Photo Gallery Love Charade
Last week, a report commissioned by the city of Duisburg purported to show that the municipality had little to do with the disaster that befell the Love Parade there at the end of July. Twenty-one partygoers lost their lives in severe overcrowding at the entrance to the party site.
Even as Duisburg has sought to deny any responsibility, the police too have said that the decisive errors were made elsewhere. Here, Police Chief Dieter Wehe (l.) and North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Ralf Jäger at a state parliament committee meeting last week. Jäger warned against making the police the "scapegoat" for the disaster. Both the police and the city government of Duisburg were involved in both planning and approving the event.
Jäger (2nd from l.) made a brief visit to the Love Parade on July 24 and spoke briefly with event organizer Rainer Schaller (r.). During his stopover, Jäger heard nothing of the ominous crowds developing not far from where he stood.
By 4 p.m., organizers had effectively lost control of the crowds streaming toward the entrance ramp -- which was also supposed to serve as an exit. By 5 p.m., the crowds had grown so dense that people had begun to collapse. Ultimately, 21 people died in the crush.
The site where most of the deaths and injuries occurred has since become a vast sea of flowers, candles and notices.
Planners foresaw all Love Parade visitors approaching the entrance from two directions through this series of overpasses. The two streams converged at the base of the ramp where the crush occured. The tunnel has still not been reopened to traffic.
Mayor Adolf Sauerland has repeatedly insisted that the city of Duisburg has no culpability for the Love Parade disaster. But documents show that his office was well aware of the planning chaos which preceded the tragedy.
