Concrete barriers fail to stop crowd surge

MANILA, Philippines - Black Nazarene devotees reportedly jumped over concrete barriers placed around the parade grounds of the Quirino Grandstand for yesterday’s procession and the visit of Pope Francis next week.

Quiapo Church rector Monsignor Jose Clemente Ignacio Jr. said there is a need to reassess the strength of the concrete barriers for the papal visit.

Ignacio recounted that he was at the Quirino Grandstand with Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle when he was informed that some devotees had jumped over the barriers to get closer to the image of the Black Nazarene at the grandstand.

“Cardinal Tagle and I were talking when we were told that people were jumping over the concrete barriers. We should inform the Papal Visit Committee about this,” Ignacio said.

Because of the incident, the Joint Task Group Papal Visit is deploying additional ground security personnel to act as buffer force and human shields in all 40 areas where Pope Francis will be having an engagement during his visit.

“In yesterday’s procession, we observed that there’s not enough crowd control personnel to address possible human surge,” said a senior security official privy to the security preparations for the papal visit.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines has decided to deploy 17,000 troops while the Philippine National Police will send 25,000 policemen to secure the pope and maintain order during his visit.

National Capital Region Police Office chief Director Carmelo Valmoria said the procession of the Black Nazarene served as a “warm up” of the security personnel for the papal visit.

“It would help us determine the lapses in our security preparations for us to immediately plug them to make it 1,000 percent foolproof,” he added.

He expects that the estimated one million crowd that showed up in the Black Nazarene procession yesterday would be “dwarfed” by the crowd of the papal visit.

“The two events are religious in nature, but we expect the crowd during the visit of Pope Francis to be six or ten times larger,” Valmoria said. With Non Alquitran, Jaime Laude