I hope the following articles will help folks understand this better. This is particularly for those who have never been to the hajj.

Very sad to hear of the tragedy in Mina. It brought back memories of one Hajj that I did twenty years ago, in which I myself almost died in a tense crowd situation around the Jamarat.

There are only a handful of times in my life where I thought I was close to death - this incident ranks number one on that list.

A lot of people are suggesting various ways to prevent this tragedy. As someone whom Allah has blessed to do many pilgrimages, I feel that there's only so much that can be done (and this post is in no way either a defense or a criticism of the Saudi authorities - its just a personal reflection on some of the problems that I feel complicate matters).

Those who have not been on Hajj simply can't visualize the scene in Mina. Part of what complicates matters is:

1) The fact that many, many pilgrims just set up mini-tents and sleep in each and every walkway, so that the actual paths that pilgrims can use are shrunk by up to 50 %. [And what do you want the authorities to do? Bulldoze these poor pilgrims out of the way?!]

2) The different languages that pilgrims speak - it is impossible to make each nationality understand (much less implement) the rules and regulations.

3) The same path is used by those who walk, those in wheelchairs, those on motorbikes, and even at times minibuses and cars. This congestion and mixing exacerbates the problem many times over. An eyewitness to this year's stampede said that the excessive quantities of wheelchairs contributed to the tight congestion, and that those in wheelchairs were the first casualties.

4) Litter everywhere. Bottles, bags, trash - the pathways are absolutely covered with litter, which increases the possibility of tripping. Despite the fact that tens of thousands of people are hired to clean the pathways, when you are dealing with millions of people, there's only so much you can do. Also realize that many cultures are simply accustomed to littering on the side of the road, so its not as if they are intentionally doing something they would not do back home.

5) Exit pathways and escape routes are either blocked with other pilgrims (who, as in point number one, just 'set up' tents and decide to camp where they shouldn't), or are blocked by legitimate camp groups who don't want outsiders wandering in. This, therefore, makes escaping during emergency situations difficult or impossible.

6) The sheer quantity of people crammed into such a tight space. Only those who have been on the Hajj can understand this point. The Hajj remains one of the largest annual gatherings of humans on the planet, and crowd control can only do so much given the diversity of the attendees and the layout of the tents and pathways in Mina.

And there are more factors as well. I'm just sharing this to help those who have never been on Hajj realize that it is quite a complicated and difficult situation. No doubt, the authorities need to take a long and hard look as there must be ways to improve, but its not just the authorities to blame. Pilgrims themselves need to act responsibly and look out for the safety of others.
Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have died. Truly a sad year for the families of those who lost lives in either incident this Hajj.
May Allah accept them as martyrs and give their families peace and patience! Ameen.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153363793348300&id=19667888299

The Hajj Stampede Is a Fluid Dynamics Problem

MECCA IS THE holiest city in Islam, the storied site of key locations from the Quran and, once a year, center of the hajj, a sacred pilgrimage that brings upwards of 3 million people to Saudi Arabia from all over the world. This week Mecca was also the site of a tragedy—nearly 800 people killed in a stampede in Mina, the semi-permanent tent city that houses tens of thousands of pilgrims. It wasn’t the first time something like this has happened during the hajj, and just as before, the causes remain the same: physics and evolutionary psychology.

This isn’t a new problem. One of the first documented human stampedes happened in 1896, at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II outside Moscow; 1,000 people died after rumors spread that the concession stands were running out of souvenirs. They’ve happened at mass religious gatherings in India, football games in Europe, rock concerts in the US. One epidemiological study found 215 stampede events between 1980 and 2007.

The hajj, site of Thursday’s tragedy, has for decades been particularly deadly. As the numbers of pilgrims have risen, so too have the mass casualty events. In the 100 years before 2009, five of the 10 deadliest human stampede events happened in the Mina Valley.

After one in 2006, Saudi authorities instituted single-direction pathways, visitor counts, and theme park-like scheduling of visits. The Jamarat Bridge, location of three pillars that represent the devil, at which pilgrims are supposed to throw stones, was the site of a stampede that killed over 1,000 people; today it’s a multi-level, multi-exit complex designed to keep people moving. In the past decade or so, the Saudi government has worked with a wide variety of architects and designers, including the famed international firm Gensler, to improve flow and safety at all of the hajj’s major sites, from the central mosque to the tent city.

Put that many people in so confined a space, though, and preventing stampedes will always be a challenge. Part of the problem is fluid dynamics—except people are the fluid.

Panic Mode
The problem starts with either a “craze,” in which people are all trying to get to a destination, or “escape panic,” in which they’re all trying to get away. In both cases, movement is unidirectional, as in, everyone is trying to move in the same direction. Unidirectional flows typically aren’t much of a problem until they encounter an obstacle—a narrow door, let’s say, or a tight turn.

The other option, “turbulent,” is when people are trying to get to a bunch of different places at once, or when crowds moving in two different directions collide. Reports from Mina suggest that’s what happened here—crowds were moving along two different streets in the tent city and ran into each other at a bottlenecked intersection.

