The Accra Stadium Disaster of 2001 | Episode 77

If you're like me, when it comes to sporting events, the only thing coming out of the stands should be cheers and chants, and the only thing leaving the field should be the occasional ball or a T shirt fired from a cannon. Remember I send that Hello and welcome to Doomsday, History's most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and onspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, you'll find out which sports fans try to kill Santa Claus, We'll find out what stadium security personnel and a corn cop have in common, and we'll meet the very first person to ever come back to life after dying. On the show, And if you were listening to this on Patreon, you'd hear about the theater of human pain that is professional soccer injuries. You learn about the single worst fanover reaction to the loss of a game in sports history. You'd take a listen through the incestuous and genital laden world of European sports chants, and you would learn why urine works better on tear gas than jellyfish things. This is not the show, you play around kids, or while eating, or even in mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that can potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. Ranking the worst sports fans in the world is not an easy task. I mean, there are just so many to choose from. I asked my wife and she said, geez, that's like trying to pick your favorite Rob Schneider movie. And I'm no expert, as I have to ask, are there any any worse sports fans anywhere in the world than the Philadelphia Eagles fans? Okay, well, relax, just own it. Wait is that a Molotov cocktail? Who even let you in here with that? Anyways? Listen, if you doubt me, let me ask you this. Does your local sports team have an on site prison? And I'm gonna guess pretty much all of you are like no, But all of you Philly listeners are all fun? Yeah? And why well, let me take you back to December the fifteenth, nineteen sixty eight. It all began during the halftime show. See, the Minnesota Vikings had been handing Philly their ass all first half, and the game was right before Christmas. And who better to turn all those grumpy, drunken frowns upside down than good old Saint Nick. Santa Claus took to the field alongside a fifty piece band and cheerleaders dressed as elves, all to bring joy and good cheer to one and all. What Sannah didn't take into account was the Eagles two and eleven season and how bitter and resentful and drunk a determined fan base can get. Also, actual Sannah got stuck in a snowstorm, so they sent out their equipment manager or something in what reporters and fans agreed was the worst Santa costume in the history of American stadium sports. And the fans didn't want second rate Christmas cheer, they wanted a better wide receiver. Fast forward four minutes and Santa's corpse was unceremoniously dragged from the field after being mercilessly pelted with snowballs and beer bottles and cheese steak, and his last words, You're not getting anything for Christmas. And from this we have Eagles jail the Easter Bunny tried to make an appearance in the nineteen seventies. He tried arriving in a hot air balloon, which crashed and the crowd reaction was strong enough to leave the Bunny running from the field in tears. During the eighties and nineties, fans spent most of their time throwing deer bottles and urinating on each other, with a number of people getting cuffed and carted away after every game. It became clear that they needed a way to speed up the justice system here. During games there was an actual judge in a courtroom outside the prison who would hear your charges and pass sentence immediately. On October tenth, nineteen ninety nine, in a game between them and the Dallas Cowboys, Michael Irvin suffered a career ending spinal injury after being tackled awkwardly on fake turf to a person. All of the Eagles fans put their hands or their hats over their hearts and quietly prayed, offering a plot. As Irvin was removed from the field. I'm just kidding, of course, they cheered their asses off, and they threw stuff at him while he was still laying on the field paralyzed unevile to even roll over onto his face to protect himself. And I am sure that more than a few of those bottles contained urine. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of Eagles fans urinating and literally anywhere but the bathroom. So what could be worse than urinating on a spinal injury? Well, later in that same season, the Cowboys returned to Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia fans got pissed about the game, well the season really, and decided on mass to pull batteries from their radios and whip them at the field. You have any idea how much damage a C or a d CEL battery can do. They call them whippables. They became famous for it, and if you feel like god, that's a lot. While there is very little that they won't do. In twenty ten, there was a news report about a fan who made himself purposely vomit all over a visitor and his young daughter. They overturned cars, they climb lampposts, They break store windows. They beat up fans of opposing teams. In twenty eighteen, one fan punched out a police horse, and in twenty twenty three they mercilessly berated and mocked a very young cancer pation in attendance, and all because she was there rooting for the other team. Notice how I did not tell you to pack your d cels, your Hogi cannon, and some bail