Koh Pich Bridge Stampede Tragedy: The Preventable Human Disaster that Should Have Been Prevented

Thursday, November 25, 2010
Opinion by Sopheada Phy,
Heinz Fellow, University Center for International Studies,
University of Pittsburgh

Koh Pich Bridge stampede was an unpredictably preventable tragedy that claimed the life of over 400 people and left about many hundreds more injured during the panic stampede on Koh Pich Bridge in the capital city Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Such a tragedy happened in the last day, November 22th, 2010, of Water Festival, one of the biggest traditional festivals in the country. This story shocked the world and was quickly and widely published and broadcasted on most of the media around the world, even just in local newspapers in many other countries besides Cambodia. The world was stunned and at the same time wondered why such a preventable catastrophe could easily happen.

Regarding the causes of the calamity, some raised by the eyewitnesses. Some claimed that the stampede happened due to a panic that the bridge might collapse since the bridge was packed by the crowd of thousands of people passing back and forth and people might not be aware that it is the suspension bridge that is easily to be swayed; some said it is due to the polices firing water cannon on the crowd just to make them move faster to avoid human traffic jam that this could get some people electrocuted etc.

Whatever reason is, strategically speaking, this happened due to the weak mechanism and inability of authorities in ensuring the safety of the people during the festival. The authorities should have ensured, since the bridge is too small and narrow (about 8 meters wide and 100 meters long) that there are some space left for passengers to walk comfortably, not letting them pack to each other even having no space to just stand. Some might say the public is not cooperative, but if there is any serious speech or statement made by the authorities in the public through loudspeakers, the public is very cooperative since to some extent, they respect or are afraid of the authorities. However, this means that even the authorities or those in charge of organizing the festival themselves would have never thought of such a disastrous calamity. This really shows the weakness and carelessness of those responsible. When this happened, no authorities around, only after about an hour or so were they just arrive; when they arrived, it is already late to rescue the victims, especially the already dead, since they were tightly packed to each other, but it was even too late when they did not know how to rescue the victims upon arrival at the scene; this is because they might have not been trained on emergent rescue.

Also, when the injured were brought to the hospitals, there were not enough rooms and space for the patients, not enough staff, not enough equipment, and even worse, most of the equipment are not technologically up-to-date. There are about four big public hospitals in Phnom Penh; all these hospitals could not accommodate about 1,000 patients; this means that the country does not have any mechanisms to prepare for such a huge disaster; the government was just so careless. Even without talking about such an unexpected catastrophe, those hospitals still could not accommodate the daily patients since hospital beds and rooms are inadequate, that make some patients stay on the sidewalk of the hospital buildings.

Death toll keeps rising; it was first just about 300 people dead, but now it rose up to over 400; this really shows the collapse of the public health care in Cambodia. Health care is one of the most prioritized sectors that the government should pay much attention on. Cambodia is already lucky that it has never ever been suffered from big natural disasters such as earthquake, volcano eruption etc., except some occasional floods caused by climate change due to the misuse of the environment of particularly those in power, without mentioning about the weak mechanism and poor risk management of the government in preventing those floods. Such a “HUMAN DISASTER” would have been easily prevented if risk management could have been well planned and implemented; this is just the thing happened due to human disaster, so what if it happened due to "natural disaster" like earthquake etc., as examples from other countries around the world, Cambodia might fall into even worse a preventable tragedy.

I have been shocked and heartbreaking when I first heard the news. In the news, some families lost all the children, some victims were just couple, and even sadly worse a disable single mother lost her two daughters; you could imagine how hard life is to live alone with trauma like the case of a disable single mother above. I could understand well about the feeling of the families of the victims since I was already heartbreakingly experienced of losing my parents; briefly noted, my mother passed away due to particularly inability, immorality, and even inhumanity of some doctors in Cambodia; it was really traumatized that no single word could describe how traumatized it is to lose family members.

I just want to share this idea to raise awareness of those responsible and accountable, the government, and also the public to rethink about such a tragic catastrophe, which left so much sorrow and trauma with victims, the relatives of the victims, and the public in general. Such a preventable human disaster should have not never ever happened at all, but happened in the country, which could be considered as the only special case in the world’s 21st Century although the different, but similar story was happened in Iraq in 2005 during the Baghdad Bridge stampede caused by the terror acts that claimed the life of about 1,000 people. This is really shamefull!