A picture of total chaos preceding the deaths last year of 43 people in a stampede at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park stadium was painted in the final report by a commission of inquiry, released on Thursday.
With the stadium bursting at its seams, people were being ”thrown from above” by 7.40pm, the report quotes from records kept by a security guard in the joint operation centre on April 11 last year.
Fifty minutes later, several people had died.
The commission, headed by Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, said control of the stadium’s perimeter fence was lost between 7.15pm and 8.10pm, by which time the stadium was ”bursting at its seams”.
A Wolf Security guard recorded receiving a radio message at 7.10pm stating that all tickets had been sold out ten minutes earlier, and that thousands of soccer supporters were still outside the stadium.
At 7.30pm, gates 5, 7 and 8 were closed ”and there was total chaos”.
A recorded entry 10 minutes later referred to people being ”thrown from above”.
By 7.45pm, gate 4 had been broken open, the crowd had broken through the fence at gate 6, and all the roller gates were forced open.
”At 7.55pm: total chaos with all gates broken and the place being broken down everywhere,” the record stated.
It continued: ”At 8.05: the police were contacted and arrangements made for extra police. There was chaos all over.
”At 8.30pm: several people dead and disaster management was called in.
At 8.45: 24 people dead and hundreds injured.”
The report also related the story of a man who lost a young child in the stampede. The man and his two young children, who all had tickets, entered the stadium through gate 4. As they reached the first set of stairs on the pavilion, there was a sudden surge by a large group of spectators which thrust them forward.
”He lost his grip on the one child but managed to protect the other against the mounting pressure from people who were falling all over them,” the report stated.
”He later realised that one child had been crushed to death.”
Another witness testified that he contacted emergency police on a friend’s cellphone from the stadium once he realised there were problems. He also tried in vain to attract the attention of security staff by setting alight a piece of newspaper.
”He also says objects were thrown onto the pitch for the same reason, again to no avail,” the report states.
A representative of Associated Prevention Services in the joint operation centre recorded that she saw a burning newspaper among the spectators and brought it to the attention of a Premier Soccer League (PSL) official ”in the centre of the incident”.
”She states that the PSL representative merely looked at the incident and did not think much of it,” the report said. – Sapa