deadly waves in the current New Yorker
from John Seabrook’s “Crush Point (The science of crowd control”:
John Fruin, a retired research engineer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is one of the founders of crowd studies in the U.S. In a 1993 paper, “The Causes and Prevention of Crowd Disasters,” he wrote “At occupancies of about 7 persons per square meter the crowd becomes almost a fluid mass. Shock waves can be propagated through the mass sufficient to lift people off their feet and propel them distances of 3 m (10 ft) or more. …”
Later, in a letter sent to the task force assembled to investigate the incident, in which eleven people died, a man in the crowd (for a 1979 concert by The Who) described what it was like near the doors: “The pounding of the waves was endless. … If a wave came and you were being stood upon with your feet pinned to the ground, you would very likely lose your shoes or your balance and fall.”
… Then the waves began to carry him toward the pile. “With this realization, I began to add to the screaming, ‘They’re going down, they’re going down!’ I yelled repeatedly … A wave swept me to the left and when I regained a stance I felt I was standing on someone. The helplessness and frustration of the moment sent a wave of panic through me. I screamed with all my strength that I was standing on someone. I couldn’t move. I could only scream.”
… Shock waves are the result not of collective behavior but of the failure of it. Individuals at the back of the crowd, unable to tell what is happening up ahead, push forward, not realizing that they are injuring the people in the front. Unlike ants and fish and birds, humans haven’t evolved the capability to transmit information about the physical dynamics of the crowd across the entire swarm.
from Francisco Goldman’s “The Wave (Tragedy on a Mexican beach)”:
Where, as we slept that night, was Aura’s wave in its long journey to Mazunte? Having done some research on waves since then, I know that it already existed. Most surface waves of any size travel thousands of miles before they reach the shore. Wind blows ripples across the calm sea, and those ripples, providing the wind with something to get traction on, are blown into waves, and, as the waves grow in height, the wind pushes them along with more force, speeding them up, building them higher. …
“I’m getting this one!” Her cheerful, plucky voice suffused with her last ever impulse of delight.
I saw her launch herself and thought, as I dived under the wave, that it seemed bigger, heavier, somehow more sluggish than the others, and I felt a twinge of fear. (Or is this just a trick of memory?) I came up amid a wide swathe of seething foam—the water looked as if it were boiling. … “Where’s Aura?” I didn’t see her. Bewildered, I swept my gaze back and forth over the teeming surface, waiting for her head to pop up, gasping, her hands brushing hair and water out of her eyes. But she wasn’t in the water.
Neither one of these articles is free online. But, having finished them yesterday, I woke today and found these passages haunting enough to want to type them out here. Any typos are mine. Details about the issue — and the various ways of getting it — are here. Francisco Goldman’s interview, which I reblogged yesterday, is here on the New Yorker’s Tumblr. Information on the memorial Aura Estrada Prize is available in English and Spanish.
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