Tucked away in narrow alleyways lined with bars and clubs, thousands of people flocked to Itaewon, an area of Seoul, for the city’s first Halloween festival since the COVID-19 pandemic.
But as the crowds grew throughout the night to the point of becoming uncontrollable, the celebration turned as catastrophic as a back alley that left at least 153 people dead.
Sky News analyzed video from social media to show it only took 30 minutes for the situation to spiral out of control.
They also confirmed the apparent absence of police or the presence of security during the building for the heart of people.
Halloween celebration
Those taking part in the celebrations are mostly young people, with many traveling to the area via Itaewon train station.
Some videos streamed their evening live on Facebook. The screenshot below, taken from one of these live streams, shows crowds starting to form on the main street of the station at 8:10pm.
The main road is busy, but cars can still enter comfortably and there is still a distance between people.
In the hours that followed, the crowds grew larger. They form a series of side streets behind the main road around the Hamilton hotel, marked in yellow on the map below. These streets are small and run from north to south very steeply.
The alleys, marked in yellow, are where the crowds begin to build
At 10:06, people can see that the main alley running east to west is still moving leisurely but slowly. Several people were holding each other to avoid being separated by the crowd as they passed a bar in Ireland.
Then, 150 meters east of where the above shot was shot, a denser crowd appeared in one of the steep, narrow alleys. People are so close together that any small movement can cut through the crowd.
In the video below, pop music can be heard exploding amid cries of distress as the crowded crowd senses danger.
The people of this town narrowly avoided disaster. That would be another steep alleyway on the other side of the Hamilton Hotel, where the deadly crash took place, highlighted in bold yellow below.
The alley west of the Hamilton Hotel, marked here, is where the fight took place
This short video shows the alley west of this hotel earlier in the evening. Crowds are spread from wall to wall on a narrow walkway – located on a 20% slope – with no exits.
Nearby, Janelle Story, a witness who spoke to Sky News, filmed her scene as the crowd skyrocketed. This video was shot at 10:34 pm.
Story told Sky News: “Very suddenly this wave of people rushed towards us with incredible force and urgency, and at that moment I stopped filming because it was really serious and scary. “
She was 40 meters from the west alley of the Hamilton Hotel, where an affair was taking place. By matching the building’s exterior to existing images from Google Streetview, Sky News confirmed the footage was taken outside the Irish bar seen in the previous video at 10.06pm.
In less than half an hour, a busy but free crowd turned dangerous.
Witness video (right) can be located by matching the front of the bar to an existing image from Google Maps (left)
By 10:45 p.m., it was clear that something was very wrong. Videos streamed live from the main road showing ambulances and paramedics approaching the Hamilton Hotel.
In the crowd around the sky also began to dawn, everyone had a serious incident. A young man streamed a street party with his friends having fun. When they moved to the Hamilton Hotel, the mood changed.
At 11:15, he filmed the crowd parting as paramedics moved with the patient on a stretcher.
The stretcher carrying the wounded through the crowd on the east-west main alley
The video below shows the scene where emergency services are heading. A surge forced the crowd to fall, possibly made worse by the alley’s steepness.
Emergency workers can be seen trying to free people trapped in the crowd. People tried to climb the wall to get out, while people on a small set of stairs leading to the side door to the hotel tried to lift everyone to safety.
Reports suggest some people have been trapped for more than an hour. Other videos posted online show paramedics and members of the public attempting CPR in the moments following the surgery. These videos are too painful to share.
Right off the bat, very few police or security personnel could be seen in the busy alleyways during the live streams analyzed by Sky News. Questions are currently being raised about the management of the situation by the authorities.
Graphics: Arianne Cantwell
The Data and Forensics the team is a multi-skill unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We collect, analyze and visualize data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite imagery, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world and show how our journalism is done.