Both modes can be deadly under stampede conditions. Six to seven people pushing continuously in a single direction have, in some cases, exerted enough force to bend steel railings. Researchers have hypothesized that during turbulent stampedes the forces are actually lower, because the multiple vectors—which is to say, people pushing in all different directions—cancel each other out.

On the other hand, if all those vectors are pushing inward … well, cause of death in stampedes tends to be either crush trauma from being trampled or asphyxiation. Autopsies of people who suffocated in stampedes show pressures as high as 6.4 psi exerted on the chest—that’s nearly half an atmosphere. Some people have died where they stood, trapped against other people until the pressure released. It’s a bad, bad way to go.

“Densities get so high that there’s just one body next to each other, and any little movement creates a force exerted on adjacent bodies,” says Dirk Helbing, a computational social scientist who studies crowd dynamics at ETH Zurich. (Helbing was involved in early work on the Jamarat Bridge, but hasn’t been directly involved with Mecca for years.) “You’re exposed to this random pushing. As a result you might lose your balance and fall to the ground, and what happens is a hole opens up in the crowd. Those standing around it lack counterforce, and they fall on top of the person.”

That event then propagates outward, though not evenly in every direction. According to Helbing’s model, pedestrians are essentially just trying to avoid obstacles—including other pedestrians—while making their way to a given destination as quickly as possible. At low densities, which is to say no crowds, you get laminar flow, as smooth as a flat-bottomed, fast moving river.

As density goes up, the number of times an individual pedestrian has to slow down or stop outright goes up, too—which forces all the pedestrians trying to get around that person to do the same. Stop-and-go waves start to propagate outward from each choke point.

Pretty soon all the slick avoidance moves everyone has been making switch to unintentional ones. The classic coordinated moves that crowd dynamics researchers recognize from sidewalks, like spontaneous organization into directional lanes and platooning according to walking speed, break down. Order flips to chaos. That’s turbulence.

The critical density for when a crowd goes critical varies according to average body size and weight of the people involved, Helbing says, but it’s usually somewhere between five and 10 people per square meter.

Social Animals
But why are people so vulnerable to catastrophe when crowds get thick enough? Other creatures, from anchovies to slime molds to starlings, manage to pull off dazzling feats of coordination when they’re crowded together. In fact many of those collectives share similar mathematical characteristics, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Princeton who studies collective behavior.

“When we see a coordinated bird flock or fish school, these things have evolved to do this,” Couzin says. “Unfortunately, we have not. We’ve evolved to be in small family groups.”

More and more, human beings live in crowded cities. But the human brain may not have quite caught up to what it built. “We don’t know how to behave in these scenarios,” Couzin says. “These situations do not allow us to naturally feel that we can understand what’s going on.”

That’s not to say that under certain circumstances human beings won’t engage in classic collective behavior. People do—they follow leaders, for example, or make any of those classic pedestrian moves that Helbing studies. But the kinds of sets of small, simple rules that lead to spontaneously self-organized flocking just don’t kick in. “Not all the time, but most often it’s about the spread of panic, not an actually dangerous environment,” Couzin says. “The response creates the danger. The strong collective response is a very dangerous thing in certain circumstances.”

That’s the lesson the organizers of the hajj have been trying to unpack. This week they learned they hadn’t—and that they have to keep trying.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/hajj-stampede-fluid-dynamics-problem/

May Allah forgive the departed and grant them jannah

hmmm. ok

Good morning bro. Eid Mubarak

I went through the articles and I find them enlightening but as enlightening as they are, we need some home truth, the Saudi government messed up and have been messing up for centuries.

If these activity: circling the Kabba(?) has been going on for centuries and yet people still die doing it we should heap the blame on the people who are in charge not try to explain it with science.

I mean no offence when I say this but beyond religion, hajj is a huge income bringer to Saudi Arabia, only people who want to be mischievous will deny this and I wonder why caution has not been taken to make these tourists/pilgrims safer.

The world needs to come heavily on the Saudi authorities and put pressure on then to make it safer. This is just not right, heck climbing Everest or K2 does not churn out so many dead bodies and it is a lot more dangerous.

Saudi has/makes the money. They can invest in policy makers, they can make this safer and they should.

Some believe it is glorious to die this way. Pls does dis mk sense

May Allah forgive the souls of the departed. Cant the each country be given a certain number of pilgrims to produce yearly?

barka de sallah and barka jumat.....


this stampede happened almost every year due to the fact that every year rate Which people went for pilgrimage increase yearly..... so the higher the pilgrimage, d higher d casualties

may allah forgive 'the dead there sin' r.i.p to them all ...

May Allah grant them all Jan'nah

May Allah be pleased with their soul.

