On Saturday, hours after at least eight people were killed in the chaos, witnesses said that the Houston Music Festival crowd flocked to the stage during a performance by rapper Travis Scott, squeezing fans together tightly. So that they can’t breathe or move their arms.
The chaos unfolded at Astroworld at NRG Park Stadium on Friday night, a two-day event that sold out. An estimated 50,000 people participated. It is not yet clear what prompted the crowd movement.
Houston Fire Department Chief Samuel Pena said the crowd “started to squeeze toward the front of the stage”, causing panic and causing some injuries. Then “people started to fall and lose consciousness, which caused additional panic.”
Pena said 17 people were taken to the hospital, 11 of them suffered cardiac arrest and “dozens” were injured.
Witnesses reported that they pushed and shoved many times during Scott’s performance before the show.
Nick Johnson, a high school student in Friendswood, a Houston suburb, who attended the concert with his friends, said that when Scott stepped onto the stage, the crowd seemed to rush to the front, trying to get closer to the stage.
“It’s getting worse and worse. Everyone can’t breathe like you,” said Johnson, standing in the middle of the crowd near the front of the stage.
Johnson said that fans began to squeeze each other and people began to scream. He said that it felt like 100 degrees in the crowd, too thick for him and his friends to move.
“Everyone is fainting by your side, everyone is trying to help each other. But you just can’t move. You can’t do anything. You can’t even raise your arms,” Johnson said.
Johnson said that Scott seemed to realize that something was happening in the crowd, but he might not understand the seriousness of the situation.
In the video posted to social media, it can be seen that Scott stopped the concert and asked someone in the audience for help: “Safe, someone will help soon.”
In a tweet posted on Saturday, Scott said he was “very shocked by what happened last night.” He pledged to “work with the Houston community to heal and support families in need.”
Standing in front of the crowd, Larry Satterwhite, the executive assistant director of the Houston Police Department, said the surge “had happened suddenly.”
“Suddenly, several of us fell to the ground and experienced some type of cardiac arrest or some type of medical event,” Sutterwhite said. “So we immediately started cardiopulmonary resuscitation and immediately transferred personnel.”
30 people attending the Veld Music Festival concert were taken to the hospital for overdose: Toronto medical staff
Sutterwhite said that he soon met with the promoters and they agreed to end the event “for public safety.”
Amy Harris, a freelance photographer for the Associated Press, described the “aggressive” crowd atmosphere throughout the day because of the way fans behaved-pushing stage barriers and prohibited VIPs and admission areas.
“This is definitely the most chaotic holiday environment I have ever experienced,” Harris said. “I feel upset all day.”
She was trapped behind a roadblock while filming the performer Don Toliver because about 300 fans poured into the area. They ended up hiding behind a safe roadblock with her.
Harris said that she encountered similar scenes at different stages of the main performance. She left the media pit because she sang three songs indiscriminately, causing people to be dragged across safe roadblocks for medical treatment.
Once, Gerardo Abad-Garcia was so tightly pressed in the crowd that his arms could not be removed from his chest. In Toliver’s performance before Scott appeared, he began to worry about his safety.
“I can’t breathe. I’m compressed,” he said. A security guard helped him and others climb over the fence and leave.
He described the crowd during Scott’s filming as “forward and backward” waves.
Some people lost their shoes, and clothes, water bottles and other garbage were scattered on the ground. He said that some people tried to help those who fainted on the ground, while other audiences seemed to ignore them and continued to watch the show.
After Scott’s concert, Abad-Garcia saw medical staff perform CPR on a person who appeared to be unconscious because the person was taken away by a golf cart.
Houston Police Chief Troy Fenner urged people not to draw conclusions about the reasons for the surge.
“I think it is very important that none of us speculate. No one knows all the answers tonight,” Fenner said.
The authorities did not immediately know the cause of death, nor did they immediately determine the identity of the deceased. A medical examiner plans to investigate.
Scott is one of the hottest young stars in the music industry. He founded the Space World Music Festival in 2018, and it will be held at the old site of Six Flags Space World every year, except in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The 29-year-old Houston native has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards. He and Kylie Jenner have a 3-year-old daughter, and Kylie Jenner announced in September that she was pregnant with their second child.
Drake was with Scott on the stage of the concert (live broadcast by Apple Music) and posted the photos to Instagram after the show.
Officials set up a reunion center in a hotel to provide services to family members who were unable to contact relatives during the event. Harris County’s highest elected official, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, said that the authorities tried to connect the family with fans who were taken to the hospital and that “some people are as young as 10”.
These deaths are reminiscent of a concert held by The Who in 1979. When thousands of fans tried to enter the Cincinnati Riverside Stadium, 11 people were killed and about 22 others were injured.
© 2021 Canadian Press
