2001 -- A report into the deaths of 11 people at a fireworks festival in Japan has
blamed organisers for "gross thoughtlessness". The official inquiry
also says local police, the local council and a security firm were partly to blame for the
crush on July 21.
Nine children and two
elderly women died when thousands of people piled onto an overcrowded footbridge after the
festival. Over 190 people were injured in the disaster.
The crush started as
people left the event on the beach and crossed a footbridge to get to the train station.
At one point, 6,400
people were stuck inside the 100-metre overpass. "The accident was
an entirely preventable one if organisers had just used a basic level of common
sense".
Akashi -- Japan
Ten die - 112 Injured in crowd crush after fireworks
2001 -- At least 10 people -- mostly children -- were killed and more than 112
others were injured in a stampede after a fireworks display in the town of Akashi, in
western Japan, officials said.
Seven children -- including a 2-year-old child --
and one older woman were among the victims.
The stampede followed a beachfront fireworks
display, a common summertime event in Japan, attended by about 150,000 people. After the
show, there was a crush of people on a pedestrian overpass that crosses a road to the
commuter train station.
Witnesses described being swept off their feet as a
crowd of hundreds tried to rush from the beach to catch the train. They said the bridge
became so packed that many had difficulty breathing.
Dozens of people were hospitalized and many more
were treated by emergency medical workers on the scene. Police said
they were investigating the cause of the accident.
10 people crushed to death
at fireworks display
Ten people, including eight children, were crushed
to death and over 90 others were injured Saturday night after they fell like dominoes on a
crowded bridge after watching a fireworks display, police said Sunday.
Hyogo Prefectural Police began to question
eyewitnesses and officials of the Akashi Municipal Government that organized the annual
fireworks display in a bid to establish the cause of the accident.
The deadly accident occurred at around 8:40 p.m. on
a 100-meter-long pedestrian overpass that was packed with hundreds of people who had
viewed fireworks at Okura beach in Akashi.
Over 100 people fell down upon each other on the
bridge, which spans between the beach and Asagiri Station on the JR Sanyo Line over Route
2. They were rushed to nearby hospitals but 10 people were pronounced dead.
Doctors said all the victims were crushed to death.
Eight of the 10 were children aged under 10, while the two others were women in their 70s.
The cause of the accident remains unclear as
eyewitnesses have made conflicting statements to police investigators.
One of them said a pregnant woman fell down on a
person behind her, triggering the accident. Another told investigators that a group of
young people stormed into the crowds.
A spokesman for the municipal government
acknowledged during a news conference Sunday that it was not prepared for a major
accident.
When the city fire department received an emergency
report on the accident, it dispatched only one ambulance to the scene. However, the crew
on the ambulance realized that the accident was much more serious than they imagined, and
immediately asked fire departments in the neighboring cities of Kobe and Kakogawa for
help.
Ambulances arrived late at the scene because of the
nearby highway was heavily congested with cars of those going home after the fireworks.
Some people at the accident scene told reporters
they alerted police before and after the accident occurred, but that police initially
ignored them saying the event was organized by the municipal government.
A woman living near the scene said she had
anticipated a serious accident like the one that occurred Saturday, noting that there was
great confusion at the scene when there was a countdown to the new century on New Year's
Eve last year.
Manager of the Lawson convenience store outlet in
front of Asagiri Station, said the accident could have been predicted. "Many people
have pointed out that the pedestrian overpass is dangerous because it is heavily congested
when there is a major event." The fireworks display was held as part of the 32nd
annual summer festival organized by the Akashi Municipal Government.
Akashi -- Japan
Witnesses blame lack of security for deaths
2004 -- The call from a
private security company was frantic: Thousands had mobbed a pedestrian overpass after a
fireworks display in western Japan and lives were in danger.
Then came the police response - let's wait and see.
In those crucial minutes 10 people - most of them
children - were killed and 117 others injured when a crowd surged onto the overpass
Saturday night in Akashi, a suburb of Kobe about 390 miles southwest of Tokyo.
The accident - the worst overcrowding tragedy in
Japan in decades - has focused intense scrutiny on allegedly lax crowd control at the site
and what critics say was a laggard response by police.
Witnesses said officials seemed unprepared for the
crowd of 130,000 people who showed up for the fireworks, and a report by a security
company hired for the event said guards called the police for backup and were turned down.
Akashi police official confirmed that version of
events.
