'Perspectives' in new NFPA Journal looks at a new approach to preventing crowd crush tragedies

In the past few decades, thousands of people around the world have died or been seriously injured by crowd crush, many of compressive asphyxia, where victims are unable to expand their lungs under the force of bodies surrounding them. It’s common for dozens if not hundreds of people to die in a single event: In 1990, a crowd crush in a pedestrian tunnel leading out of Mecca during the Muslim Hajj led to the deaths of 1,426 Muslim pilgrims. Federico Botta, a 27-year old PhD candidate and researcher at the University of Warwick Business School in Coventry, England, believes he...