Shanghai team to deal with aftermath of tragedy

Police officers yesterday stand guard at the location where people were killed in the stampede during the New Year's Eve celebration on the city's historic waterfront area. — Aly Song

Ten people sustained severe injuries in the New Year's Eve stampede that claimed the lives of 36 people in Shanghai, local authorities said on Friday.

Four of them are in a critical condition but they are improving.

The injury toll rose to 49 after Changzheng Hospital received two more patients on Thursday but they were released shortly afterward after treatment for minor injuries.

Another 11 people were allowed home yesterday while 29 others are still undergoing treatment, said Wu Jinglei, a spokesman for the city's health and family planning commission.

Wu said the identities of all the injured had been confirmed and hospitals had contacted their next of kin.

The 29 injured victims are being cared for at the city's three top-level hospitals — Shanghai No.1 People's Hospital, Ruijin Hospital and Changzheng Hospital.

Two seriously injured patients have been moved to Ruijin Hospital from Huangpu District Central Hospital for treatment.

Two of the injured victims being treated at Ruijin are in a critical condition. One of them suffered kidney damage in the crush, and the other is on a ventilator, said Chen Erzhen, the hospital's deputy director.

The other seven patients at the hospital were mainly suffering from arm and leg fractures, bruises and chest injuries, he said.

Two patients are in a critical condition at Shanghai No.1 People's Hospital, said Xia Shujie, its deputy director. One is on a heart and lung machine, Xia added.

The health commission has organized eight experts from the municipal mental health center and summoned another 40 to prepare to offer counseling services to stampede victims at the three hospitals, Xinhua news agency reported.

Wu said that most of them were not suffering any mental trauma, but there were some who had exhibited some abnormal behavior.

One slightly injured female patient, for example, had refused to talk or answer any questions when she was taken to Ruijin Hospital, he said. Doctors arranged for a nurse to give her counselling and she had since recovered.

Meanwhile, the city's education authority is arranging counselling for university students who had witnessed the tragic events on the Bund.

Police have launched an investigation into the cause of the stampede.

The city government has set up a working team for rescue operations and to deal with the aftermath.

Some survivors initially said the stampede might have been triggered when people started to throw coupons resembling US banknotes to revellers outside the M18 bar but police have discounted any link.

Police said on Thursday that the coupon throwing happened at 11:46pm, some time after the stampede and at some distance away.

The city government has been criticized for not taking effective preparative measures to cope with the crowds that flock the Bund, although it did close the nearest subway station to the area, Xinhua news agency said.

Last year, officials were caught off-guard when nearly 300,000 people turned up for the New Year countdown at the Bund. It had been canceled this year, but police said the number of people gathered along the Bund by 8:30pm on Wednesday had exceeded last year's figure.

"We started to add manpower since 7pm due to the increase of revelers and added another hundreds of persons after the accident," said Cai Lixin, a deputy chief commander at the Huangpu branch of the city's Public Security Bureau.

At 11:32pm, the official microblog account of local police began to suggest people find other places to celebrate New Year. Police then noticed unusual activity at the south part of Chen Yi Square and when they moved in the full extent of the tragedy became evident.

The city government last night released the names of another three victims crushed to death in the stampede, all young women aged 21 to 26.

Authorities have yet to identify the last of the victims.

All but four of the dead on a list of 32 identified victims released earlier were aged 25 or under, and 21 were female. The youngest was a 12-year-old boy, Mao Yongjie.

He became separated from his mother in the overwhelming flow of revelers, news magazine Caixin reported, and efforts by hospital staff to save his life failed. His mother spent New Year's day crying until she passed out from exhaustion, Caixin added.

The oldest fatality was Du Shuanghua, 37, whose wife told AFP he was the family's only breadwinner and she had not yet told their 8-year-old son his father was dead.

Fan Ping showed AFP pictures of the family on her phone, but struggled to find the one she wanted her husband to be remembered by, before refusing to look at it herself.

Friends with Du told Fan her husband was still conscious when he was taken to Shanghai No.1 People's Hospital. But she never saw him alive again.