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Brief Report
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The tragic nature of the human stampede that took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on November 22, 2010 claimed the lives of 347 people and injured another 395 according to official reports. Yet, an accurate death toll may never be known as cited estimates of fatalities, compiled from surrounding provinces, were not well documented.2During the latter part of a traditional three-day festival, the Bon Om Touk stampede occurred amidst a crowd of more than a million people that had gathered to celebrate the end of the annual rainy season.
The event took place on Koh Pich, or Diamond Island, where many perished on a narrow swaying suspension bridge when panic led to crushing deaths from asphyxiation and internal injuries. With rumors of a failing bridge and individuals passing out and trampled, authorities rushed to regain control, with military-employed water cannons directed at crowds attempting to flee the bridge. The effectiveness of water cannons as a relatively non-lethal method of controlling crowd behavior remains controversial, and likely contributed to further confusion. More deaths resulted from electrocution by electric cables that victims grabbed to pull themselves out of the river, or drowning in the muddy river below. Not unlike other human stampedes, what incited the panic remains unclear.
Described as the greatest tragedy that Cambodia has experienced since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, the Bon Om Touk catastrophe ranks among the deadliest human stampede disasters during the past 30 years, a Class IV event exceeding 100 fatalities according to a recently proposed scale (Table 1).1Witnesses' reports described bodies piled five or six deep with the numbers of deceased exceeding the government's capacity to deal with them.2It is the fourth major crowd disaster to have taken place in 2010, including a stampede at the Ram Janki Temple in Kunda,...