I’m really surprised there hasn’t been more news about the chaotic end to the Sydney Fireworks last night. It was dangerous and not ok.
If you know a million people will be at the fireworks, you also know you have a million people to get home. Don’t leave the only exit, the train stations, to half a dozen haphazardly placed cops and one exhausted & desperate railway worker with a budget megaphone to try to control this tidal wave of humanity.
@mativity roads were closed so the only way out was by train or bus (from QVB - so 1.5km from Circular Quay).
First 3 stations closed or full.
Central Stn had a row of about 6 police letting v. small numbers of people into the bottlenecked station entrance, so people were squeezed together surging forward every time any number of people were allowed through, up steps, over collapsed barriers.
It was pretty scary.
@mativity Central Stn is 2.5km from Circular Quay, which is quite a long way for the remaining 900,000 people to walk after midnight. (And after waiting for hours and hours for the fireworks to start)
And then to wait in a massive block of people that went for hundreds of metres down the road. With 6 police officers holding the fort.
@mativity yup.
Was struck by how smh had an article about whether abc coverage was ok, but nothing on the shocking logistics of the event.
@mental @mativity I think the crowd on the whole was amazingly well behaved. And I think I wasn’t the only one thinking about South Korea at that moment. But any group of people has a certain number of idiots and it wouldn’t have taken much to have ended in disaster.
Husband said there was a really large bloke near him in the crowd at Central whose friends were egging him on, saying “Push! Push! Push!” And he did.
Gorgeousratty
rusty
Dr Mark Butler