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Concert Safety And Lessons Learned From The Who's 'Cincinnati Tragedy'

the who cincinnati
Brian Horton
/
AP
A security guard and an unidentified man look at an area where several people were killed as they were caught in a surging crowd entering Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum for a Who concert on Dec. 3, 1979.

The night that 11 people died at The Who concert in 1979, Paul Wertheimer worked as Cincinnati's first public information officer and was tasked with updating the public on the events that were unfolding inside Riverfront Coliseum, now known as Heritage Bank Arena. 

The city of Cincinnati put Wertheimer on a safety task force to review what went wrong before The Who concert, which the band refers to as "the Cincinnati tragedy." He later went on to found Crowd Management Strategies in 1992, a consulting firm based in Los Angeles that looks at issues involving crowd control and safety.

Paul Wertheimer joins Cincinnati Edition to discuss the tragic events that transpired 40 years ago and how it helped shaped the safety of concertgoers for decades to come. 

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Michael Monks brings a broad range of experience to WVXU-FM as the host of Cincinnati Edition, Cincinnati Public Radio's weekday news and information talk show.