money. It's because we are not spending our time in Philadelphia today and what we actually will see today is going to be so much worse. So pack your giant foam hands, your favorite cantake cloth seat pillow, and maybe a bottle of supplementary oxygen. Today we are flying off to Ghana. Ghana sits on the Atlantic coast of western Africa, squeezed right between Togo and the Ivory Coast, with Burkina Faso sitting to the north. If you think of Africa as looking a little like a rhino lowering its head to boop the island of Madagascar with its snowt Ghana sits right about the middle of its neck. And we've been to Africa before, and we have pointed out that it is literally the cradle of civilization and thus the oldest inhabited lands anywhere on the planet are found here. But Ghana itself is not an old country. Before it was Ghana. The general area was home to all kinds of states and empires like the Ashanti. And if you recognize a name, it is because they were the first Sub Saharan African nation to crawl out from under Britain's thumb. Whether you're drawn to the golden beaches of the Cape Coast, the lush forests of the Volta region, or the lively streets of Acra, the capital, Ghana is a diverse land of vibrant cultures and stunning landscapes. Now, we're a pretty diverse group here, but we're still going to stand out like a sore thumb parade. But don't worry because Ghanians are known for their warmth and hospitality. They can make you feel like family from the moment you arrive, So get ready to hear people yelling Aquaba everywhere we go. It means welcome, but it feels like we love you. They've got over fifty ethnic groups across Ghana, each with their own customs and languages. But again, don't sweat it because the official language here is English. And yeah, we're going to be staying in Akra, the capital. Obviously for us, it's exotic as hell and it's colorful, and it's busy. It's a tropical city, and there's music and laughter and delicious aromas on the breeze. It's got parks and shops and restaurants and museums and popular beaches and colorful bazaars and energetic nightclubs. It's basically Acra's a kind of city that's gone at all. Just be careful about that street food. This is just me, but I always think when I'm learning about a new culture, I'll like to start with the food. And one of the most popular and icy is Kelliwilly. It's spicy fried plantains, keyword being spicy. When I started this, I myself tried an entire dinner for four of dishes at a Ganian restaurant here in Toronto, and it really wasn't that spicy, which means they were either trying to spare me or it was not an authentic experience. You pick up a snack on Oxford Street in Okra, and here's the thing. Some places they pride themselves on making you sweat out a piece of your soul. They have running challenges just to see if anyone can finish an entire order without running into traffic and dying. So we're not here for some food related disaster sode. We're here for a football game. And let me clarify for my North American listeners, non American football soccer. If you're like me and you're from North America, you probably played it in school and then just never thought about it again. Most of the world calls it football, and in South America they call it football. A lot of people think of soccer as an America term, but it actually originated in England. It fell out of favor and got picked up here because here in America there already was a quote football. Now for reference, American football counts about four hundred million fans around the planet, which technically makes it the largest sports property in the world. The Alabama Crimson Tide have over three million fans by themselves go Red Tide. But discounting people in comas and children too young to know what their hands do, and North Americans in any one of the other one hundred and ninety four countries recognized by the United Nations, Soccer is king. Soccer counts one in two as fans, I mean one in every two people on Earth, regardless of any other medical or demographic considerations, it's effectively more popular than porn, and it's about time we attended a game together. But first, as a quick tangent, may I present to you the complete history of human sports in sixty seconds or less, more or less, probably more. We have known for a long time that basically as soon as proto human hominids could stand upright, they manhandled each other. There are cave paintings in southern Europe depicting dudes slap grappling each other into submission twenty thousand years ago, and as such, mankind's oldest and most basic form of recreational combat or sport is wrestling. The second oldest is running. And I did try to compile a list of human sports based on their age, and soccer or footed ballplay comes in forty third, after things like falconry and shot put, and horseback ar tree and stick fighting. The Chinese used to kick leather balls in the nets during the Han dynasty about twenty three hundred years ago, and they called it kuju. Mayans and Aztecs and Greeks and Romans all had their own versions of the game too, But the game as we recognize it came from eighteen hundreds England between now and then. There have been versions that use your hands, or your feet, or your hips or even your butt. There have been versions where you kick balls made of hair or rocks or animal bladders. Yep. My personal favorite version of soccer comes from medieval Europe, which didn't have a lot of rules, but did involve entire villages of people kicking an inflated animal organ across a field. Now, I don't know how you kept score when the entire village is kicking a lung, and frankly, it sounds more like rugby. The rules as we better understood them were codified in eighteen sixty three, and because Britain loved boating around and being all ding dong, we live here now, the sport moved around the world, and by the twentieth century soccer had grown into the world's most popular sport. National leagues and international competitions popped up worldwide. You got your English Premier League, La Liga from Spain, Italy's got Series A and more recently Major League Soccer in North America. Americans will list a million reasons why American football is vastly superior to soccer, and Indians do the same for a cricket. Ozzies do it for rugby, we Canadians do it for hockey. But most Americans will tell you they would rather watch paint dry. Just a bunch of running and passing for ninety minutes, no strategy, no skill, no drama. So and so passes to so and so. Now back to so and so, and now back to so and so, and now it's going the other way now. As an aside, the ninety minute thing is my favorite part about football. They run the clock no matter what, so there's no calling into work the next day saying I only went to sleep forty minutes ago because the game went into quadruple overtime, like you get with a lot of American sports. Also, they did this study recently where they said that in a two plus hour American football game, between all the whistles and the commercial breaks and the replays, there's only about twelve minutes of actual play. Fans of soccer will argue to their dying breaths that soccer is nothing but strategy and elegance and unpredictability. They also point to the fact that these people run up and down a field the length of an airport runway back and forth for ninety minutes, which is a feat that would have any player in Major League Baseball wretching their cuts out. Sociologists will tell you that soccer's appeal is deeply rooted in the universal desire for play and teamwork and competition. They say, at its core, soccer is about people coming together with nothing more than a ball and some open space. It transcends language, class, our background. If you want to play hockey, your parents have to set up a GoFundMe to cover all of the gear and the permits and the ice time and your bail money, which is not for the kids, that is for the parents. I never had to do this with any of my children, but as far as I can tell ani totally from talking to all my friends who do, there is a sixty to eighty percent chance that anyone in attendance could suddenly turn into a fuming, raging pole that you call the cops on for punching out some other parent. But soccer, on the other hand, as sports go, soccer transcends cultures and boundaries. Like we said, it literally brings entire nations together. There's nothing petty or immature about it unless you're counting fake injuries. I don't know if people in Tajikistan or Burkina Fasso or Albania get into arguments comparing fake soccer injuries to fake pro wrestling injuries, but the fake injuries in professional soccer are trey manifik. Soccer doesn't require expensive equipment or complex rules, whether playing for glory in front of billions at the World Cup or with just a group of kids playing in a dirt patch between two partially collapsed buildings, Soccer unites people from every corner of the earth, and it was exactly the simplicity that allowed it to become the world's game. There are plenty of people who think of it as a way of life, and hands down soccer is the most popular sport in Ghana. And today we're heading with about forty thousand other people to the Akra Sports Stadium. It's home turf for Ghana's oldest surviving football club, the Hearts of Oak or just Hearts if you're local. They've been kicking balls and taken names since nineteen eleven. They're not just one of the oldest existing teams in the Ghana Premier League, they're also holders of the ghania FA Cup, the CIF Championships League, the CIF Super Cup and the CIF Confederation Cup, which makes them basically one of the most iconic teams in Western Africa. And we are here to watch the Hearts of Oak versus the Asante Katoko. That club was created back in nineteen thirty five by the then King of the Ashanti Kingdom, Asanta Hena Nana ser Osei agib i'm on prempe. The second Katoko means porcupine, so people call them the Porcupine Warriors and they have won more than twenty league titles themselves. These are two of Ghana's most successful and popular football teams and today they are going head to head and we got tickets and the date on those tickets is May the ninth, two thousand and one. Welcome to the Acres Sports Stadium. Crowds of supporters for both teams arrived playing early to secure good seats because they were going to go fast. The game drew a massive crowd. Even the news was on board, happy to talk about the history of beef between these two teams. Hearts of Oak and Katoko were rivals going way back. They had a long history of clashes, and fans believe that this rivalry was good for the game. It creates more passion, and of course, the flip side of that coin is how bad things can get when someone finally loses. If you ask me about my dad, I can still become pretty emotional about losing him. But as much difficulty as I have had with my emotions, my feelings are nothing compared to the bottomless sorrow felt by soccer fans when their team is losing. Of the forty thousand people who showed up this day, half were going to leave in a bad way. But we're not going to let a little unruly fan behavior wreck our day. By six pm, the stadium was pretty much filled to capacity with about forty thousand fans in attendance, and that is about fifty seven hundred Dodge caravans full of fans. And the thing about today's game is that the stadium was really kind of showing its age. It was built back in nineteen sixty two, and it was pretty common to hear people complain about it. The stadium was built close enough to the ocean for the salt water on the breeze to really take the place apart. The seats were plastic and uncomfortable. There weren't enough stairwells, there weren't enough entrances or exits, and tunnels were claustrophobically small. There were no turnstiles, just cages with gates, and the whole thing had just become a little ugly and outdated. There was plenty of security on hand, but it still took forever for everyone to funnel inside. As the game began, the stadium buzzed with energy. Every time a player touched the ball, it sent waves of anticipation through the stands, and every time the ball nears a net, the roar of the crowd swells and then crescendos as it falls. Both teams are aggressively protective and playing hard to keep the ball out of their nets, and it is an intense match. The fans are loud and passionate and emotionally invested, and during the first half things are under control. I mean, you've got some fans exchanging chance, but nothing too bad. You not all familiar with soccer chants In North America, people sit in the stands, they wave their hands and they chant things like you're not the better team, or we believe that you are unlikely to win, but in other parts of the world they chant things like your mom is your dad's sister and we're gonna gonna murder you. In the parking lot, you could feel the tension rising with every misshot as the back and forth grew. As the first half drew to a close, Hearts of oak took a one point lead, and tensions remained high. Emotions were actually beginning to spill over, which was beginning to worry both the less emotional inattendance and security. Security had anticipated trouble, and they seemed like they'd been waiting for it, like they were on high alert, like they almost couldn't wait for it. A sports reporter claimed there was a growing sense of unease in the stadium, but it was brushed off as just typical for these high stakes matches. In the second half, Hearts of Oakland took the lead. And I remind you, if you're a soccer detractor, you watch a basketball game and it's just baskets skip basket until the score gets driven up to about one hundred points each and nothing really matters until the last minute or so in deciding who actually wins. And they always end up winning by just a point or two. In soccer, getting shut out two to one in the second half, even if there were a full forty minutes left on the clock, feels like a death sentence. It's very difficult to overcome that kind of disadvantage. As the first projectiles began landing near the players, less aggrieved fans tried their best to get out of the way, making for the stairs and heading for the parking lot. The time was seven twenty two when the Hearts of Oak scored for the second time, and Kotoko fans disappointment turned into disbelief. Katoka supporters were enraged. Their porcubine blood oiled over like a kettle about to whistle. So while some people celebrated, others were livid. And I don't know that any kind of an announcement over the PA was going to calm anyone down. I don't know how one calms down, not many people at one time. Maybe mass hignosis or some kind of sleep ray. But this was two thousand and one and those tools were not yet available. It wasn't quite pandemonium, but it was getting there. Fans could hear their pulse quickening in their ears, and began cascading over seats, climbing down row after row, making their way closer to the field level. They couldn't actually get onto the field because the stadium had lined it with a two meter high fence with barbed wire and spikes at the top. I should point out Donna didn't have that same hooligan energy that haunts European soccer matches, but they could figure out how to muster up some real guff during these big matches. Other fans determined to make their displeasure known began ripping apart seats in their anger. The seats were old and plastic and could be ripped out of the concrete pretty easily, and they called them throwables. Debris rained down on the field while tried to breach the security barriers, but not all the fans obviously. Most just wanted to leave peacefully. But instead of rows orderly all queuing out into the stairwells, the stands devolved into clumps of agitated people gathered out and around the exits. I mean, you don't have to tell me twice that a situation is going south and it's time to test the distance on the remote car starter. I'd be right there with them, but only to a point. See, the problem today wasn't just that too many people were trying to leave too soon. The problem today with that too many people were trying to leave through too few exits. The station had been designed with eight exit stairwells, but only six had been actually built, and they weren't the best. They were only about a meter wide, that's like three feet. Imagine