Security guards use a bench to hold off relatives of stampede victims trying to enter the emergency area of a hospital in Shanghai, China, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015. Dozens died in a stampede during New Year’s celebrations in downtown Shanghai, city officials said – the worst disaster to hit one of China’s showcase cities in recent years. AP
SHANGHAI — People unable to contact friends and relatives streamed into hospitals Thursday, anxious for information after a stampede during New Year’s celebrations in Shanghai’s historic waterfront area killed 36 in the worst disaster to hit one of China’s showcase cities in recent years.
A Shanghai government statement said another 47 people received hospital treatment, including 13 who were seriously injured, following the chaos about a half-hour before midnight. Seven of the injured had left hospital by Thursday afternoon.
An elderly couple arrived at the Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital looking for their grandson who had gone out to celebrate New Year’s Eve on the Bund, where the stampede happened. Another man looking for his 25-year-old son carried photos of him, but left when told that the bodies still not identified there were female.
The microblog of the People’s Daily, which is run by the ruling Communist Party, said that the injured included 3 Taiwanese and one Malaysian, and that some of the dead and injured were aged between 16 and 36.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted an unnamed witness as saying people had scrambled for coupons that looked like dollar bills that were being thrown out of a third-floor window. It said the cause of the stampede was still under investigation.
At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought photos out of dead victims who they had not been able to identify, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around the table. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at photographs someone had taken on a cellphone broke into tears.
A saleswoman in her 20s, who refused to give her name, said she had been celebrating with three friends. “I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted ‘don’t rush,'” she said, adding she could not reach one of her friends. “There were so many people and I couldn’t stand properly.”
A man who would give only his surname, Li, said he had identified the body of his wife’s cousin among the dead at the hospital. The victim had gone out to celebrate the New Year on the Bund and his wife was on her way from Anhui province in the east, said Li.
Xia Shujie, vice president of Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital, told media that some of the people brought to them were suffering from serious suffocation.
Xinhua said the deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square, which is in Shanghai’s popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when Shanghai was home to international banks and trading houses. The area is often jammed with spectators for major events.
On Thursday morning, dozens of police officers were in the area and tourists continued to wander by the square, a small patch of grass dominated by a statue of Chen Yi, the city’s first Communist mayor.
Police stood guard at Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital, where many of the injured were being treated. Earlier, relatives desperately seeking information had tried to push past guards at a hospital, state media photos showed. Guards had to use a bench to hold them back. Later, police were allowing family members into the hospital.
CCTV America, the U.S. version of state broadcaster China Central Television, posted video of Shanghai streets after the stampede, showing piles of discarded shoes amid the debris.
One photo from the scene shared by Xinhua showed at least one person doing chest compressions on a shirtless man while several other people lay on the ground nearby, amid debris. Another photo showed the area ringed by police.
Steps lead down from the square to a road across from several buildings.
“We were down the stairs and wanted to move up and those who were upstairs wanted to move down, so we were pushed down by the people coming from upstairs,” an injured man told Shanghai TV. “All those trying to move up fell down on the stairs.”
Last week, the English-language Shanghai Daily reported that the annual New Year’s Eve countdown on the Bund that normally attracts about 300,000 people had been cancelled, apparently because of crowd control issues. The report said a “toned-down” version of the event would be held instead but that it would not be open to the public.
The stampede appeared to be near that area.