Tragic news from Mecca last week as more than seven hundred people died on Thursday, crushed in a stampede during the annual Hajj.
“The crowd at the Hajj is not a crowd of hooligans or bargain shoppers, it’s actually overall a well-behaved crowd,” says disaster expert, Amanda Ripley. “There’s a certain intentional harmony of that crowd. So it’s actually, if anything, calmer and more cooperative because of the religious nature of the event. Most of these terrible tragedies are a function of too many people moving through too small of a space.”