being pinned by crowds in such a claustrophobic space. And the stairwells had these metal railings at the bottom, which created a kind of a bottleneck. See what about half of those people discovered were that even though the stairwells led to the tunnel, and the tunnel led to the doors, and the doors had a big exit sign over them, and so in your imagination, you just push the bar handle on the door and it will swing wide and turn into a beautiful egress with only about two pounds of force. Well, turns out that's a lie. They were supposed to be. Instead, they ended up with these narrow cages with gates, like I said, And what they discovered was that those doors to the cages were temporary walls. When an escalator breaks down, it just turns into stairs. But when a door breaks down, it becomes a wall. So they created the impression of exits, but none of that actual door opening motion that allowed for such a feat to occur. And it was hard to tell people fifty deep to back off because I know it says exit, but it's not as hard to communicate at a distance, especially when you and everyone around you is going ah the entire time. Patreons will remember from the time that we talked about the ten cent beer Night disaster in Cleveland back in nineteen seventy four, there comes this point, a tipping point, if you will, where the atmosphere changes from ordinary tension to dangerous volatility. And at seven point thirty, just like clockwork, the match was over. The Hearts of Oak secured a two to one win over Kotoko, a time for joy and celebration. Wait, was that a tear gas canister flying overhead? Oh? Yes, cue the screaming. It was at this point that the police began launching tear gas into the stands. Attendees described im media panic and disorientation and coughing and wheezing and crying when tear gas comes into contact with the moisture from your eyes, or your skin or your lungs, it produces hydrochloric acid, which irritates the hell out of them. You got your blindness, you're choking, you're burning and your skin and even a little exposure can last about half an hour. And the gas worked perfectly as designed. I was about to say as planned, but I don't know that there was really a plan here. That gas was overwhelming. I forgot to mention. Outside of North America, people really liked letting off flares during soccer matches and it creates this incredible glow on the TV and it usually ends up filling the stands with a nice thick cloud of smoke. Between that and the tear gas, everything had finally arrived in a state of pandemonium. People started running, trying to escape, but they found themselves with nowhere to go, and worse, they couldn't breathe. The gas spread rapidly through the stands, sending fans surging towards the exits. People began to trample over one another in a desperate attempt to escape the fumes. Bodies were piling up near the gates. People were screaming for help, but there was no escape, So so you flew all the way to Ghana to see an international football game, when instead of just flicking the lights on and off to get you to all go home, they start blasting tear gas into the stands. Would you know what to do? It begins with people pressed into place against the doors by people pushing from behind, who are themselves being pushed from behind by even more people pushing them from behind. Doorways, hallways, bridges, they're perfect places for choke points to happen, and this makes them the most dangerous place to be in any kind of a stampede or crush like this. The disaster was set into motion the moment the first body fell. When a person falls in a dense crowd, the person directly behind them is treated to a better view, at least momentarily. See. Nature hates a vacuum, and that small void that gets created above where you were just standing is almost instantly filled by people being pushed from behind, And the moment that person behind you reach out to brace themselves, it's already over. They fall, and now somebody falls into their space directly on top of them, and technically both of them are on top of you. Those at the back of the crowd continue pushing forward, not realizing that those at the front are in trouble and it's impossible to resist. So all that you can do is brace. When someone falls on you, they can blow all the air out of you in one shot, and with the weight on your diaphragm increasing by the second, you are not going to be able to get that next breath. The key to your safety in any crowd experience is a not to be in the middle of one. But no judgment here it happens, which is why I always tell you when you arrive somewhere new, try to make a mental note of all the exits, and in a panic, you're going to try to exit the exact same way you came in, but that's not always going to be the safest option. And b to keep your arms up and fold it in front of you like a or like a boxer. You do this and it creates the space to move your chest and to keep breathing. Now, being in a crowd crush is going to be the hardest physical endurance test of your entire life, So conserve your energy. Don't bother pushing against the crowd. You're not strong enough to affect it, and don't even bother yelling or screaming. Save all your strength because adrenaline will not last forever. And on that. The downside is that adrenaline may make things feel like you're in slow motion. But you can use this to your advantage. If you're trapped in a crowd and you haven't fallen yet, there's