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N0KFQ > TODAY 03.12.14 17:01l 65 Lines 3005 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 41467_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Dec 3
Path: IZ3LSV<IW8PGT<I3XTY<I0OJJ<N6RME<CX2SA<N9PMO<KB5HAV<KQ0I<N0KFQ
Sent: 141203/1555Z 41467@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.62
Dec 3, 1979:
Eleven people killed in a stampede outside Who concert in
Cincinnati, Ohio
The general-admission ticketing policy for rock concerts at
Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in the 1970s was known as
"festival seating." That term and that ticketing policy would
become infamous in the wake of one of the deadliest rock-concert
incidents in history. Eleven people, including three high-school
students, were killed on this day in 1979, when a crowd of
general-admission ticket-holders to a Cincinnati Who concert
surged forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and
secure prime unreserved seats inside.
Festival seating had already been eliminated at many similar
venues in the United States by 1979, yet the system remained in
place at Riverfront Coliseum despite a dangerous incident at a
Led Zeppelin show two years earlier. That day, 60 would-be
concertgoers were arrested, and dozens more injured, when the
crowd outside the venue surged up against the Coliseum's locked
glass doors.
In the early evening hours of December 3, 1979, those same doors
stood locked before a restless and growing crowd of Who fans.
That evening's concert was scheduled to begin at 8:00 pm, but
ticket-holders had begun to gather outside the Coliseum shortly
after noon, and by 3:00 pm, police had been called in to maintain
order as the crowd swelled into the thousands. By 7:00 pm, an
estimated 8,000 ticket-holders were jostling for position in a
plaza at the Coliseum's west gate, and the crowd began to press
forward. When a police lieutenant on the scene tried to convince
the show's promoters to open the locked glass doors at the west
gate entrance, he was told that there were not enough
ticket-takers on duty inside, and that union rules prevented them
from recruiting ushers to perform that duty. At approximately
7:20, the crowd surged forward powerfully as one set of glass
doors shattered and the others were thrown open.
With Coliseum security nowhere in sight, the police on hand were
aware almost immediately that the situation had the potential for
disaster, yet they were physically unable to slow the stream of
people flowing through the plaza for at least the next 15
minutes. At approximately 7:45 pm, they began to work their way
into the crowd, where they found the first of what would
eventually turn out to be 11 concert-goers lying on the ground,
dead from asphyxiation.
Afraid of how the crowd might react to a cancellation, Cincinnati
fire officials instructed the promoters to go on with the show,
and the members of the Who were not told what had happened until
after completing their final encore hours later.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the City of Cincinnati banned
festival seating at its concert venues. That ban was overturned,
however, 24 years later, and improved crowd-control procedures
have thus far prevented a reoccurrence of any such incident.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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