A stampede broke out early yesterday outside a stadium near Manila where thousands had lined up to watch a popular game show, killing at least 73 people and injuring 359 others, officials said.
About 30,000 people were waiting to get inside the stadium for the program Wowowee when the stampede occurred, said Vicente Eusebio, the mayor of Pasig, a Manila suburb.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said 73 people were killed, revising a higher death toll reported by authorities due to double counting amid the confusion. At least 359 injured people were taken to 11 hospitals, according to officials.
The mayor said the melee erupted as the crowd pushed and surged toward the gates, thinking they were open, trampling those in front. One survivor said some people in the crowd became rowdy when they could not enter.
"The gates were being partially opened then shut," said Myrna Britania, 42, who spoke at a hospital where the injured were being treated. "The raffle tickets can be obtained at the gate so everyone was in a hurry. There was pushing and people in front of the gate were crushed."
Britania, who had spent all night in line, said "people at the back of the line were pushing not knowing there were already people dead lying on the ground in front."
Eusebio and police denied reports that the stampede was caused by a bomb scare.
Merquieades Salazar cried over the body of his wife, who was among those crushed. Salazar, 45, said the couple was jobless and wanted to try their luck at a raffle with a jackpot of 20,000 pesos (US$384).
"In the desire to win money, she is the one I lost," Salazar sobbed as he stroked his dead wife's hair.
"We both fell and we were both pinned to the ground," he said.
Authorities collected the dead and lined up the bodies on the side of a street outside the stadium for identification as bags and shoes lay scattered outside the hall.
Police Superintendent Gerry Galvan said at least 50 people died at the stadium and the rest at hospitals where they were taken. Soldiers loaded some of the bodies into a truck.
Radio DZBB reported hospitals were overwhelmed with the scores of injured and were using parking lots to accommodate them. The Rizal Medical Center alone was treating 200 people, said Senator Richard Gordon, head of the Red Cross.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo consoled the injured during a visit to the medical center, putting her hands on the shoulders of Leny Subayco, who was waiting for an X-ray of her injured leg.
Subayco said she lost consciousness after being pressed against the stadium gate and woke up later under a pile of people.
"Under me was a dead person, beside me there was another dead and there was another dead above me," she said.
The game show, organized by the ABS-CBN TV network, is extremely popular because it offers big prizes, like cars and money.
Gordon blamed poor organization of the event for the tragedy.
ABS-CBN's executive vice president for entertainment, Charo Santos-Concio, said that the show had been postponed indefinitely.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS