Wowowee stampede kills 79, hurts at least 200 persons
By Mars W. Mosqueda Jr.
Seventy-nine people were killed in a stampede at the Ultra stadium in Manila on Saturday as they scrambled to get tickets for a popular Philippine television game show, Wowowee.
Most of the dead were elderly women, crushed against a closed steel gate at the bottom of a slope or trampled underfoot. One child was killed, hospital officials said.
Some witnesses said chaos erupted when someone shouted "bomb" but most survivors blamed the crowd surging for the tickets.
"My mother came here hoping to win a prize," said one man in his 20s, holding her dead hand and sobbing.
More than 200 injured people were taken to one government hospital. Some survivors went to private hospitals and their number was not immediately known.
Police said as many as 25,000 people were lining up outside the Ultra stadium when guards started to hand out ticketsat dawn for the first anniversary celebration of the game show "Wowowee".
"The slope was so steep that when one person stumbled, they fell like dominoes," said Manila's police chief, Vidal Querol.
An army truck took the bodies to a funeral parlour after they had been lined up on the street, their faces covered with towels, sheets and newspapers. Hundreds of shoes and flip-flops were scattered across a narrow driveway.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo visited the injured in hospital and was due to survey the scene of the stampede.
Some tickets for the "Wowowee" show were given away this week but many fans camped out for days to get tickets at the gate.
Even after the stampede, thousands of people refused to leave the area because they wanted a chance at the usual jackpot of 1 million pesos and a special prize for the anniversary of a house and plot of land.
Ambulances had trouble reaching the scene because of the large crowd.
The ABS-CBN network cancelled the event and appealed to those inside and outside the stadium to go home.
"It's insensitive to continue the show," Charo Santos-Concio, head of entertainment at the network, said on television. "We're all devastated."
ABS-CBN said it would pay for the funeral and hospital expenses of victims and survivors.
"Wowowee", on six days a week at midday, is one of the most-watched shows in the Philippines and by communities of Filipinos living abroad.
"The guards could not control the crowd. People were climbing on the roof of a pathway, scaling the fences just to get inside and rushing to a narrow gate," Susan Doblin, who travelled from the central island of Leyte, told Reuters.
"We're very poor. I waited for days outside to try our luck. This is a rare chance for us to win a million pesos." #
