... that I was not able to respond to your posts or finish my planned post about what WM could have done to try to prevent this, but I work nights and I had to get a little bit of sleep before coming back in to work to fix computers.
In one post, you claim that there were "two entrance doors".
There was one single-door that opened directly into the lobby in a straight-on view of the store -- NOT a sliding door, and not a door that is appropriate to use for crowds. That door was *not* in use, as you can see from the pictures. It is not for normal use, it is a key-lockable door that is what the manager leaves through after he sets the alarms and the one that the manager goes into before other employees are let in for work.
There were the sliding doors on either side of the lobby -- but one side was for entrance, and one was for exit. From the pictures you show, especially the view head-on of the lobby, the entrance side was "stage right". Once people get into the lobby, then there is a second set of doors that lets people into the main part of the store.
Your crowd control expert pages mention several issues about crowd dynamics, specifically crush injuries in stadiums where tens or hundreds of thousands of people are pinned in on all sides and people are being pushed into overcrowded pens, or when two flows of people are pushed into each other. If people were allowed to come into the store from both sides of the lobby, and then had to merge together to get in to the store itself from the lobby, then crush injuries would have been more likely to occur, as you would have two flows of people into too small of a space, unable to merge with each other.
As one security website says:
Potential hazards: A risk assessment of the venue can reveal physical features that may lead to overcrowding and possible injury. These include:
• steep slopes
• dead ends or locked gates
• convergence of several routes into one
• uneven or slippery flooring or stepshttp://www.mckenziearnold.com/event-security-and-crowd-safety.htmlSo using both the entrance and exit doors for entrance to the store would have led to a traffic jam inside and a situation much more similar to what happened in the Hillsborough tragedy -- people would have been pressing in from both sides and the people caught in the middle would have been crushed.
Additionally, per some of the same people the website you mention quotes, and from a book called Crowd Safety and Survival, the L-shaped entrance where people enter from one side instead of from the front is considered to be one of the safer configurations for entry to avoid crush accidents. The entire 2000 people were not pressing directly on the doors -- the surge of the crowd would have been pushing people against the outside wall of the store, not against the door, reducing the likelihood of a door to collapse from sheer crowd surge, and reducing the pressure on the people at the entrance.
http://books.google.com/books?id=e8ThPTakU_0C&pg=PA220&lpg=PA220&dq=crowd+craze&source=web&ots=iziT2PuAvJ&sig=meF8MIIklOUp4S3EGrwPRCu7B7U&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA104,M1Also, from this picture, there were barricades to reinforce the L-shape configuration to ensure that crowds would not be pushing directly against the doors.
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So, what else should they have done?
Possibilities:
1) Put up barricades to create "order", as you suggested.
Unfortunately, as you are aware from looking at the Hillsborough tragedy, the riot control pens and other types of barricades were what killed the people that were crushed inside. As they mention, a crowd can take on a fluid-like dynamic. What happens when you put your thumb on the end of a waterhose to block half of the end? The water comes out twice as hard. If you create a long entryway and block the sides up, the only exit is through the front or from the back -- making it MORE likely that people will be crushed. The barricades in place were designed to create an L-shape entry so that there would not be straight-on force pushing people inside.
2) Put up barricades to keep the crowd away from the doors entirely.
.... and what happens when it's time to let the people through? Somebody has to go move the barricade. If they are heavy enough to keep from being knocked over, they are going to take time to move.
3) Put regular security guards in front of the doors.
Again, the guards who were removing the barricades in the Ikea incident were nearly trampled, and witnesses said they could not stop the people and had to move aside or they would have been hurt themselves.
4) Put police or security guards in riot gear in front of the doors, armed with nightsticks, teargas and/or "less lethal" weaponry.
... I can just picture THOSE headlines.
And that's apparently what it would have taken to have made this stop, and that might not have worked. Likely, it would have caused a panic stampede if they had to be used, and people would have started running away and hurting each other.
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But I differ with you dramatically on one point.
"No one in the crowd is to blame for Wal-Mart's negligence."
Bullshit.
Again, it wasn't the press of 2000 people that made those doors open -- with the L-shaped entrance, a crowd surge would not have been directed against the doors. People literally beat down the doors. They hit the glass with their fists. They shattered the glass. They broke into the building!!!
There was no shout of "Fire" to cause panic. There were no slippery walkways that might have caused people to slip and fall on each other to cause a domino effect. There were no staircases that people fell down. There were no police opening gates forcing people into crowded areas.
There was not even an opening of the door to trigger the stampede.
It was broken down.
Do you honestly believe that the people who were banging their fists against the doors and breaking the glass had no idea what they were doing, had no understanding that they were breaking into a building???