700 People Dead at Mecca

Mecca Stampede Kills Over 700 http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-least-220-killed-in-mecca-stampede-1443085905

During one of the holiest events for muslims over 700 people were killed by a stampede with hundreds more left injured. Mecca is a holy place that able bodied Muslims are required to journey to at leaste once during their lifetimes. This years pilgrimage has turrned into a deadly mess but the alarming part is this is not the first time nor the deadliest. Back in 1997 over 1400 people were killed and in 2006 another 300 were left dead. This is alarming news for a handful of reasons. For starters the fact that this is not the first problem is huge, Stampedes and other safety aspects for this trip have been the casue of all of these deaths troubling. Espically when considering the population, this year over 2 million Muslims were apart of this pilgramage and it is not about to get smaller anytime soon. Statisically the number of people going on a journey like this will continue. The sheer number of people pose a huge problem; where to house them? How to provide safety and sercurity for that manuy people? Food? Sanitation? And that would have to be some of the simpler problems.

At this point officals are not positive what casued the stampede. This year they implemented a new time limit system in hope to maintain the peace and keep things moving along smoothly, clearly that was not the case. The time limits were never enforced so some people stuck around too long while other were quick. This prevented any sort of regulation and status quo. Officials are not sure what to do in future years to prevent other disasters such as this one from happening again. It was interesting read that back in 2011 1.3 billion dollars were spents to help expand and prevent such a thing but already it has proved to be insufficient.

Alex Benson