"Right before the accident, there was a
proposal asking for a group of police to go up to the bridge," he told reporters in
Akashi on Sunday. "But the decision was to wait."
He however, defended the police, saying that
security companies had been hired to monitor traffic atop the pedestrian overpass and
police were not responsible for that area.
He also said that plainclothes officers had checked
out the situation a little while before and said it was "nonviolent."
Witnesses, however, said they could see trouble
brewing from the start.
A survivor said the platform was packed when she got
off the train at Asagiri station - and it only got worse. She couldn't even get to the
beach to see the fireworks and had to watch from the bridge.
After the fireworks finished, the deadly pushing
began as most people tried to return from the beach to the station while others got off
the train to go to the beach, perhaps for late-night partying.
"Everybody was panicking, it was really
awful," she said on Sunday. "At one point, I started feeling dizzy and I thought
I was going to die by falling on the ground and being trampled."
Witnesses and the report by the security company
said a group of young men or teen-agers got off the train, threatened people and tried to
push their way across the packed bridge and down to the beach. Some witnesses said the
youths had the brightly dyed hair common in Japan's counter culture.
Police have not identified or detained any of the
youths mentioned, state police spokesman said.
"Apparently they were so irritated by the
slowly moving crowd they tried to ram their way through," said the woman, who went to
the fireworks display and was caught on the bridge with a friend and her
junior-high-school-aged son. The woman, her son and friend were not injured.
Several rows of people stumbled and fell on one
another, and the crowd surged over them, crushing or asphyxiating the victims.
Akashi -- Japan
Five facing imprisonment over fatal crush on overpass
2004 -- Prosecutors
demanded prison terms Thursday for five people charged with negligence over a fatal crush
on an overcrowded pedestrian overpass in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, in July 2001.
Relatives of those who died in a fatal overpass crush in July 2001 make their
way toward the Kobe District Court.
Eleven people died in the incident, most of them
children. The crush occurred as people made their way back from a fireworks display.
The prosecutors demanded 3 1/2-year terms each for a
former policeman, a former Akashi city official and a former security company official,
and terms of three years and 2 1/2 years for two other Akashi city officials.
The former policeman was an officer in charge of
crowd control at Akashi Police Station. The two other defendants facing 3 1/2-year terms
are head of the city government department in charge of the fireworks, and a senior
employee of security company.
Prosecutors said, "Each of the defendants is
trying to transfer blame to another party." There is no evidence of soul-searching on
the part of the five, they said.
All five defendants have pleaded not guilty, arguing
the accident was unforeseeable.
Prosecutors said the defendants could have
anticipated the danger of a crush but neglected to take action.
The indictment cites neglect by the authorities,
though the prosecutors did not indict the city, the police force or the security firm.
The accident occurred on a pedestrian overpass
linking a railway station and a beach where the fireworks show was being held on July 21,
2001. Some people fell down on the extremely crowded overpass, causing a crush that killed
nine children and two women and injured 247 others.
Five officials convicted
Fatal stampede at summer festival
2004 -- A Japanese court convicted a top police officer and four other officials
of professional negligence Friday over a stampede at a city-sponsored fireworks festival
that killed 11 people and injured hundreds three years ago.
The July 21, 2001 accident occurred on a jam-packed
pedestrian overpass connecting a train station and a local beach in Akashi, 450 kilometers
(280 miles) west of Tokyo.
Police said 11 people, including eight children,
died and nearly 250 others were injured when a group of unruly youths tried to push their
way through about 3,000 people on the bridge, creating chaos.
The Kobe District Court sentenced Tsuneo Kanazawa,
55, then a regional police chief, and Keiichiro Nitta, 63, the former head of Nishikan, a
security company, to two years and six months in prison for neglecting their professional
duty to maintain public safety, a court spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
The court also gave three Akashi city officials
suspended prison sentences.
Judge Yasuhiro Morioka said the defendants failed to
take safety measures to prevent the stampede, including limiting the number of people on
the overpass, Kyodo News reported.
More than 130,000 people turned out for the
beachside fireworks display organized by the city. The six-meter (20-foot) bridge
straddles a thoroughfare and train tracks and is the most direct link between the beach
and a nearby train station.
Two to serve time over fatal crush
Municipal officials get off with suspended terms
2004 -- A police officer and a former security company official were sentenced
Friday to 30 months in prison for failing to prevent a fatal crush on a pedestrian
overpass after a fireworks show in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture.
