TV host to be quizzed over deadly stampede

A POPULAR TV host was questioned by the authorities yesterday following a stampede that killed at least 74 people and injured more than 500 others at a suburban Manila stadium where a massive crowd turned up to watch a popular TV game show.

Willie Revillame, host of the Wowowee programme, will appear before a government fact-finding panel along with executives of the television network which produces the show, and security officers and guards, presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered a rapid investigation into the stampede on Saturday at the Philsports Arena in suburban Pasig city where an unruly crowd surged toward a gate in a frenzy to get raffle tickets and seats to the show.

Pasig mayor Vicente Eusebio said about 30,000 mostly impoverished people, some from faraway provinces who had camped out for days outside the stadium, turned up to watch the show, which raffles off huge cash prizes.

The melee erupted as the crowd pushed and surged toward the gates, thinking they were open, trampling those in front, witnesses said. Survivors said some people became rowdy when they could not enter.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said 74 people were killed including a person who died of massive bleeding more than 12 hours after the stampede and another 514 were injured.

Most of the injured had been sent home, but more than a dozen remained hospitalised with serious injuries such as fractures, severe cuts and contusions, and mental shock, he said.

Yesterday, passers by laid flowers and lit candles on the road where a day earlier corpses had lain side-by-side amid a litter of personal debris. Some onlookers silently prayed as janitors hosed down the area with water.

Mr Duque urged authorities to draw lessons from the tragedy and establish rules to effectively manage similar crowd-drawing shows in the future.

"We had a situation where people were already upset because they were tired, lacked food and exposed to pollution while encamped on sidewalks," he said.

"Many of those who died were elderly women who were already weak because they've been waiting in line for three days."

The tragedy gripped the country because many of the dead had apparently sought quick relief from poverty by aspiring to win cash prizes and goodies in the show.

Wowowee is hugely popular in the Philippines. Entry is free, but for yesterday's first anniversary show only the first 300 were eligible to play games in which they might win up to one million pesos (€15,300) in cash or a fully furnished house.