Yet another disaster has struck pilgrims on the annual Muslim pilgrimage, this time 800 worshippers were trampled to death and hundreds more were hurt beneath a crush of people making their way to a ritualistic stoning of the devil, a re-enactment of a story from the Quran involving the Prophet Abraham — that takes place during the hajj.
Every year, millions of Muslims converge on Saudi Arabia’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina for the hajj pilgrimage, and with monotonous regularity the hajj and events surrounding it have been marred by tragedy.
A look at some of the deadly accidents of the past few years requires much better management controls, but they never learn from their mistakes:
2015: At least 717 people are killed and more than 800 injured in a crush of pilgrims Thursday September 24th in Mina, on the outskirts of Mecca.
2015 On Sept. 11th, a crane collapsed in a storm and crashed onto the Grand Mosque in Mecca, 111 people are killed and nearly 400 injured.
January 2006 — Some 362 Muslim pilgrims were crushed to death at the eastern entrance of the Jamarat Bridge during the stoning ritual.
February 2004 — a stampede kills 251 Muslim pilgrims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia near the Jamarat Bridge during the stoning of the devil.
April 1998 — One hundred and nineteen Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death in Saudi Arabia at the hajj.
In 1997,340 pilgrims died in a fire at the overcrowded Mina tent camp.
1998 Saw the site of the deaths was a two-story walkway in Mina, the location of the stone pillars where pebbles are thrown.
May 1994 — a stampede near Jamarat Bridge in Mina, near Mecca, kills 270 in the area where pilgrims ritually stone the devil.
July 1990 — inside the al-Muaissem tunnel near Mecca in Saudi Arabia, 1,426 pilgrims are crushed to death. The accident occurs on Eid al-Adha (The Feast of Sacrifice), Islam’s most important feast at the end of the hajj and the day of the “stoning of the devil” ritual.
July 1987 — Iranian protesters clash with Saudi police, leading to the death of more than 400 Iranian pilgrims.
December 1975 — a cooking gas cylinder explodes in the pilgrim tent city, causing a fire that kills over 200 pilgrims.
“All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God’s will,” Authorities told journalists at a press conference, my response to gods will, “why is it that God always chooses a badly managed event or facility, one that has poor plans, procedures and controls, because disasters like these, simply don’t happen in well run events”.
Dr. Bill Pomfret of Safety Projects International Inc. stated that; as a safety professional, with over 50 years’ experience, almost 10 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I simply cannot accept these simple excuses, the fact is, “there are few accidents, the problem is that the few keep on happening, over and over again, to different people, in different places and at different times” especially when they are badly managed.
“All too often some disaster is shrugged off as just another “accident” as if this were a sufficient explanation and an adequate reason to do nothing about it, the fact is, every accident has a cause, and every accident causes a loss”
Brigadier Mansour al-Turki of the Saudi General Security Forces blamed the deaths on “the mass of people on the bridge, and the state of panic that erupted after some of them fell.” the trampling begins with a small number of people falling, followed by a state of panic and an attempt to escape the crowd, which leads to an increasing number of victims, “the point of an accident Investigation is not to spend time and money to tell us at the end what we knew at the onset, that human error was involved” what needs to be remembered, says Pomfret; is that the majority of these pilgrims do not speak Arabic, they have never experienced anything like this before, they come from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc. The underlying problem is that there is still no safe management system for controlling the crowds.
The Brigadier knows what type of crowds to expect, he should have access to Incident reports from last year, after all, this is an annual event, peruse them to get a good idea on how many crowd-control staff is needed and have the number of barricades and areas of admission to prevent long queues or people bottlenecked into a small space.
He needs to understand the venue and have a good idea of how many people it can fit. When you’ve reached maximum capacity, have your staff inform the people and exercise controls for those waiting to get in. Don’t let people in unless the same number of people come out. If you’ve got multiple entrances, try to make sure it narrows to a point, this is not rocket science, after all.
Thursday’s stampede is likely to intensify fears that the kingdom does not have the transportation and public safety infrastructure to channel and protect what is the world’s largest annual human migration, my proposals from past years have fallen on deaf ears
This latest high death toll is likely to embarrass the Saudi government, which considers itself the leader of the Muslim world and takes great pride in hosting the millions of pilgrims who visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina each year. One of the titles of the Saudi monarch is “custodian of the two holy mosques,” referring to his personal duty to protect the sites and the pilgrims.
Dr. Pomfret says, these accidents are only managerial excuses for operational errors, and are really management omissions or oversights, in science, if you know the cause of the event, that event is not an accident, and if we do not like the result of an event and want to escape personal responsibility for it we call it an accident, many of these pilgrims are old and infirm, some are deaf, dumb, others are crippled, if the KSA is going to continue being the host to Pilgrims, it needs to change its culture from being re-active to one of being pro-active and developing and enforcing procedures to control the masses
For further Information, and a copy of a detailed Power Point Presentation of both these accidents together with pictures of both living and working conditions of migrant workers, many are Muslim’s
Contact: Dr. Bill Pomfret; MSc; FIOSH; FRSH; CSL; FBIM; RSP; CHCM.
pomfretb@spi5star.com Tel: 613-2549233