while it is not clear who is responsible. Since protecting people’s lives is the administration, I think it’s important to think like it’s your own business, not someone else’s, as we also reflected on ourselves in an accident.” Manager Matsuoka said. “(I saw a report that an illegal building was left unattended in the alley of the accident in Itaewon. Shouldn’t the city guide such a thing? I hope the people involved will verify it well and work hard to prevent a recurrence.”
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What Akashi did to prevent recurrence
