The Mina Incident from the Perspective of a Crowd Scientist

Tragic events like the Mina incident in Saudi Arabia, which left hundreds dead, may not occur as we imagine. It is usually thought that incidents caused by overcrowding result in panic and flight; however, Stephen Reicher, a social psychology professor at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, states that this perception is not very close to reality. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Reicher said, 'The public perception regarding crowd psychology is completely wrong.' 'The frantic effort to find an exit is not the cause of the disaster; rather, the situation is much simpler. It only takes a few people in the crowd to lose their balance and fall. In this case, the crowd behind them, unaware of this occurrence, continues to push, and the crushing begins from there.' This crowd scientist mentions that panic and crushing during flight are often referenced, 'but crushing while fleeing means that the crowd is running and chaos has ensued. However, in such disasters, the issue is that individuals cannot move at all, let alone run.' He states, 'The frantic effort to find an exit is not the cause of the disaster; rather, the situation is much simpler. It only takes a few people in the crowd to lose their balance and fall. In this case, the crowd behind them, unaware of this occurrence, continues to push, and the crushing begins from there.' He believes that 'in such incidents, usually half of the deaths occur due to asphyxiation because people push against each other so much that some cannot move enough to breathe.' 'In such incidents, usually half of the deaths occur due to asphyxiation because people push against each other so much that some cannot move enough to breathe.' So when does a densely packed crowd turn into a dangerous crush? The answer to this question is usually four people per square meter. In such a crowd, the distance between individuals becomes so small that they begin to push each other, and these waves of pushing can quickly become dangerous. The account of the event from one of the eyewitnesses also confirms this theory. Abdullah Lotfi, a survivor of this tragedy, told the Associated Press, 'I saw someone fall on a person in a wheelchair, and then several others fell on them. The pressure was like a wave, and we were all moving back and forth.' Every year, 2 million people travel to Mecca for the Hajj rituals. However, such a large crowd always has the potential for incidents to occur. The deadliest incident occurred in 1990 when ventilation problems in a tunnel claimed the lives of over 1,400 people. Joining dense crowds is always dangerous; however, the sense of cooperation and unity among the crowd can significantly help reduce the problems caused by overcrowding. Reicher believes that 'crowd psychology can help improve situations and prompt people to cooperate more and assist each other in such times. The only possible danger is that in such crowds, a false sense of security may arise among the crowd.' In this regard, the Washington Post also writes in an analysis that deadly incidents resulting from crowding have a long history, from music festivals, protests, religious ceremonies to sporting events. For example, in 1989, a crowd crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, led to the deaths of nearly 100 people. In 2005, a rumor of a terrorist explosion among the crowd on the Dijla River bridge in Baghdad caused panic among the people and resulted in 960 deaths. In 2010, on the last day of a festival in Cambodia, due to crowding on a bridge that lasted for hours, at least 345 people died from asphyxiation and trampling, and 329 others were injured. According to this newspaper, incidents of crushing underfoot during ordinary crowd panics can lead to several deaths; however, the main problem regarding large crowds is the lack of space to move, for which the attendees in these crowds cannot be blamed for their behavior. Kate Steele, a crowd risk analysis and safety expert, states that human panic in a crowd is really different from the stampede of a large herd of fleeing animals, and it is better to call human crowding 'collective crushing.' According to her, what happens in human-type incidents is the movement of two waves toward each other and their collision in a confined space, which is not due to the panic of people in the crowd and their flight. Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, Iran's Minister of Interior, announced on Tuesday that 'according to the latest statistics provided to us, there have been 169 fatalities, 295 missing, and 45 injured, with some of the injured being discharged from the hospital today.' According to the latest official statistics from the Saudi government, the death toll from the Mina incident has reached 769 by Tuesday. In this context, 717 people were killed during the 'Ramy al-Jamarat' in Mina. The number of Iranian casualties during the Hajj rituals has increased to 136. The number of Iranian victims of the Mina incident is expected to rise; the latest statistics indicate 155 people. The number of Iranian casualties from the Grand Mosque incident has reached '11 people.'