The recent stampede in the `Naina Devi' temple in Himachal Pradesh that left over 150 people dead and 230 injured ought to serve as a wake up call to put in place safety measures to prevent such avoidable mishaps.

A rain shelter on the mountain path near the temple collapsed which reportedly triggered rumours of a landslide. Consequently, panic-stricken people ran down into a crowd of pilgrims coming up a narrow path. On the fateful day, there were around 25,000 people against an average of 15,000 pilgrims visiting the temple each day.

More shocking was the lathi-charging of the crowd by the local police. With heavy rains making things worse and the path turning slippery, most of the victims - women and children - got killed. Perhaps, better crowd management would have prevented the ghastly tragedy.

A stampede, which commonly describes a sudden rush of a crowd of people with no clear direction or purpose, is synonymous to mass impulse among herd animals as cattle, elephants and wild horses. The response, known to help animals escape predators, is believed to originate from biological responses in the brains and endocrine systems. Human stampedes mostly occur during religious pilgrimages and huge mass gathering in public places, resulting in many injuries and death, mainly from suffocation and trampling.

In May 2005, over 1000 people died in Bagdad following a stampede on the Al-Aimmah bridge. The mishap occurred following rumours of an imminent suicide bomb attack near a shrine where around one million pilgrims had gathered. The panicked crowd flocked to the bridge, which had been closed. While some fell onto the concrete base and died instantly, owing to the pressure of the crowd, the bridge's iron railings gave way, dropping hundreds of people 9 metres (about 30 feet) into the Tigris river.

To what extent safety measures are in place at public places frequented by a large number of people? How prepared are the authorities to arrange relief and medical aid?

Stampedes do not happen just in religious places. It is a real threat at any place of public gathering. A number of factors including lack of awareness/irresponsible behaviour among people, chaos created due to VVIP movement and absence of emergency management initiatives often seem to compound the situation.

In January 2005, about 300 people, mostly women and children, were killed in a temple stampede in Maharashtra 's Satara district, perhaps the worst after the 1954 Kumbh Mela mishap in which some 800 people died in Allahabad . On the auspicious paush poornima (full moon) the steps leading to the temple got slippery owing to breaking of coconuts by some devotees. Also, the approach path was made narrower due to the numerous stalls set up temporarily. Thanks to the ensuing melee, many got trampled to death with some panicked pilgrims setting a few stalls on fire. Consequently, close to 25 gas cylinders in the stalls exploded covering the area in dense smoke.

On the occasion of Somwati Amavasya stampedes occurred on 15 July 1996 , both in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

At the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain, as early as 5 am, with about 3000 persons in the temple premises and another 7000 at queue outside, a stampede occurred at the feet of a staircase leading to the temple sanctum where the pilgrims rushed for worship.

At Hardwar as some 25 lakh devotees thronged the temple through a bridge that was already damaged, a stampede occurred leaving 20 people dead and six injured.

At both the places, primarily, inadequate arrangements for crowd control led to the mishaps. Notably at Hardwar , only one Sub-Inspector and a Naid Tehsildar were on duty to control the crowd.

In September 2006, about 50 people were killed and 100 hurt in a stampede at a sports stadium in Yemen just minutes after President Ali Abdullah Saleh finished an election rally. The deaths occurred when tens of thousands of people tried to gain entry into stadium that was already crammed at least a lakh people.

At a Buenos Aires nightclub on the eve of 2006, a fire snatched away 174 youngsters leaving another 400 injured. Although fireworks lit by fans attending a rock concert said to have caused the fire, with all the emergency exits locked from outside, a stampede that followed apparently led to more deaths than the fire.

In December 2005, at a flood relief camp in Chennai, 42 people died and another 50 injured in a stampede where more than 2000 people had gathered to collect relief materials. Holding the State government responsible for the mishap, the Supreme Court noted that the incident occurred due to the negligence of officers.

In October 2005, a stairway stampede at a Chinese primary school in Beijing killed 10 children and injured many. The children were just coming out of the evening class and the lights went out. As one student shouted that a ghost was coming, many terrified children fell down the stairs leading to the stampede.

In November 2004, four women and a teenaged girl were killed and 10 others injured in a stampede at the New Delhi railway station. The mishap was reportedly triggered by a woman who tripped over a trunk and fell down as she was rushing on the foot bridge along with several others to board a train. That within moments over two-dozen people piled up over each other depicts the gravity of the situation.

With over two million people assembling at Mina, Saudi Arabia every year, and stampedes having sniffed out hundreds of lives (In 1994 " 270 lives, 1998 "119 lives; 2004 "251 lives and in 2006 "345 people) especially during the stone-throwing ceremony, at the 15-metre Jamarat Bridge, a new special police force formed last year has been empowered to monitor the flow of people as also prevent pilgrims and vendors from loitering in the streets leading to the Haj procession.

Are people responsible for accidents in public places ever punished? Many a time Inquiry Commissions are set up. But hardly their reports are made public. More recently, this June, seventeen police officers in Mexico were fired as they had blocked the only accessible exit at a nightclub where 12 people, including three policemen were crushed to death in a stampede. The mishap occurred after police raided a nightclub where some 1000 people had gathered to fete the end of the school year. It was suspected that alcohol was being vended to minors. However, an incriminating video footage, taken inside the nightclub, depicting youngsters screaming and beating on the ceiling of the stairway, trying to get out, apparently nailed the police.

With stampedes killing hundreds of people every year in the country and incapacitating an equal number of them, there is an imperative need to get mad and act. Surely it is time to seriously consider putting in place an effective management, control and monitoring mechanism to prevent avoidable tragedies. Be it any place of public gathering, a system of delineating clear entry and exit routes besides deployment of sufficient police and medical personnel is necessary. In monitoring crowd movement, trained volunteers can be roped in to assist the authorities in ensuring that the strength of people does not exceed a certain limit.