It has emerged that the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem had been at the event and left two hours early, urging the police to take immediate action because he felt people were in danger from large crowds. He says the police did not listen to him.
I guess they felt the event had occurred in the past without fatalities, and he was being alarmist?
A tweet from 2018 has surfaced, from a journalist, warning that at this gathering, the crowds would exit from the music site along a relatively narrow tunnel bordered by metal and stone walls, and that it was a disaster waiting to happen.
From various blogs that I know and trust, written by people who had relatives at the event, it seems that part of a grandstand collapsed above the tunnel, and that in the following confusion, some people feinted (perhaps they fell a few feet to the ground and were unconscious for that reason?).
Their friends tried to get them out of the crowds to get medical attention.
Then some people fell in the exit tunnel below the grandstand area, perhaps these were the ones who had feinted, falling into the tunnel, or were other people?
It is not clear if the grandstand collapse caused the first people to fall in the exit tunnel.
Others fell on them and so on, also falling on some steep steps near the tunnel.
One story of heroism has emerged, of a particularly strong man who somehow managed to hold back part of the crowd to make space for others.
There are allegations that the police (at first) did not help, and viewed things as crowd disorder rather than an urgent crisis.
I am loathe to blanket blame them as a force, as once the scale of the disaster became realised then they did disperse the crowds and prevent more people entering the area.
The speed of the fatal crush and chaos/confusion would have played their part.
But some police failings seem to have happened, and an investiagtion will show many lessons to be learned.
Similarities to Hillsborough - of an infrastructure not suited to the purpose it was being used for, of lack of immediate awareness amongst the police, of a crowded tunnel where extricating people would be hard, and of members of the public and emergency services doing their best against overwhelming odds.