1979 — Dec 3, WHO Concert Crushing/Trampling, Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati OH-11
–11 Chertkoff and Kushigian. Don’t Panic: The Psychology of Emergency Egress. 1999, p. 83.
–11 Chronicle-Telegram, Elyria OH. “11 dead, 20 injured in Cincy concert crush.” 12-4-1979.
–11 Nager. “Concert Industry Learned from Who Tragedy…” Cincinnati Enquirer, 12-3-1999.
Narrative Information
Chertkoff and Kushigian: “Riverfront Coliseum (now called the Crown Coliseum) in Cincinnati, Ohio, opened in September 1975. It is a multi-use indoor arena with over 100 entrance doors placed at various locations around the building.
“On the evening of December 3, 1979, the popular British rock band The Who was performing at Riverfront Coliseum. Tickets had gone on sale on September 28, and in just an hour and a half, the concert was sold out. A total of 3,578 tickets were for reserved seats. The remainder of the 18,348 tickets were for festival seating, meaning that a ticket merely entitled the ticket holder to entrance into the building, with seating or standing room in front of the stage determined on a first-come, first- served basis. Consequently, people began to arrive early in the afternoon, long before the doors opened for the 8:00 P.M. performance.
“Concern about the use of festival seating at Riverfront Coliseum had been raised several times in the past. A Public Safety Study Team, foamed in response to crowd control problems at an Elton John concert in August 1976, reported that the management of Riverfront Coliseum, on its own, was reducing the use of festival seating, and that, therefore, such reductions should be left up to the management. In September 1977, Donald J. Mooney, Jr., of the Cincinnati Human Relations Committee proposed an end to festival seating: “All future concerts should be sold on a reserved seat basis. Reserved seats would discourage the arrival of thousands of fans hours before the concert is scheduled to begin, and before the doors are open. Such congregations, and the resulting drinking and drug abuse, have been the primary causes of disturbances on the plaza level near the coliseum” (`76 Study Recommended Coliseum Reduce “Festival Seating,” 1979, p. A-1). The Cincinnati fire division also had raised objections to festival seating, noting that overcrowding and the blockage of aisles tended to occur with festival seating. However, Safety Director Richard Castelleni maintained in a letter to a private citizen that crowd control problems at Riverfront Coliseum were, and should be, the responsibility of management, not the city: “enforcement of codes and ordinances would and could be handled by coliseum personnel, as enforcement was above and beyond the capabilities of the limited manpower of the fire division and exceeds the service to which a privately owned facility is entitled” (Delaney & Greenfield, 1979, p. B-1).
“By 7:00 P.M., thousands were tightly packed around the entrance doors…creating a dangerous situation…. One person stated afterward that the crush was so great he could not lift his arm in order to scratch his head….” (Chapter 7: The Who Concert Stampede, December 3, 1979,” from pp. 79-80, of 79-84.)
Nager: “…11 people were killed outside… [Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati] building in the crush before a concert by the Who. It remains the deadliest concert disaster in American history.” (Nager, 1999)
Newspaper
Dec 4: “Officials today blamed ‘festival (unreserved) seating’ for creating a crush at the doors of Monday night’s ‘The Who’ rock concert in which 11 people were trampled to death. ‘We can make an assumption that one of the major problems was festival seating,’ said Mayor J. Kenneth Blackwell. ‘There was a demand for good seats.’
“Half of the sold-out crowd of 18,000 held tickets for unreserved seating at Riverfront Coliseum. The other half had reserved seats.[1] “This will probably lead to a campaign to end festival seating at future concerts,” said Cincinnati Safety Director Richard Castellini.
“The 11 young people were trampled to death, and another 20 injured, immediately after the first two doors were opened to an initial throng of 7,000 youngsters who had been waiting several hours in the near-freezing weather. Some were drinking beer or whiskey. Others were smoking marijuana.
“Witnesses said the doors simply could not accommodate the crush of excited fans rushing for good seats to see the popular rock group on national tour. “The crowd was just pushing and pushing and pushing,” said Buford Meir, 18, of Miamisburg, Ohio. “It was horrible.” Candice Momper, 21, of Covington, Ky., said when she got to the doors, “I couldn’t believe what was happening up there.” “There were people piled up. Off their feet. On the ground. At least 20 of them. Some were unconscious. The crowd couldn’t see people were piled up till they got up there. Then the crowd from behind just kept pushing so much that people kept walking over them.”
“The crowd was so thick it took police 15 minutes to reach the dead and pull out the injured. Some in the throng who escaped physical injury were emotionally shaken. “I thought I was dead,” said Jim Holstrom, 28, of Cincinnati, who was standing near the front of the crowd with his brother, Dave, 22
“I can’t stop shaking I think my brother is dead. He was next to me and went down in the rush. I don’t know how I got out. Somebody was on top of me I couldn’t breathe.”
“When two banks of doors in a 100-foot-wide area opened at about 7:30 p.m., the thousands of fans outside tried to push in all at once, police said. The press of the crowd shattered the glass doors and forced down scores of the concertgoers….
“Police officer Dave Grawe said the crowd “jammed the people up so tightly in front that they just passed out. They didn’t even fall down. They must have jammed up so tight that they didn’t get any air and just died.” (Chronicle-Telegram, Elyria Ohio, December 4, 1979)
Sources
Chertkoff, Jerome M. and Russell H. Kushigian. Don’t Panic: The Psychology of Emergency Egress. Praeger, 1999.
Chronicle-Telegram, Elyria OH. “11 dead, 20 injured in Cincy concert crush.” 12-4-1979, p. 1. Accessed 7-17-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/elyria-chronicle-telegram-dec-04-1979-p-1/?tag
Nager, Larry. “Concert Industry Learned from Who Tragedy – Safety Taken More Seriously After 11 Died in 1979.” Cincinnati Enquirer, 12-3-1999. Accessed 7-17-2017 at: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1999/12/03/loc_concert_industry.html
[1] Chertkoff and Kushigian, however, write: A total of 3,758 tickets were for reserved seats. The remainder of the 18,348 tickets were for festival seating.”