Jazakumullahu khayr for the enlightment, may Allah be with the remaining pilgrims, grant the ummah fortitude to bear the loss of the departed souls, grant the deceased Aljana firdaos, accept Hajj of those that have performed and make it for us that are yet to perform Hajj. (Amin)

panachuku:
Some believe it is glorious to die this way. Pls does dis mk sense

that's what I heard,they are going to al-janna.

may Allah forgive the believers who died while answering the call of Ar-Rahman

Let everyone pray to God in their countries






Or

I think Saudi Arabia should have a fixed number of people they want each year for the hajj

Jazakallah kyran for shedding light on the issue. I hope people will understand this and stop assigning blames on what they don't have any knowledge about.

Amen Ya Allah

Very sad indeed. May Allah (swt) forgive the fallen ones.

Now, the world should come down heavily on the authority of Saudi Arabia. The world is blessed with brains that can deliver a permanent solution to this stampede thing. Why?

But wait ooo....Has Islam become a cult group?

So I have to take oath before being allowed to post comments here.......much about intolerance



and the phrase "holy hajj stampede".....shoro niyen?


is it the hajj that is holy or the stampede?

panachuku:
Some believe it is glorious to die this way. Pls does dis mk sense

Definity it is, but only if you believe it.

Reducing the no of pilgrims slot for each country may help.

Blame saudi gov't for the stampade. though it's the will of ALLAH. may ALLAH reward the dead ones with jannah.

May Allah grant their soul. Al-janat firdaos

May Allah forgive d dead

may Allaah forgive them and grant them Paradise, ameen

may Allaah forgive us too, ameen

Logistically managing 3m people is very difficult and requires years and years of planning towards improving the existing system. When I read people mocking the dead and Islam in previous threads it reminds me compared to most Christians, Muslims on nairaland have a more decent approach to matters as I have never seen a situation in which people die like the church collapse of TB Joshua that muslims begin making comments that are as idiotic and thoughtless as in the previous threads on this issue. I urge my brother continue to follow this path of human decency.

May Allah forgive the dead grant them aljannah. and grant the injured speedy recovery. Amin

nyc

the saudi authorities are controlling the numbers/quota of pilgrims from each country. but the fact is still more than 2 million people attend the hajj from all over the world.
in every stampede the root of the problem is not about the perceived real danger but from supposed danger so the authorities can only help to some extent.
in a gathering of just one hundred thousand in one place moving a single individual can cause stampede by just slight pushing or stopping just for 3 seconds while moving . imagine millions moving at the same time!
i think the Saudi authority can improve the safety by doing some of these suggestions
1. banning all vehicles on that route and creating an open railing system with seats for the conveyance and should be overhead system if possible.
2. creating a physically challenged routes to take out the wheel chairs from the normal routes.
3. enforcing a single way movement of pilgrims and separate return routes.
4. separate between the men and the women routes. because they have different strengths as such naturally men are stronger and faster in movement.
5. most importantly the route should be subdivided such that not more than 5 people can walk abreast. and in between every two routes there are barriers so that the police and emergency services can be stationed to monitor and render help as the need arises. this will also reduce the number of pedestrians on each lane and lower the number of casualties in case of stampede
6. all tents close to the routes should be prohibited
7. all these routes should be a ring format that will go round and return the pilgrims to their lodges. so even the stoning will be done on transit
8. make sure every country were forced by their embassy or officials to control their nationals and stick to schedule given to them

panachuku:
Some believe it is glorious to die this way. Pls does dis mk sense

nijanigga:

that's what I heard,they are going to al-janna.

yes, we long for it

it may be a mystery to you though, until you believe what we Believe, Allaah (swt), your Creator, my Creator

Alhamdullilah, may almighty Allah keep guiding us and bless us with the best here and here after together with unity, peace and harmony. Barka da salah.
From your article sir, if there is problem probably there is solution. Y don't them find the causes which I know, they know and seek for the possible solution in order to avert such a tragic occurrence. This not d first time neither second nor... Third. Greetings to u all and pardon my mistake..

Let me throw more light on this issue having perform the Hajj and witness stampede too. First of all we must understand that the Saudi authorities have design and redesign the Jumarat area just to forestall this reoccurrence. from the medieval era of one circular jumaarat to a multi level, one directional straight traffic jumarat.
Also pilgrims are given time in batches as to when their group should come forward to perform the right. However, human factors are difficult to curtail. Hajj is not tourism, the three days of Musdalifa ,Arafat and Mina are the most rigorous.
Bear in mind that the Jumarat rite are the last act to perform before going back to mecca to complete the hajj, therefore most pilgrims are eager to perform this last act so that they can quickly go back to mecca and conclude their hajj rite. This is the genesis of all the stampede and of course millions of pilgrims. The Saudi Authorities can indeed re strategize with the availability of 21st century technology/architecture.
The Saudi authorities have spent over 1 billion dollars to make the jumarat 300 thousand capacity, 5 level structure. but more needs to be done. The problems of pilgrims not sticking to their allocated time can simply be remedied by a technic I saw used somewhere in UK. Put a gate at strategic route leading to the jumarat and give every pilgrim a wrist band that could only be activated and grant gate access to pilgrims only if their allotted time is reached. this is a very simple technic used for street concert in uk. the gates must not even be a physical structure, a roller bar with micro chip will do.