- Astroworld’s operating plan An industry expert told Insider that an explanation of the surge in crowds should be included.
- After a large crowd flocked to the main stage, 9 people were killed at the festival last week.
- An industry expert said that the safety plan documents for the event appeared to be “off-the-shelf” and “vague.”
- More stories Go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival’s event operations plan says event staff should Calling the dead concert audience “The Smurfs” should have Including plans for what to do in crowded situations, An industry expert told Insider.
After more than 50,000 people flocked to the Houston stage last week, nine people were killed at the festival. Hundreds of people were trampled and injured in the rush, including Texas A&M Students who did not show brain activity Since the incident and A 9-year-old life supporter.
Joseph Bogdan, an associate professor in the Department of Music and Business at Columbia College Chicago, said that for events like Astroworld that “have a large number of ordinary people”, the safety plan usually includes plans for what to do in the event of a surge in crowds, and Unusually, there are no plans for this festival.
“I think this is an’off the shelf’ plan,” Bogdan told Insider. “I’m speculating here, but I would say maybe 80% or 90%, they didn’t even think about and read themselves.”
56-page planning document Written by Scoremore, a Texas-based holiday production company, it does not include instructions on what to do in crowded situations. Scoremore did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Bogdan said that the danger of a surge in crowds “we already know that this industry has been around for 40 or 50 years, and it’s happening all the time” because “artists think it’s very difficult to see people operating like rotating razors on stage. cool.”
Kevin Lyman, a professor of practice at the University of Southern California and the founder of Vans Warped Tour, said that in general, it is standard to make a plan to stop the concert in an emergency. This usually involves a person directly contacting the stage artist.
Lehman said: “It all comes down to communicating with people respected by the artist in order to be able to find him as soon as possible, because this is the only way to really calm this kind of thing,” Lehman said, adding that he “must stop. About 100 performances” in his life.
Lehman said the best way to prevent a surge in crowds is to set up tiered fences throughout the audience to divide them into smaller groups.
Bogdan said that most large-scale general admission activities will also set up fenced “passages” among the crowd to allow emergency rescuers to pass through. According to the operational plan, Astroworld does not.
Bogdan said that he thought it was possible that the people who organized the concert pushed forward the operational plan without fully understanding it because the city of Houston is pressing them to provide a safety plan for the event, so “they found something And handed it over to them. You can say so without really paying attention to it in advance.”
According to Bogdan, the event organizers who make emergency plans check the documents of previous events and “always” make plans based on these documents.
Bogdan also said that the plan said that the concert should continue when facing a “bomb or terrorist threat” as long as it is not near the audience, which is unusual.
“This is interesting to me because you have to define what is closest to the event,” Bogdan told Insider.
Overall, the plan is very vague, Bogdan said, noting that the vagueness of the description of the bomb threat in the document is extremely vague for large-scale events.
“It left too many unanswered questions and too many opportunities for different interpretations of the plan’s needs,” Bogdan told Insider.
Bogdan said that it is normal to include “unforgettable code words” in the operational plan, and event staff can use these words to refer to people who died during the concert. However, he said that the term “Smurfs” used in Astroworld’s operating plan is not standard.
“One of the problems is that, in hindsight, when there are eight “Smurfs” in the end, it seems a bit cold to use the term,” Bogdan said.
Lehman also stated that he “never heard of” discussing the deceased in cryptic terms at concerts. According to Lehman, the code word that indicates to the crew that they should switch to a private radio channel in an emergency is standard, but it is not normal for the deceased to have a code word.
