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A man cries as he prays for victims of a stampede in Shanghai, China, Friday, Jan. 2, 2015. Authorities were still investigating the cause of the stampede late Wednesday night, but street vendors, residents, taxi drivers and other witnesses say the city failed to prepare for the massive turnout. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)(The Associated Press)

Residents lay flowers for victims of a deadly stampede in Shanghai, China, Friday, Jan. 2, 2015. Authorities were still investigating the cause of the stampede late Wednesday night, but street vendors, residents, taxi drivers and other witnesses say the city failed to prepare for the massive turnout. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)(The Associated Press)

A man arrives to lay flowers for victims of a stampede in Shanghai, China, Friday, Jan. 2, 2015. Authorities were still investigating the cause of the stampede late Wednesday night, but street vendors, residents, taxi drivers and other witnesses say the city failed to prepare for the massive turnout. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)(The Associated Press)

SHANGHAI On New Year's Eve of 2013, Shanghai authorities sent about 6,000 city police officers and requested help from military police to manage a 300,000-strong crowd that filled the city's famed riverfront for the annual midnight light show. According to state media, police choked off access to an elevated viewing platform reachable through staircases and closed the nearest subway station to rein in the crowd.

On Wednesday night, just as many revelers showed up to ring in 2015, but the venue was guarded by only 700 police officers with no traffic control, state media reported. People were free to walk up and down the staircases, and the closest subway station was left open.

The city had already canceled the light show on the Bund, as the riverfront area is known, and apparently downgraded police deployment and crowd control measures. When the authorities became alarmed by the huge crowd, they called in another 500 police officers but it was too late.

Three dozen people ended up trampled or asphyxiated to death in a stampede at the bottom of a 17-step, 5-meter-wide (16-foot-wide) concrete staircase, shocking a city proud of its professional urban management and a country eager to show off its most cosmopolitan city.

While investigations continue into the New Year's Eve tragedy, eyewitness accounts and state media reports point to a sequence of miscalculations by city officials that helped create the out-of-control conditions leading to the stampede.

"You canceled the light show, but did you properly notify the public?" asked a father who lost his daughter in the stampede but declined to give his name for fear of offending the authorities. "Once people started to show up in the hundreds of thousands, did you have backup measures to ensure safety? What were you doing during the time the crowds were growing?"

"The government has been seriously derelict of its duties," he said sternly.

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Witnesses, state media: Sequence of errors led to Shanghai stampede that killed 36