Stampede death toll rises

Photo by: Thomas Miller
Government-supplied caskets are set out at Calmette Hospital in Phnom Penh on Tuesday for bodies of the victims of Monday night's water festival stampede. The government have already begun carting the coffins out to the provinces for relatives of the dead on.

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" There were too many people coming from different directions and that made chaos. People weren’t able to breathe."

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via CAAI

Tuesday, 23 November 2010 21:03 Sebastian Strangio

CONCERNED relatives swamped Phnom Penh’s main hospitals yesterday, hoping for any news about relatives lost or injured in last night’s tragic stampede on Diamond Island’s north bridge.

At Calmette Hospital, hundreds of frantic relatives scoured a makeshift morgue set up at the rear of the hospital, while others consulted notice boards where dozens of photos of the victims were posted.

Onlookers covered their mouths and stood on the tips of their toes to get a glimpse of the rows of bodies covered in white sheets. Some burst into sobs and averted their eyes. Inside the hospital, patients could be seen resting on mats lining the corridors.

While the grisly task of identifying the victims was carried out, survivors shared fearful stories of how and when the lethal crush occurred.

“I was stuck in the middle of the bridge among nearly 1,000 people on the bridge for about two hours,” said Loeung, a young woman from Svay Rieng province whose 24-year-old sister was crushed by the panicking crowd.

“We had a lot of difficulty breathing and we couldn’t move, and our group had scattered on the bridge.”

She said her sister, a factory worker from Sen Sok district, was knocked out by an electric shock from the bridge railing and then was trampled by the panicking crowds.

“I saw she was about one metre from me, and I tried to help,” she said from her makeshift bed at the hospital.

Chan Chhai Reoun, 25, a law student from Cambodia Mekong University, passed out during the stampede and awoke to find himself in a trailer with dead bodies being ferried from the site. Two of the three friends he was with also died in the crush.

“We couldn’t run because it was so crowded,” he recalled. “It was too crowded to even breathe – that’s why some people died.”

Chheng Sony, a 20-year-old from Prey Veng province who came to Phnom Penh to sell fruit during the festival, was in the middle of the bridge during the stampede and recalled the confusion that reigned.

“There were too many people coming from different directions and that made chaos. People weren’t able to breathe,” he said.

Beyond capacity

Dr Thou Sophany, a doctor at Calmette Hospital, confirmed 138 people arrived dead yesterday morning, and a further one died on arrival.

Dr Chhauoy Meng, who headed up the hospital’s response to the event, said dealing with the corpses had stretched the hospital’s resources “beyond our capacity”, but insisted there was enough space to care for survivors of Monday’s tragedy.

Chhauoy Meng said the incident was unprecedented in its scale. The next largest disaster in memory, he said, was a Vietnam Airlines plane that crashed at Phnom Penh International Airport in 1997, killing 65 people.

As of noon, around 40 bodies were yet to be identified, while relatives and friends of the deceased clamoured around several tables where government officials signed forms authorising a 5 million-riel (US$1,250) government compensation payment.

Several large military flatbed lorries pulled through the north entrance of the hospital, which officials said would be used to transport corpses back to the provinces.

A similarly grisly scene prevailed yesterday at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital, where the hospital’s director, Dr Say Seng Ly, said 139 dead bodies arrived in the wake of the stampede. A further death was recorded yesterday morning, he added.

Lim Huy, a doctor and service quality monitor with GRET, a health group attached to the hospital, said many of the victims were between 15 and 25, most of them from out of town.

“I think most of the people were from other provinces. People from Phnom Penh knew that the bridge was crowded and unsafe,” he said.

He added that no foreigners were recorded as being among the dead or injured.

Mam Daro, an officer with the Cambodian Red Cross, said the organisation was active at each hospital, helping families match lost relatives with the bodies in the hospital’s possession. He added that the Red Cross had not yet tracked down any of the missing persons.