something else that you can try, which I call the accordion method for personal extraction, which sounds kind of like a bowel thing, but I'm sticking with it. When you're in a crowd doing this kind of thing, you will notice that people tend to push in surges, kind of a heave ho, heave ho, And in the surge is where all that exertion is the strongest, but done during that little hoe phase, very briefly, the crowd kind of relaxes a little bit before people begin pushing again. It's almost like it creates this little moment of space between people, but only for a moment. And if you can understand and recognize this pattern, you can use this timing to get in a couple of steps sideways, keep those arms up, keep them braced, and then just wait for the next wave or surge to try to get in another couple of steps. It's slow, and all you want to do is work your way diagonally and sideways until the pressure begins to let up enough that you can finally make your escape. The further that you can get away from the center of the calamity, the less pressure that you're going to feel from the number of people squeezing into the same space. So you work your way diagonally and sideways until that pressure begins to let up enough that you can finally make your escape. I have to say, there may be nothing you can actually do in this kind of situation, but that is a terrible attitude to go into it with, so just remember to keep your arms and your chin up. It is completely clear that the situation was now out of control at this point. Some police even tried to help rescue people from the crowd, but it was a little late for that. Many fans have been left trapped or suffocating under piles of bodies, which I have to say, sadly, is a slow and terrifying way to have to die. As the new body arrived at the pile, pressed on by panicking hordes from behind who didn't know that there was no exit, the weight increased, and more than just the physical pain, the fear of listening to people screaming for their lives is itself an actual torture. The sounds of their screams weakening and petering out is a different kind of a torture. It was a full half an hour before emergency responders arrived, again too late to help. The body is of those who died from asphyxiation and trampling injuries were pulled from the stadium, and survivors were forced to file past rows of lifeless bodies as they laid stacked near the exits. By the time the smoke cleared, one hundred and twenty six people died, with another seventy injured. So what happened? Well, where do you want to begin. The public and the media were all, the police are trying to kill us. They've gone mad. But the problems that day were twofold. People wanted to know why tear gas was deployed in a crowded area and why the exits were locked, and so a commission was set up to investigate. Newspapers in the media immediately criticized the firing of the tear gas for creating the lethal stampede. Testimonies from survivors and families victims painted a picture of negligent homicide. Obviously, they know their job better than us, and I'm not going to say that they weren't anticipating crowd disturbances, but geezus done as now. Sports council actually had asked the police to provide extra security that night, and they did up to and including stationing riot control police officers around the stadium. You ever heard of acorn cop? He was this Okaloosa County, Florida Sheriff's deputy, Jesse Hernandez, And this guy unloaded an entire clip of AMMO into a locked patrol car holding a handcuffed suspect. And he did it because he thought he'd been shot. He thought that he'd been shot because he tried doing some John Claude van Dam but ended up somersaulting onto his own duty belt and pulled something in his hip. He thought he'd been paralyzed and started yelling shots fired. Well, he wasn't paralyzed, He just hadn't limbered up in about three years, and so somersaulting away and air raiding his own vehicle because an acorn, which, if you don't know, is a small nut, not much bigger than the top of your thumb. Well, an acorn fell from a tree and bounced off the roof of his car. Acorn cop got fired because he got all fired up and fired on an unarmed suspect. And why do cops do this? Why do they overreact this way? Well, long story short, they're programmed too. They've heard endless stories of some innocent old grandma pulling a nine from their purse, and they just don't trust anyone or anything. And it's not just a Florida problem, it's a global phenomenon. So did the police an acra overreact, Well, they didn't like the look of the crowd and they decided to play keep away. When the police normally play keep away with a crowd, they're probably just standing in the line, holding up riot shields and batons and marching forward one foot at a time, shouting we're just gonna swing these clubs and if you get hit, it's your own fault. But they're not always that way. Sometimes they just start lobbing to your gas, which is good for keeping people away, sort of when you lob a volley of rubber bullet side of crowd. They tend to stumble away from the source of the affliction. But when you fog an area with tear gas, people don't just politely corral to leave. They are blinded and panicked, and they will run in any available direction. A panic and stampede ensued as fans tried to flee the irritating fumes. Oh, and I should mention, just to confirm, they also did fire rubber bullets and flash bangs. If you do not