Scream. Suffocating. Panicked. unconscious.
Audiences at the highly anticipated Houston Music Festival on Friday night said they were shocked to see how the incident turned into a chaos that resulted in at least eight deaths.
Rapper Travis Scott was the headliner of the sold-out Astroworld music festival in NRG Park, with an estimated 50,000 people attending.
Here, some of them describe the confusion they are still trying to understand.
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Ariel Little of New York and her husband were in a major viewpoint among the crowd, only a short minute before she started struggling.
After Travis Scott’s Astroworld concert killed 8 people, Houston officials sought answers
While trying to escape the increasingly crowded venue, the couple realized how dangerous it became.
Little’s voice trembled with excitement, and she described how small she felt when she was beaten by a crowd.
“My chest is sore from people pushing and squeezing—actually squeezing—my chest and lungs. All I can remember is screaming for him.’I get out! I have to Get out! People didn’t move,” Little said. “They think it’s a joke, but it’s actually like people are dead.”
Her husband Sean quickly surveyed the scene, looking for a way out.
“There are a lot of people in my department that are a bit like screaming and panic attacks because it feels like you are under the elevator and the elevator is rushing towards you, and you can’t do anything about it,” said Sean Little. “No one was moving in my department at the time because I think everyone was shocked by everyone’s madness and panic. People’s eyes were full of fear.”
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Madeline Eskins (Madeline Eskins) is an intensive care unit nurse. She said she was one of the people attending the music festival. She passed out because the crowd was getting closer to the stage. She was taken to a slightly less crowded place for medical treatment, where she woke up.
Eskins, a 23-year-old from Houston, said that she then saw someone nearby who needed medical help, and she told them that she was a nurse. Eskins said that when a security guard overheard her voice, he asked her if she could start helping others.
“There are three people on the ground undergoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. This is the most chaotic chaos I have ever seen in my life,” Eskins said.
Eskins said she tried to instruct medical staff and volunteers on how to use the defibrillator. She also helped check the pulse and performed CPR compressions on several people.
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“When the main performer appeared _like Travis_, people felt very nervous because they just wanted to see him,” Sal Salinas said. “It’s like you are suffocating there. If you don’t stand on the side or anything else, you will suffocate.”
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Niaara Goods, a 28-year-old from New York, said that as the timer was pressed to the start of the performance, the crowd surged.
“When he jumped onto the stage, it was like a wave of energy took over everything and everything became chaotic. Suddenly, your ribs were crushed. There are human arms on your neck. You tried to breathe, but you couldn’t,” Goodes said he went to Texas to meet friends and celebrate his birthday.
She said that she and her friends, one of them was punched in the head and chin and soon separated, but both escaped. Goods said she wanted to go out so much that she bit a man on the shoulder to make him move.
“Some people are laughing at us-people who are screaming about going out. Because they think it’s funny. They don’t realize it’s terrorist activity,” she said.
Later, after arriving at a safe place, she saw the injured person sitting on a gurney or wheelchair rushing to a safe place.
“This is really the scariest night of my life. I really thought I was going to die to get out. That’s not the price you paid,” she said.
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Gary Gaston, 52, in Houston, said he went to the concert with his ex-wife, their 14-year-old son and teenage friends.
After only listening to a few songs by Scott, they felt threatened, so they decided to leave and meet at the medical tent outside. When Gaston and his ex-wife arrived shortly after 10 p.m., he said they saw the medical staff begin to use gurneys to bring at least eight people into the tent, and most of them seemed unresponsive.
“It’s surreal because you see these people being pulled out of these gurneys, people running into medical tents, but the music continues,” Gaston said. “People on the field don’t know.”
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Gavyn Flores said that people have been trying to rush into places where there is no empty space, while others are trying to walk towards the roadblock to jump to safety.
Flores said: “They can’t get there because someone likes to stop them, so they have to deal with it as if they can’t quit the show.” “They’re like chanting’Stop the show!’ There is a person behind it. Resuscitation. Many people are receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which is ridiculous.”
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Julian Ponce said there were signs of injury, but he didn’t realize that someone had died until he returned home.
“It’s kind of exciting, like we keep hearing people say,’Stop the show. Stop the show,’ but we don’t know what happened. We heard that someone was bleeding. We heard a lot of things, but we’re not so sure, “Ponce said. “I don’t even know how it feels. It’s simply breathtaking.”
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Associated Press reporter Acacia Coronado is from Austin, Texas.
© 2021 Canadian Press
