25th November 2011
Crush Point
“Crowds are a condition of urban life. On subways and sidewalks, in elevators and stores, we pass in and out of them in the course of a day, without pausing to consider by what mechanisms our brains guide us through so easily, rarely touching so much as a stranger’s shoulder. Crowds are often viewed as a necessary inconvenience of city living, but there are occasions when we gladly join them, pressing together at raves and rock concerts, at sporting events, victory parades, and big sales. Elias Canetti, in his 1960 book “Crowds and Power,” sees these times of physical communion with strangers as essential to transcending the fear of being touched. “The more fiercely people press together,” he writes, “the more certain they feel that they do not fear each other.” In fact, a crowd is most dangerous when density is greatest. The transition from fraternal smooshing to suffocating pressure—a “crowd crush”—often occurs almost imperceptibly; one doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late to escape. Something interrupts the flow of pedestrians—a blocked exit, say, while an escalator continues to feed people into a closed-off space. Or a storm that causes everyone to start running for shelter at the same time. (In Belarus, in 1999, fifty-two people died when a crowd tried to enter an underground railway station to keep dry.) At a certain point, you feel pressure on all sides of your body, and realize that you can’t raise your arms. You are pulled off your feet, and welded into a block of people. The crowd force squeezes the air out of your lungs, and you struggle to take another breath.
