re: #66 Nojay UK

This happened at a religious pilgrimage site where, from the news reports I read, hundreds of thousands of visitors gather together on certain occasions. If it’s really like that then the site should be engineered to hell and gone to cope with the crowds and limits put on people movements and access, restricting numbers like a sports stadium or other commercial mass participation location. Respect doesn’t come into it because in a crowd no-one gives or expects respect to others.

The site has not been engineered in the slightest. It was a disaster waiting to happen with the right series of circumstances, and officials knew that there were risks here.

In so many ways, it’s not unlike the periodic stampedes and deaths that occurred in places like Mecca/Medina during the Haj or other religious festivals where people come together in close quarters and some precipitating action results in a stampede.

The Saudis completely reconfigured both the Grand Mosque and the stoning of the devil locations multiple times to make them safer for people, but crowds are unpredictable, so you have to build that in as well.