Report of Site Inspection: An inspection of The Charles E. Smith Center.
Address: 600 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC
General Introduction: The Charles E. Smith Center is located in the George Washington University, and has served as the home of the GWU department of athletics and recreation for more than 30 years. It was founded in 1821, room for 4338 seats, and the enrollment of Smith Center is 24,531 and the NCAA Division 1 is its affiliation. The purpose of the smith center is hold variety of GW’s 27 intercollegiate varsity sports. In there, there are several different venues processing different competitions or practices, like women’s and man’s basketball, volleyball and gymnastics. Other than holding sports events, the Smith Center also hosts some major events, like freshman convocation, concerts, commencement ceremonies and fall career and internship fair. Moreover, the Smith Center is also available to hold smaller scale events in two clubrooms: the colonials club and champions club. It is convenient to get the Smith Center, no matter take metro or drive a car by yourself. The Foggy Bottom metro station is so closing to the Smith Center that only take 5 minutes walk to get there.
Smith Center provides three different parking areas, van parking, bus parking and visitor parking, but visitors should be attention about there is no parking directly adjacent to the Smith Center, and it highly recommends that bus drivers park the bus in the designated bus spots located at Virginia Ave and Constitution Ave NW (roughly seven blocks away). If visitors come to the Smith Center by their own cars, there are multiple visitor parking spaces located on GW campus except for street parking around the Smith Center, like SEAS garages (between 22nd and 23nd on H Street), Marvin Center (800 21 Street NW) and Elliott School (1957 E Street NW).
Another issue that most of visitors pay attention to is that lodging near the Smith Center, the Washington Marriott is definitely the best choice, just a few short blocks from the campus. In addition, like One Washington circle hotel, the George Washington University Inn and Doubletree Guest suites are also good recommendations. Furthermore, visitors do not worry about eating out, because there are so many different kinds of restaurants near the Smith Center that can fulfill different people’s tastes.
Entrance or Exit/ direction
Phenomenon: As you can see from the floor plan, there are two floors in the basketball stadium, four entrances on the second floor and two entrances on the first floor, and an elevator is located in the Northwest corner of the building. As I mentioned above, visitors have different choices to get there, by bus, metro or car.
Risk: The entrance on the first floor is only open for staffs or athletes, and all visitors should use other four entrances on the second floor. However, we know sometimes numerous people exit the stadium at the same moment after the game that could result in a long time waiting, and everyone want to go back home as soon as possible, so visitors maybe complain about that and then push others, which let some one get hurt. In addition, Smith Center does not provide a special exit or entrance for disabilities, even though an elevator is located in the corner of the building. Since large numbers of young people maybe are so excited or angry when they leave, especially after watching a ball game, so violently emotion maybe cause people push each other.
According to my research, 96 people injured in a stampede in Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield England in 1989, which held an FA Cup semi final match was played between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. To make matters worse, many arriving fans had been delayed by traffic congestion, and finally 21,000 fans seated in the stadium, even though which could only hold 14,600 people. Because people were not allowed to enter in after match started, and the fans outside could hear the cheering from inside after the match kicked off. As a result, over 5,000 fans trying to push their way through the turnstiles, and police opened more gates to allow the crowd to enter, since they realized a crush was imminent. However, that led a large numbers of people rush into the stadium through a narrow tunnel and into the two already overcrowded central pens. Generally, some police stationed inside the stadium should close the gates to stop the rush, but they did not do that, and some fans started to clamber over the fence to escape the crush. Eventually the fence collapsed and a total of 96 fans died and 766 were injured, which is one of the worst stadium disasters.
When crowds are moving, there should be no more than two to four people per square meter to prevent injury, so some people fall down easily. No one expect something happened like that, but if a crush begin, event organizers or polices should preserve enough space anywhere the crowd may flow.
Infrastructure
Phenomenon: In the Smith Center, restrooms are located on the third floor in both the Northwest and Southwest corners of the Arena, including two family restrooms located on the Arena level in the concessions concourse.
Risk: As we know, comparing to men, women always use restroom much longer. Because all restrooms are located on the third floor, but visitors are all sit on the first or second floor. So it is not very convenient to get there quickly, because all fans do not want to miss any minute during the match. Moreover, most of people prefer to go to restroom at half time, which led they rush into restroom at the same time, so that is a problem.
Attention
Phenomenon: Although smoking and any tobacco use are prohibited in the Smith Center, and weapons or projectiles also are not allowed to bring in, but some people also violate the rules. In addition, Smith Center also prohibit visitors bringing glass, metal or hard plastic containers of any size, which is helpful for agitated fans, and that also protect other visitors, athletes or performers.
Risk: Because we cannot avoid some people violate the rules, so security check is so important before visitors get into the venue, such as check their bags. However, staff has no ability to monitor everyone at any time, so maybe some people cannot help smoking, which would lead to a fire that is so horrible indoors. In 1985, around 52 people passed away because of a fire happened in the Bradford city football stadium, and most of them are children or elderly people, although smoking was prohibited in the stadium. The reason of the fire is that a cigarette stubbed out in a polystyrene cup that let rubbish underneath the wooden stand fuelled. In conclusion, no matter whether staffs are already checked all visitors’ bag before enter the stadium, some fire control facilities, fire alert and fire control passageway are necessary to install.