know what a flash bang grenade is, it is basically a grenade that explodes with a magnesium based flash and a sound as loud as the Krakatau of volcanic explosion. They will cause temporary blindness and loss of hearing, and loss of balance and just a whiff a panic. Now I believe I was just telling you about some malfunctioning exits. It's a pretty common practice on the show that different venues control crowd movements and prevent people from sneaking in by locking extra doors or fire exits. Of course, building code state you're gonna need x number of exits for every x number of people. The reason the code exists in the first place is because when you have fewer exits than people, bottlenecks of people will form by the exits. As the stampede grew, people struggled over the crowded stairways. Some tripped and fell, and others tried to help them up, but the crush of people either pushed them away or threw them to the ground as well. Either way, once you've tripped, it's only a matter of seconds before someone falls on top of you, and another and another. And you ever tried planking, well, you ever tried planking with seven people on your back and legs. One man survived by sticking his head through a staircase railing for air, while the rest of them was neatly flattened. And these people were trapped like this for almost an hour and a half without help, and good luck holding that plank. For ninety minutes, people died. Imagine not dying, but carrying the weight of these people who had already asphyxiated and now lay as dead weight on top of you, urinating and defecating from all the pressure, and the fact that death releases all of your sphincters, holding all that in from their duty to withhold your duty and I promise you I am not saying any of this to be COI or funny. There's just nothing funny to be had here. And I'm sorry, folks. Not every disaster is hilarious. What those people went through was an unimaginable experience and something that I would wish on no one. The one hundred and twenty six people who died that day, one hundred and sixteen died from compressive or traumatic asphyxia, which, if you don't know, means that their chest cavities were effectively crushed inwards and they suffocated. The remaining ten died from trauma. The Ghana Institute of Architects called the stadium a death trap, and actually the problem was threefold. With so many people trying to leave, Even if first responder had been standing by, which they weren't, they would have had an impossible time trying to swim upstream, so to speak, to reach the people in immediate danger. It took more than an hour for rescuers to arrive, and by then it's well, where do we even start. In fact, there were more than three folds to the problem that day, in no particular order. The lack of safety oversight, poor emergency services, lack of safety staff, structural shortcomings, poor maintenance, a lack of communication, and my not favorite no least favorite aspect. Rather than divide the injured and the dead amongst various hospitals and morgues, a single hospital kept the bodies, but because they didn't have the capacity for that many bodies, they were left to decompose before they could be prepared for burial. You got to remember it's hot and Ghana, you can't leave a body in a non refrigerated area. Military police then escorted relatives in groups of twenty two to an noticed board outside the morgue to look through pictures of the deceased. People collapse with grief, sobbing and screaming the names of their loved ones. The bodies were later placed on the floor of a large room to aid an identification, but even with their conditioning, it was a little too late to do anything to mask the smell. President of Ghana, John Kuffor addressed the nation. He said that six police officers in charge of security at the stadium that day had been suspended, and he made it sound very clear that if they found anyone who really overflecs that day, they were going to feel the full weight of the law, and he appealed for restraint. He said, let us not rush to judgment. I am aware of the anger many of you feel about the conduct of the police, but the eyes of the world are upon us, so let us show the world that we are a dignified and peace loving people. Let us all be united and support each other in this moment of national grief. The government also set up a co made of religious leaders to console the Barris families and a funeral committee to help arrange burials. Kufor said the government would pay the medical expenses of survivors. Ghana's soccer federation indefinitely postponed all Premier League matches. There wasn't a single Ghanian who believed the police weren't responsible and aggressive and excessive, because this wasn't even the first time that this had happened. Parts of Oak had a similar incident playing against Esperance of Tunisia in the Africans Champion League final in December. At that game, police fired tear gas on unruly fans during the match too. The only difference was that one didn't turn into a full on disaster, which gave the authorities a kind of a mental pass, like normalcy bias. We pumped tear gas into the stands and no one died, so we can continue using this tactic because no one will ever die. In the end, the official inquiry did blame the police for overreacting with res and indiscriminate behavior. It went on to accuse some officers of dishonesty and indefensible laxity, which sounds a little bit like malingering to