Placeholder while loading article actions
BOGOTA, Colombia – Several levels of crowded stays collapsed in a makeshift bullring during a bullfight in central Colombia on Sunday, there are four left dead people and hundreds injured, numbers that could rise in the next few hours, as terrified spectators were trapped among the rubble.
The tragedy took place in El Espinal, a small town located about 95 kilometers southwest of Bogota.
Images of the sinking went viral quickly on social media. Dozens of people were mocked and playing with an injured bull during a popular event known as corraleja. Suddenly, three levels of bleachers yielded, trapping hundreds of men, women and children underneath. As people shouted, some jumped out of their seats and hurried to help, trying to lift wood and other debris aside.
Héctor Ortiz, 64, could not believe the scene. A woman next to him shouted, “This balcony is about to fall!” i he saw eight sections begin to sink one after the other, like a domino.
“After the first balcony collapsed, he pulled the next one, and so on,” Ortiz told The Washington Post. “It was the gate through which the bulls passed that stopped the collapse. Otherwise, we would be talking about a much bigger tragedy.”
The last bullfight? Mexico City weighs a ban.
Every year, the mayor’s office and the Espinal’s private festivities organize events to celebrate the feast of Sant Pere on 29 June. The bullring stands for a show that arose on the Caribbean coast when Colombia was a Spanish colony. Unlike traditional Spanish bullfighting, bulls are not usually killed in a corral, and spectators are invited to run with the animal still in the ring.
In towns such as L’Espinal, the event has evolved to become a popular spectacle.
Its bullring was built of bamboo gadua, and the multiple levels were full of spectators. “A Gadua bamboo structure is quite unstable,” said Luis Fernando Velez, head of the regional civil protection agency. “Organizers should have anticipated that this could happen.”
Vélez said 50 civil protection volunteers were working to transport the most seriously injured of the 322 injured spectators from the bullring to the town’s only hospital. Firefighters and police also helped. The local health system sent a “red alert” to the community.
On Twitter, Colombian President Iván Duque expressed concern over the victims and called for a speedy investigation.
Among the dead was a 14-month-old baby. More than two dozen children were injured, and others were missing, after being next to their parents in the bullring when the structure collapsed, Velez said. The eight stands involved housed about 800 people, according to Mayor Juan Carlos Tamayo Salas.
A full funeral, a bullfight and a message to the Kenyan police: “The Crown cannot stop culture”
The incident was reminiscent of a resemblance corrals disaster in the Caribbean city of Sincelejo. More than 500 people died and more than 2,000 were injured in 1980 when makeshift stands collapsed.
“This had happened before in Sincelejo,” tweeted President-elect Gustavo Petro, who will take office in August. “I ask local authorities to refrain from allowing more shows with the death of people or animals.”
Petro provoked outrage as mayor of Bogota when he banned bullfighting. Sunday seemed ready to fight the same battle nationally.
After witnessing the disaster on Sunday, Ortiz said: “I think this is the end of the corralejas in L’Espinal. ”