What was supposed to be a moment of national pride for the Indian Air Force (IAF) turned into a nightmare at Marina Beach in Chennai. A crowd of 1.2 million people rushed to the exits, killing five and requiring many to be hospitalized. The Air Show on October 6 was held to mark the 92nd anniversary of the IAF and was the first such event in Chennai in over 20 years. What was intended to be a military aviation spectacle ended in chaos as the crowds were so large that both the organizers and local authorities were overwhelmed. Late Sunday evening, five people were confirmed dead and 40 were hospitalized, a senior police official said. “More than 150 people across the city are receiving first aid for dehydration and stress. One death was reported on the beach and another near Napier Bridge. The other victims were sent home. He’s on his way somewhere else,” said the police officer: The rush of people to a certain place.

The event was widely promoted by both IAFs and attracted more than 1.2 million spectators to the sprawling Marina Beach. At 7 a.m., people gathered along the two-kilometer coastline to secure viewing spots for the air show, which runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Families, children and the elderly traveled by train, subway, bus and thousands of four- and two-wheelers to witness the unprecedented spectacle that entered the Limca record books. Presence and Absence However, when the event ended at 1 p.m., the entire audience left the stage together. Traffic authorities were unprepared for the mass exodus and traffic jams soon formed around Marina Beach, bringing traffic to a standstill for more than an hour. Witnesses reported panic among participants who realized they were trapped. Abbasli, who attended the program until the end, said: "I was so suffocated that I couldn't move at all." Karthikeyan, 34, who had come with his family, died of a heart attack near Napier Bridge. As temperatures rose to 36 degrees Celsius and water or medical attention was not readily available, many of the show's attendees dehydrated and fainted, according to those in attendance.

The dead included Srinivasan, 48, who fell to his death in a parking lot near Santhome; John Babu, 56, a former employee of Omanthurar Hospital, died while trying to retrieve a scooter from the hospital's parking lot; And Dinesh lay unconscious on the shore. All of the deaths were not due to overcrowding, but to mismanagement that left people in overcrowded shelters for too long. Although the provincial government expected a huge turnout (original estimates were around 10 million), the actual turnout exceeded even these expectations. The management, which took precautions to control the crowd, was not prepared for the scale of the event. Lack of adequate transport facilities added to the chaos as the services of Chennai Metro Rail Limited proved insufficient to transport the large number of participants. Not only are people thronging the beach at railway stations like Velachery and Government Estate, pictures and videos of the unprecedented rush at these local stations are going viral on social media. Next to the beach is the Chepauk Stadium, which usually holds 40,000 people for cricket matches. However, the beach received more than 12,000 visitors and was not so well planned and monitored.