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8 February 1981


Crazy

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At the end,nobody was really found to be at fault.

All I can say is that it is a miracle this did not happen earlier or more often.

The Stadium had only 2 exits on that "petallo",(one on each corner with #7 been the one closest to the "electrico station) as opposed to the opposite petallo that had 5 (13-18).

The vast majority of the people (over 80%) at the side where the tragedy happened used the gate 7 to exit since it was so close to the train and all the bus lines on Leoforos Posidonos.

To add to that, the curvature of the stadium made it impossible to see what was going on in front of you unless you were within 20-30 feet from the stairs leading down and even then, you could not see the people down the two flight of stairs leading to the exit.

To make it even worse after you went down about 10 steps or so there was a platyskalo about 10 feet wide and then another set of stairs that was 1/2 the width of the stairs above ,so that people at that point had to push hard to the right so as to funnel through to the narrower lower staircase.

It got even worse when you finally hit ground level as at that point you had to take a hard 90 degree left turn and finally exit.

If you did not manage to turn in time you were pretty much halkomania on the wall in front of you.

Well you would think that you were home free at that point right?

Hell no!

The size of the area where you had to take the hard 90 degree turn was about 12 x 20 and the sliding exit door ( which I never so closed) had 3 turnstiles blocking the way.

One was full length and permanently installed ( thus narrowing the area even more) and the other two were removable and about waist high ( they were supposed to be installed during fan entry,and lifted up and set out of the way 15 min before the game was over to facilitate the fans exit.

I can tell you from personal experience that after almost every derby or important game from the early to the late 70's the two removable turnstiles were not been removed,since the two stadium employees assigned to that gate were to busy watching the game from the upstairs diazoma .

We saw them there all the time after the games started.

It was just a matter of time.

Someone was going to be killed it was just a question of who.

It was a miracle it went this long( early 80s) without serious injuries or worse.

I have seen people getting banged up pretty bad going down those stairs and if you fell or stumbled going down when the way was still blocked by the turnstiles you were going to take a bunch of people with you for the ride.

Nothing you could do.

There was wall to wall people behind you pushing forward.

The design was bad and the employees "itan ellines".

Ti ixes mana mou , ti eixa panda.

I will always mourn my buddies ,as we all new each other at least "fatsika".

God bless their souls.

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I was shocked to hear this but not surprised. I had attended several games before that in various facilities and I could see that most had death traps. As a very young person didn't fully appreciate the danger, but a few times I had experienced being stuck and the crowd pushing against me.... NOT a pleasant thing. Horrible.

What a senseless death for those palikaria.... But, you know, there are too many savages among the "fans" who hate those who wear different colors so much to hurt them.... Because when you carry a club and you swing it against someone else, or you stab them.... it's like wanting to kill them.

Anyway, hopefully not only I don't want to see more deaths, but no injuries either.

Cause sometimes you can't correct a wrong.....

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  • 12 years later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/9/2008 at 9:54 AM, THYRA13 said:

All I can say is that it is a miracle this did not happen earlier or more often.

The Stadium had only 2 exits on that "petallo",(one on each corner with #7 been the one closest to the "electrico station) as opposed to the opposite petallo that had 5 (13-18).

Bleak picture of Karaiskaki before the renovation. Olympiakos ended up moving out in 1984, returned from 1989-1997, and then the big renovation that was completed in 2004, after which Olympiakos has moved back in permanently. 

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