Mourning and fury over Shanghai stampede deaths

Chinese authorities order review of crowd-control measures as victims' relatives complain of poor planning for New Year event.

A woman lights a candle during a memorial ceremony on January 2, 2015, for people killed in a stampede on New Year’s Eve in Shanghai. Aly Song / Reuters

SHANGHAI // China instigated a review of crowd-safety procedures after a deadly stampede on New Year’s Eve killed 36, with dozens of people still in Shanghai’s hospitals on Friday.

The stampede – the city’s deadliest disaster since 2010 – started just before midnight as tens of thousands of people crowded into the historic Bund riverside district for a light show.

Chinese president Xi Jinping ordered an investigation into the tragedy and told local governments to prioritise safety ahead of mass celebrations of the Lunar New Year next month.

China’s national tourism administration issued an emergency notice on Thursday night requiring its local offices to establish procedures to control crowd flows at tourist spots.

Relatives of the stampede victims accused the authorities in Shanghai of failing to control the crowds.

Li Juan was only a few metres away from her younger sister Li Na when the accident happened on a wide stairway leading to a waterfront promenade.

“It all feels like a dream and I still cannot believe that she is gone,” she said, weeping uncontrollably.

The 23-year-old victim worked as an assistant teacher in an early learning centre.

“The government is responsible for the accident,” Ms Li said. She saw only six to eight police on the staircase, she said, and none on the plaza” below.

Shanghai’s police said a “more than normal” 700-strong force was present.

The city government said it was still investigating the cause of the stampede, but police appeared to discount reports that it started when what appeared to be money started falling from above – bar coupons that looked like US dollar bills thrown from a building window across from the square. The coupons were flung after the stampede occurred, the police said on its microblog on Friday.

Qi Xiaoyan, a 21-year-old migrant worker, came to Shanghai from nearby Anhui province just four months ago to earn money to support her family back home, her cousin said.

“I cannot imagine something like this would ever happen in a city like Shanghai,” said Cai Jinjin, who has lived in Shanghai for 10 years.

“Besides the sadness, I’m more bitterly disappointed in this city.”

The stampede took place as vast numbers of people crammed into a square named for Chen Yi, Shanghai’s first Communist mayor.

All but four of the dead on a list of 32 identified victims released by the city government were aged 25 or under, and 21 were female. The youngest was a 12-year-old boy.

City authorities on Friday raised the number of injured by two to 49. Four were in critical condition and another nine were severely hurt, the state news agency Xinhua said, citing hospital sources.

The stampede is Shanghai’s worst accident since a fire in a high-rise residential building killed 58 people in 2010, and a black mark for the commercial hub’s international reputation.

Xinhua said municipal authorities had been caught in a wave of criticism for “not making effective preparative measures to cope with the crowds that flock the Bund”.

The oldest fatality was Du Shuanghua, 37, whose wife, Fan Ping, said he was the family’s only breadwinner and she had not told their eight-year-old son that his father was dead.

Friends who were with Du on the Bund told Ms Fan that her husband was still conscious when he arrived at the Shanghai Number One People’s Hospital, where most of the injured were taken. But she never saw him alive again.

Police and security guards prevented relatives from entering the hospital before eventually allowing only two members of each family into a waiting area.

“We waited desperately from midnight the first day to 9pm the next day. The hospital did not give me any updates on my husband until we were told to go to the funeral home to see his dead body,” Ms Fan said.

People continued to gather at the accident scene, some laying flowers in a government-approved show of mourning.

University student Chen Xiaohang placed white chrysanthemums in memory of the sister of a high-school classmate who died. “I feel very sad about this and I hope the government will offer better safety controls for events like this,” she said.

“The Shanghai government should take responsibility for the incident. Most of the young victims must be the only child of their families,” said taxi driver Xu Jianzhong.

Under China’s strict birth control regulations most couples are restricted to a single child.

* Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse