(O-H5) Survey of Current State and Response in Crowd Crush Injury

Objectives: The objective of this study is to identify the characteristics and appropriate response of the crowd crush disaster.

Background: On October 29, 2022, a crowd gathered for a spontaneous Halloween event in the Itaewon area of Seoul, South Korea, where a crowd crush accident occurred. At least 158 people were killed and at least 196 people were injured. The victims were mostly young adults. The victims were mostly young adults. In this study, the authors tried to learn a lesson by investigating the worldwide crowd crush disaster and analyzing the differences and results.

Methods: First, the current crowd crush disasters were investigated and summarized through literature and internet searches. Based on this, we secondarily conducted a survey of experts to derive the prevention, management, emergency medical response of crowd crush disasters and the research contents needed in the future.

Results: Our research shows that crowd crush disasters have occurred in both developed and developing countries since the 1800s. Common characteristics include high crowd density due to crowds being concentrated in a specific location, a crowd collapse occurring at a certain point after a sustained period of crowd movement, a narrow section of the crowd that becomes a bottleneck, or a large number of people suddenly converging in a certain space. The largest loss of life occurred in 2015 during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, but the events varied from concerts, sporting events to funerals. It is important for organizers to ensure that crowd density does not exceed certain limits, and that efforts are made to maintain order and prevent accidents. While it is important to adhere to the principles of disaster medicine, such as rapid and dispersed transportation, crowd management may be more important due to the difficulty of accessing patients during a crowd crush. In the future, crowd management guidelines and a real-time crowd density monitoring system using CCTV or drones can be established.

Conclusions: Crowd crush disasters can occur in any type of crowd gathering where crowd density increases, and should be prevented through crowd management and managed through real-time crowd density monitoring.

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Funding (Optional):
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. NRF-2023R1A2C1002938).