SHANGHAI — Just before midnight, a huge crowd that had gathered for an outdoor New Year’s Eve celebration in this city’s historic riverfront district began to grow unruly. There was pushing and shoving. And then, in an instant, a stampede began that would trample at least 36 people to death and injure dozens more.
“We were just trying to walk up the steps to see the light show, and then people at the top began pushing their way down,” said a 20-year-old man who gave his name only as Xu, while waiting for a friend at the Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital. “Then I heard someone scream, and people began to panic. We got crushed.”
The stampede started after 11:35 p.m. on Wednesday near Chen Yi Square. Most of the victims were young revelers who had come to ring in 2015 on the Bund, Shanghai’s iconic waterside promenade.
Like other major cities around the world, Shanghai has made its New Year’s Eve celebration a signature event, with light shows and performances late into the night. This year’s big attraction was billed as a “5-D light show” that was supposed to project colorful blazes of light across the river, onto the city’s newest landmark, the 2,074-foot Shanghai Tower, the world’s second-tallest building after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
But many people who said they were milling around the Bund on Wednesday night believe the huge crowds that had gathered for this year’s event simply overwhelmed the authorities and the event organizers in this city of 25 million.
Among the dead were 25 women, ages 16 to 36, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
A video posted on Youku.com appears to show an enormous mass of people pushing and yelling and crushing people under its weight. The crowd may have been even larger than the 300,000 people the city said showed up a year ago, said attendees.
After the stampede, and the ensuing chaos as ambulances tried to reach the victims who were sprawled out in what is usually a busy traffic intersection, the light show was canceled. Police officers locked arms to close off an area for ambulances to get in. But for some, it was too late. Many victims died before reaching a hospital, the authorities said.
On Thursday, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, ordered an immediate investigation into the cause of the tragedy. And by afternoon, the local police were even looking into reports that a party in a building adjacent to Chen Yi Square may have contributed to the chaos when fake U.S. $100 bills were tossed from above into the area.
But several people who were at the scene dismissed that theory, saying that the phony currency had nothing to do with the stampede. It was just a panic after several people fell and screamed, these witnesses said.
On Thursday afternoon, four city hospitals were treating the victims while friends and relatives waited. In the lobby of Shanghai’s Changzheng Hospital the mother of a 16-year-old girl dropped to her knees after being told her daughter had died as a result of the stampede.
“I can’t take it! I want to die,” the woman cried out as her relatives tried to console her. “I don’t want to live. I can’t go on!”
In China, New Year’s Eve celebrations are a relatively new affair, far less significant and theatrical than the annual Chinese New Year celebrations that take place according to the traditional calendar, usually in late January or early February. And yet, every year the crowds that gather in major Chinese cities on Dec. 31 seem to get bigger.
The Bund is one of Shanghai’s most popular tourist spots, a strip of hulking, pre-World War II buildings built by the British. Now elegantly restored and illuminated at night, the buildings house banks, upscale restaurants, nightclubs and five-star hotels, including the Peace Hotel and the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai.
The city spent $732 million to renovate the Bund area from 2007 to 2010, expanding the promenade and making more room for tourists to delight in looking at the historic buildings and then gaze across the Huangpu River to the new financial district, filled with high-rise apartment buildings and office towers.
On Thursday, there were large crowds once again, walking the Bund promenade, but also police cars and vans in the area near Chen Yi Square. Some visitors placed bouquets near the statue of Chen Yi, a former military commander and onetime Shanghai mayor.
At No. 18 on the Bund, police officers could be seen visiting the building where the party that handed out fake $100 bills was held. Inside the building, and out on the street, crumpled bills could still be seen Thursday afternoon. Calls to the police and the building went unanswered.
At Changzheng Hospital, though, there were tears and large crowds. A man who declined to give his name said he was at the Bund on Wednesday evening with his 21-year-old cousin, who was crushed to death. The man was comforting that cousin’s older sister.
“I was with my cousin and we got pushed,” the man said. “I was pushed down. I couldn’t breathe. I felt I was going to die because I couldn’t breathe. But I couldn’t find my cousin. Now, I came to the hospital. I’ve been here since last night. But now we know my cousin died.”
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