Stampede casts lingering shadow over Cambodia's Water Festival [-Xinhua calls for detailed, complete and transparent investigation to prevent future occurrences]

By Zhu Li, Zhang Ruiling

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- In the coming years, the Water Festival at Diamond Island will unlikely carry the traditional festive mood; instead it may become a time of mourning of this year's stampede, a tragedy that consumed at least 375 lives and injured more than 700 others.

The three-day festival, on the full moon days of the Buddhist month of Kadeuk (usually in November), celebrates a major natural occurrence: the reversing flow between the Tonle Sap and the Mekong River.

It is seen as the largest and most exuberant festival in Cambodia, as people from provinces and rural areas will come all the way to the capital city and take part in all kinds of celebrations from fluvial parades, dragon boat races, fireworks to general merriment. The turnout is usually large, and this year the officials had estimated 3 million people from all over the country would fill Phnom Penh up.

The Diamond Island, in the Bassac River neighboring the capital city, became a new eye-catching destination of them since it was the first time that the shiny, modern entertainment complex opened to the public during the festival.

Nobody thought about whether the 8-meter-wide, 100-meter-long bridge is capable of such a big pedestrian flow. So Monday night around 9:30 p.m., when some rumor triggered panic, the tightly packed crowd who tried to flee found themselves trapped on the bridge desperately. As more and more people struggled to rush toward the exit, hundreds were suffocated, trampled, or drowned to death after they jumped into the river.

While this is not the time to finger pointing, but a tragedy of this degree of seriousness and with a high toll in lost of lives, deserves a detailed, complete and transparent investigation to prevent future occurrences.

Lieutenant General Sok Phal, deputy chief of the National Police and vice-president of the special committee for the accident investigation, said on Wednesday the primary assessment was, after inspecting the site and talking with victims and eyewitnesses, that the swinging of the bridge is the cause of the accident.

"It's a kind of suspension bridge, but people were not aware of it and when it (the bridge) swung, some four or five people on it felt dizzy and fainted, which triggered a rumor that the bridge was collapsing," said he, adding that the bridge in fact was in good condition.

Sok Phal said that the deaths were from suffocation and stampede, ruling out the possibility of terrorism or electrocution.

A government official who requested not to be named, however, said Tuesday that it was a lesson learned for Phnom Penh authorities and police as well as medical staff to be well prepared for such important and large event.

"During such large and important event, the authorities must have evacuation plan, fire lane and standby medical team," he said, adding that few precautions were taken before and during the event.

The official estimated there were about 20 to 25 people were fully packed in a square meter on the bridge just before the accident happened.

The police teams seemed not to pay enough attention to human flow control. A Westerner who crossed the bridge in the first day of the festival wrote that "the closest security I could find were occupied making sure none of the crowds sat on the wall of the casino (Naga Casino near the bridge)," and the nearest police were busy with manning road blocks and collecting money from motorists entering designated pedestrian areas.

Accident is nothing new for Cambodia's water festival. The last time the festival saw a tragedy was in 2007, when five Singaporeans were killed after their dragon boat, carrying 22 men, capsized at the end of a race. Seventeen Singaporeans were also injured in the accident.

However, magnitude of the latest tragedy, which the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen described as the biggest disaster the country had experienced after the Pol Pot regime, should make people ponder what we can do to guarantee public safety.

Analysts said an Emergency Plan should be in place for an event with such a massive attendance; and when the amount of people is overwhelming, an already-there evacuation plan would help a lot.

On Monday on news of the stampede, the police and rescue teams were quick to respond but the police cars, fire trucks and ambulances could hardly move as the streets toward the bridge were all overcrowded.

Unlike in a natural disaster where element of act of god take cause towards devastating outcome, the stampede is not a case of beyond human control. It is preventable and the organizer should have anticipated and put in proper crowd control measures.

Pung Kheau Se, President of Canadia Bank and owner of Diamond Island as well as its bridge, expressed the same opinion as he came up at Calmette Hospital Tuesday to send condolences to the victims there.

"Nobody expected a tragedy like this would happen, and the control of pedestrian flow will be the main preventive measure we take in the future," he said, adding that it just did not occur to him there would be such an overwhelming number of people.

The government swiftly announced compensation: about 1,250 U.S. dollars to each household of the dead, and 250 dollars to each injured, Hun Sen had also ordered to establish a special committee to conduct investigation on the causes and accountability.

While it is difficult to find comfort for those who lost their loved ones in such a public tragic incident, the willingness by the government to conduct thorough post-event investigation and the resolution showed to prevent future tragedy like this would gradually reduce the pain of them and hopefully make the day of joyful water festival return sooner.