Don't tempt the Fates; control that 'Kalutan' crowd or be dead sorry

Posted on February 14, 2006 - Filed Under |

 

IF City Hall is serious, and we have little doubt it isn’t, and it would be staging another grand Bangus Festival on A.B. Fernandez Avenue on a scale similar to the last time, may the ghost of the Ultra stampede not haunt the event organizers. 

            We’ve said it before and we say it again here – crowd control for the occasion is so bad it’s a disaster waiting to happen. For all the many show-offs among the volunteers in vests and the uniformed cops (and full-gear soldiers too!) who are supposed to keep order, when the people start coming in droves, massing at a particular live band, pop group or sexy stars stage area, you bet the crowd controllers are nowhere to be found!. Or, if they’re ever around, are probably so engrossed watching the gyrating sex bombs onstage they plain forget their real assignments.

            The crowd is virtually left to fend for itself, ready to create mayhem and start pushing and stomping on each other in an emergency like a stampede.

            Believe us, we saw that ugly scene – and was in fact caught right in the middle of it – in last year’s B Festival. It was something we would never want to experience ever again. Sportswriter Al Mendoza (writing in another local newspaper) is right: When there are just too many people filling a tight, closed and one-way-out space, oxygen can get so very scarce you could not breath. A sea of humanity snuffs out your oxygen supply even as you rapidly lose body fluid thru perspiration that you would be close to fainting – it not actually fainting. At a certain point, your fuzzy mind would wish you could extend your head upward like a giraffe to gasp for precious air above the heads of people.

            It is simply suffocating!

           

* * * * 

            Looking back to that evening last year, it was foolish of us to have decided to make our way thru the already thick crowd watching the Parokya ni Edgar band performing onstage in the area fronting the Metrobank branch on A.B. Fernandez . We  had planned to just go through the crowd and take a tricycle at the Herrero intersection to go home after our presswork at the Star office.

             As soon as we plunged into the first thick line of watchers, we realized we could not already turn back. As we tried to move on, we found we could not already step forward except sideways. A few more steps and we could not simply already move, hemmed in on all sides even as we heard some girls around crying and screaming invectives at what some maniacs in the corwd were obviously doing to them. A distraught mother, her voice already hoarse, was pleading and wailing to please give way for her and her little son who was suffocating; no one budged, the crowd’s eyes focused on the performers onstage.

            Thus immobilized, soon we could not believe we were being practically lifted off our feet by the crowd and moved any which way as sweat poured from all our pores. Refusing to just collapse, we summoned all our reserve strength to break off from the “walls” and pushed and elbowed our way, ignoring the cussing and cursing we got from our mad effort. Luckily, we saw the open side entrance door of the Victoria Hotel to our right and we barreled our way to it, followed by some very harassed women who took the path we cleared. You bet we felt soooo relieved at getting out and away from that hellhole.

            Later, finding our way to Quintos bridge, we joined our Patrima colleagues who had just finished their bangus grilling on top of the bridge. We must have looked like we came from a battlefield that Tito T, Susan Y, Minnie C and the others promptly gave us a seat, saying the cool air from the river below would do us good. It took us sometime regaining our equilibrium.

            We remember telling Butch Velasco, we think it was, that they should be watching the crowd out there or somebody could die, but looking around, no cop was in sight alas. Fortunately for the organizers, nobody died – that time.  But what if somebody or several died from sheer asphyxia, if from nothing else?

            Then probably BSL, Niknok, Raffy or Dea would be going on TV to do a Charo Santos or Eugene Lopez III apologizing to the families of the victims and “taking full responsibility” for the accident.

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