Relatives of people crushed to death after a
fireworks show in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, head to the Kobe District Court on Friday
morning.
Nine children and two elderly women were killed and
247 others were injured in the incident, which happened around 9 p.m. on July 21, 2001. It
was the first time a court has held a police officer criminally liable in a situation
involving people being crushed to death in an overcrowded place.
The officer, Tsuneo Kanazawa, 55, was one of the
police officers in charge of crowd control at Akashi Police Station at the time. He is now
a deputy Hyogo Prefectural Police inspector.
Keiichiro Nitta, 63, was a senior employee of the
Fukuoka-based security company Nisikan Co., now operating as N K Security.
Presiding Judge Yasuhiro Morioka of the Kobe
District Court said Friday that the incident occurred as a result of the combined
negligence of police, the security company and the city.
He handed suspended sentences to senior Akashi
municipal officials Mitsuhiro Bungyoku, 62, Hisashi Yamabuchi, 62, and Kazuo Minami, 52.
They were each sentenced to 30 months, suspended for five years.
All of the defendants will appeal the ruling to the
Osaka High Court, their lawyers said.
"It was a tragic accident in which all of those
who were killed were the weak," the judge said.
He said certain circumstances should be taken into
account, including the revelation that the Akashi Police Station chief told his
subordinates not to place too much priority on crowd control. The head of the station at
the time was Yutaka Nagata, 62.
"However, as experts in crowd management, the
responsibility of the two (defendants) whose sentences were not suspended was more
grave," the judge said.
The court recognized that all the defendants had a
responsibility to ensure the crowd's safety that day, even though the city was primarily
responsible for spectator safety at the fireworks show because it was a municipal event.
The judge said there was a lack of coordination
between the city and police in mapping out effective measures to prevent overcrowding, and
the various shortcomings in the security plan had a major impact on the turn of events.
"It cannot be denied that much of the
responsibility for the failure of police (at the scene) to take adequate steps rests with
the then head of the Akashi Police Station," he said.
But this has no bearing on the issue of whether the
defendants were responsible, he said.
He ruled that the tragedy could have been averted if
municipal officials had requested that police be dispatched to the overpass by around 8
p.m., and if Kanazawa had properly deployed the officers under his command at the site by
7:30 p.m.
The fatal crush occurred on a pedestrian overpass
linking a railway station and the beach where the fireworks show was being held.
The overpass became packed to capacity as people
began leaving the beach after the event ended. People leaving the beach were pushing
through the overpass even while spectators who had watched the event from the overpass
were still inside.
The crush occurred when some people fell amid all
the pushing.
Following Friday's ruling, Akashi Mayor Hiroto
Kitaguchi reiterated the city's apology for the incident.
"We take the facts (stated in the ruling)
seriously. We deeply feel our responsibility," Kitaguchi said. "As chief of the
city, I want to offer my deepest apologies."
A senior Akashi Police Station officer appeared
shocked that a colleague and a former security company official did not receive suspended
sentences.
"It's a harsh verdict," he said.
Members of the victims' families sat in the gallery
during the sentencing.
Masaharu Arima, 45, who lost his two children in the
accident, praised the court for recognizing the responsibility of the former head of the
police station.
Kiyoshi Miki, 35, who lost her 3-year-old daughter
in the crush, said the court's recognition of responsibility was too lenient.
"I'm still dissatisfied with the stance of the
prosecutors, who could not seek the criminal responsibility of others, such as the head of
the police station," he said.
Prosecutors had demanded 3 1/2 years in prison for
Kanazawa, Nitta and Bungyoku.
All five defendants pleaded not guilty in the trial,
which began in April 2003.
Kanazawa maintained that he could not have foreseen
the crush. Bungyoku and the other city employees said they had left crowd control in the
hands of the security company.
Nitta meanwhile said the security company had
fulfilled its duty because it asked police to take care of crowd control.
Prosecutors said the defendants could have
anticipated the danger of a crush but neglected to take precautions.
According to the court, the five failed to take
appropriate measures to deal with a human crush, even though they knew that spectators who
couldn't enter the crowded beach area were already backed up on the overpass during the
fireworks show.
Hyogo Prefectural Police sent its case on 12 people
to prosecutors in connection with the case. Seven of them, including police station chief
Nagata, were not indicted.
Although the indictment also cited negligence on the
part of authorities, the prosecutors did not indict the city government, the police force
or the security company.