me. Six officers were charged with one hundred and twenty seven counts of manslaughter. But what have we learned from every single time a government is forced to hold their own people accountable? From even hearing me say that, you can pretty much already guess how the trial went down. The court ruled that the prosecution had failed to make their case, and not just that. They found that the asphyxia was caused by the stampede and not the tear gas, so it didn't matter how the gas got there. All that mattered was that it was their own fault. So put up a finger if your legal system sucks. The Commission of Inquiry also recommended improvements to stadium security and first aid facilities. They also suggested nationwide rapid response teams should be set up because God knows they weren't going to address the cause, just the response. The Acro Sports Stadium itself was renovated in two thousand seven. A statue was created where wreaths were laid and memorials are held every year to remember those lost on that terrible day. The statue itself appears to depict an exhausted man carrying a dead man on his back, and the title is inscribed, I am my Brother's keeper in honor of the victims. In twenty sixteen, an annual memorial May Ninth Cup football competition was created and the memorial events came to be themed Embrace the Day. Fans who attend matches of the stadium no longer sing about your mum or your bum. They now chant never again. The Acre Stadium disaster was the result of a perfect storm inadequate crowd control panic exacerbated by the tear gas and the rubber bullets and the flash bangrenades and the locked exits that created the deadly bottlenecks. Basically excessive police force in a death trap of a location created by poor stadium management. The Acros Stadium disaster of two thousand and one, killed one hundred and twenty six people, making it the worst stadium disaster in African history. Now I get to tell you one of the more original and unusual anecdotes that has ever been my privilege to share on this show. A man named Abdul Mohammad had been one of the fans caught up in the chaos that day, and according to reports, he had been trampled in the stadium and by the time emergency services found him, he was dead. His body was taken to the morgue. And here's where it gets good. You know that scene from the horror movie where the morgue worker is going about their duties and then suddenly one of the corpses just sits up, sometimes still inside the body bag. Yeah, Abdul was that guy, but in real life more workers noticed him moving around still sealed in his body bag, and body bags just normally don't do that. They actually call it the Lazarus syndrome. It's where a person shows signs of life after death. It's actually the origin of vampire mythology. He used to get corpses and they'd fill up with gas and maybe they'd burp or speak or sit up or give you the finger, and people assumed that they were the undead, but rather than stabbing Abdula in the heart or cutting off his head, they opened the bag to find a very confused man. What happened was he just got knocked silly, but it left him unable to communicate or move, so he was mistaken for a corpse man. He got treated as such. Abdulla Muhammad became part legend and part miracle, but he also became the very first zombie in doomsday history. If you were lucky uy enough not to wake up in a bag or a fridge today, why not celebrate your uninterrupted lifespan by considering becoming a supporter of the show. It really helped me fulfill my dream of doing this full time, and if you and a few thousand of your friends could spare a buck or two, you would really help keep the show and frankly me alive. Before I tell you about Patreon, if you're into it but aren't looking for a whole relationship, you can visit buy me at poppy dot com slash doomsday to make a one time donation. And for those of you who do, I deeply appreciate you all. However, if you think any episodes a little early, with no sponsor interruptions and with additional ridiculously interesting material in each new episode is worth it, you can learn more at patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo and a quick but heartfelt shout out to Kenny Jones, Emma Brooking, Devin Austin, Bailey Blair, Kathleen and Jeff Hancock for supporting me on Patreon. You can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or you can fire me an email to Doomsday Pod at gmail dot com. And I love hearing from you guys. I'm just a little behind on the moment on returning mail because I need a new stamp. One of my dogs ate my Doomsday stamp, so I'm simply waiting for a replacement. Alder episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave us a review and tell your friends. I always thank all my Patreon listeners, new and old, for their support and encouragement. But if you can spare the money and had to choose, I always ask you to consider making a donation to Global medic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over three point six million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn more and donate at globalmedic dot CA. On the next episode, we are going to talk about the scariest, most bloodthirsty thing to ever happen to America's Gulf Coast and it's something we've actually touched on before, which makes this kind of a spin off episode. It's the Galveston Hurricane disaster of nineteen hundred. We'll talk soon. Save the goggles off, and thanks for listening.