“This news fell like lightning from a blue sky”said a father who burst into tears while picking up his daughter’s body at a morgue in the country’s capital.
Part of a huge crowd celebrating in Itaewon rushed into an alley, where at least a 153 people, most of them in their 20s, emergency services said, adding the death toll could rise.
The young people, some still in their teens and many of them in costumes of Halloweenset out to enjoy the bars, nightclubs and restaurants where the revelry routinely spills over into narrow and often steep side streets.
Instead, the street filled with people calling for help, as emergency personnel desperately tried to free trapped bodies and perform CPR on people lying on the ground.
Choi Sung-beom, chief of the Yongsan Fire Station, told a briefing at the scene that 82 people were injured, 19 of them seriously. Among the fatalities there were 22 foreignerssaid.
Family and friends desperately searched for news of their loved ones at community centers converted into facilities to search for and report on the missing.
at least the 90% of the victims had been identified by noonwith delays affecting some foreigners and teenagers who did not yet have identification cards, said the Ministry of Interior.
Near the scene of the events, commemorative altars began to be improvised, on which people left flowers and notes.
President Yoon expressed his condolences to the victims and his wishes for a speedy recovery to the many injured in one of the worst disasters in South Korea and the world’s worst stampedes in decades.
“This is truly tragic”he said in a statement, promising an investigation into the cause of the disaster. “Last night, a tragedy and disaster took place in the heart of Seoul that shouldn’t have happened.”.
Disorder then chaos
South Korean mobile gaming and technology companies such as Kakao and NCSOFTthey withdrew their promotions from Halloween after the tragedy, while the Everland amusement park canceled its Halloween events.
Many governments and regional organizations have canceled or curtailed festivals and other celebrations.
The agglomeration in Itaewonsymbol of the unbridled nightlife of the South Korean capital for decades, took place when it was beginning to recover after more than two years of restrictions due to the COVID-19and after trendy restaurants and shops replaced seedy establishments.
It was the first event of Halloween in three years in seoulwhich has practically freed itself from the restrictions by the COVID-19 and social distancing. Many of the partygoers wore Halloween masks and costumes.
Twenty-four hours earlier, there were already warning signs that the festivities were attracting a dangerous number of people.with victims and their families questioning the apparent lack of crowd control.
Early on Sunday, costumes and personal belongings were mixed with bloodstains on the narrow street. Survivors huddled under emergency blankets amid a crowd of rescuers, police and media.
Many of the dead were near a nightclub, Choi said. Among the foreigners killed were people from China, Iran, Uzbekistan and Norway, she said.
Witnesses described the crowd becoming increasingly agitated as the night progressed. Chaos erupted just before the stampede of the 22:20 local time (1320 GMT)and the police present had to make efforts to control the crowd, witnesses said.
Moon Ju-young, 21, said there were clear signs of trouble in the alley before the incident, with 10 times more people than usual.
Images on social media showed hundreds of people huddled in the narrow, sloping alley crushed and motionless as emergency personnel and police tried to free them.
Choi, the fire chief of the Yongsan districtsaid all the deaths were probably due to being crushed in the alley.
makeshift morgue
Firefighters and witnesses said people kept coming into the alley when it was already overcrowded.and that those at the top of the slope fell, causing people further down the slope to fall onto others.
One woman said her daughter, who was pulled from the crowd, survived after being trapped for more than an hour.
A makeshift mortuary was set up in a building near the scene. About four dozen bodies were wheeled out on stretchers and taken to a government facility to identify the victims, according to a Reuters witness.
the district of Itaewon is popular with young South Koreans and foreigners. Its dozens of bars and restaurants were packed on Saturday for Halloween.
“At Christmas and during fireworks you see huge crowds (…) but this was ten times bigger than all that”Park Jung-hoon, 21, told Reuters.
Source: Ambito
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