Korean officials admitted responsibility and apologised on Tuesday for failures in preventing and responding to the crowd surge, which has left citizens shocked and angry.
The tragedy centred on a narrow, downhill alley running between a dense row of store fronts and the landmark Hamilton Hotel. The path became clogged by a huge wave of partygoers before some fell and toppled over one another like dominoes, according to witnesses, before suffocating to death.
“If the government knows that there were going to be that many people there, and there is going to be road blockages, there should be enough police and emergency services already there on standby,” Taverniti said.
Stuck in a huge crowd, Taverniti said he didn’t sense that something terrible would happen until some women near him apparently slipped and fell down, and people nearby tried to help them back up.
By that time, he could no longer seen where his three friends were.
“All of a sudden more people started falling … there were just too many people,” he said.
He said he thought he saw some of his friends’ hands among the people who were piling up.
He tried to grab them, but had to let go after being crushed by the enormous weight of other people who were losing balance. He said he heard “lots of people screaming”.
Many citizens called police to warn about crowd danger
The government is facing growing public scrutiny over whether the crush could have been prevented and who should take responsibility for the country’s worst disaster in years.
National police chief Yoon Hee Keun said an initial investigation found there were many urgent calls from citizens notifying authorities about the potential danger of the crowd gathering in Itaewon. He said police officers who received the calls failed to handle them effectively.
“I feel a heavy responsibility (for the disaster) as the head of one of the related government offices,” Yoon said in a televised news conference.
“Police will do their best to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.”
Yoon said police had launched an intense internal probe into the officers’ handling of the emergency calls and other issues, such as the on-the-spot response to the crowd surge in Itaewon that night.
Separately, South Korea’s interior minister, emergency office chief, Seoul mayor and the head of a ward office that includes the Itaewon neighbourhood all offered public apologies.
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Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon apologised deeply and wept and briefly halted his news conference as he talked about the parent of a 20-year-old woman who was declared dead earlier in the day.
“When I tried to comfort a person with a daughter hospitalised at the National Medical Centre yesterday, they said their daughter would survive and they believed so,” he said.
“But I heard she passed away this morning. I am sorry that my apology has come late.”
The disaster left at least 156 people dead and 151 others injured.Witnesses described people falling on one another, suffering severe breathing difficulties and falling unconscious.
They said rescuers and ambulances failed to reach the crammed alleys in time because the entire Itaewon area was packed with slow-moving vehicles and partygoers clad in Halloween costumes.
Most of the dead were in their 20s and 30s, and about two-thirds were women.
Australian man found friend among rows of unconscious bodies
Taverniti said he shouted to the bars and clubs to open their doors to let some people in to ease the crowd, but that nobody listened.
He said several police officers arrived about half an hour later and people in the crowd helped pull out those who were injured before more officers arrived later.
He later found one of his friends among the rows of unconscious bodies laid out in the pavement.
Taverniti was able to locate his two other friends being treated at hospitals.
He says he plans to stay in Seoul for a bit longer to ensure the steady recovery of his hospitalised friends. On social media on Tuesday night, he said one of them was in a stable condition.
“I believe 100 per cent that this incident is a result of the government’s mismanagement and the lack of ability because I have known that Halloween event has always been this big in Itaewon,” he said.
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“This year there was clearly not enough police presence.”
