: Screaming. Suffocating. Panicked. Unconscious.
The concertgoers at a highly anticipated Houston music festival Friday night say they were shocked to witness how the event brewed into pandemonium that left at least eight people dead.
Tuesday, November 09, 2021
‘I gotta get out’: Travis Scott concertgoers describe chaos at Houston show
National | Globalnews.ca
: Screaming. Suffocating. Panicked. Unconscious.
The concertgoers at a highly anticipated Houston music festival Friday night say they were shocked to witness how the event brewed into pandemonium that left at least eight people dead.
: Screaming. Suffocating. Panicked. Unconscious.
The concertgoers at a highly anticipated Houston music festival Friday night say they were shocked to witness how the event brewed into pandemonium that left at least eight people dead.
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I was horrified to hear about this event on Saturday morning. Everything I have read suggests that the organizers of this event are at fault and the way that audience flow and barriers were set up contributed to this tragedy. I wish there was more discussion about what kinds of audience flow prevents human crush events. I know that many people jumped the barriers to the VIP section earlier in the day and it is very possible the event was over capacity due to that, but I otherwise do not know what the proper precautions are for this and I think it is incredibly important to know. I was also shocked to find out how common it is for people to pass out at concerts. This concert was particularly deadly, but it is apparently very common for smaller surges to happen and for people to get overheated and pass out. Maybe I just did not know this because I have only been to a handful of concerts, but I think something that could really help with this is to have more signage and announcements about staying safe and hydrated as well as more industry knowledge about how to prevent human crush with proper barriers and security.
Concert safety is a huge, huge deal. People may not expect producers to think about this so fervently, but in most cases, they do. Major festivals know the massive probability of illness, injury, and death that come with a large entertainment event. Dehydration, drugs, mental health crises, and yes, overcrowding, pose horrific results if they are not properly prepared. It seems someone decided to overlook the potential for disaster when it came to Astroworld. The fact that eight people ended up dead, hundreds more injured, and that some of the victims were children is disgusting and shameful. And horribly sad. The blame is wholly on the festival producers, as well as Travis Scott, for not preparing to encounter medical issues and for not stopping the concert when it was clear that emergency services needed it to end. The EMTs involved who did their best to save people should be lauded, and I hope they are able to avoid or recover from any survivor’s guilt. I hope the victim’s families are properly apologized to and repaid for the loss of their loved one.
I was so shocked and saddened to hear about this tragic accident at the Travis Scott concert. I can only imagine being confined in such a crushing crowd that you cannot move and cannot breathe – I don’t have claustrophobia, but even just thinking about this is making my skin crawl, especially with the happenings of the concert. I have been to standing room only concerts before, but they were not this genre of music, and not for artists nearly as popular as Travis Scott. When I was at those concerts, while the crowd did get into the music and we all were bouncing up and down and having a good time, we were not converging toward the stage and everyone had room to move around, and more importantly, to breathe. I understand a crowd getting hyped for a performer who they like who has just entered the stage, but I don’t understand why everyone tries to converge towards the stage. Yeah, you may get five or ten feet closer to the stage, but the likelihood of anything more than that is slim to none. As seen here, the results of such actions can truly, and unfortunately, be fatal. My heart goes out to all the victims of this tragic accident who were just trying to have a good time at a concert.
Hearing about what happened at Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival this past week was terrifying; the death toll and amount of critically injured people coming from this event is really alarming. From the stories recounted in this article, it is clear that the feeling of being in the crowd at the festival was a suffocating nightmare. Many of the witnesses stated that there were many people who shouted for help or chanted for the show to stop, to no avail. Since this incident, I’ve seen a lot of videos on social media heavily criticizing Travis Scott’s lack of awareness and action during the festival. A lot of these people often bring up video evidence of another musical artist pausing their performances after seeing an audience member in need of help, which just goes to show that it was very possible for the concert to stop and potentially prevent some of the injuries and deaths that took place. The primary factor however seems to be the concerning lack of safe and proper structure for the festival, which was the responsibility of the event organizers.
This is one of many in a long line of festival disasters that we have been hearing about in the last couple of years. There was the infamous Fyre Festival, and one after that in a similar situation, whose name I cannot remember, and now this, Travis Scott's Astroworld. Earlier this week, I saw a video taken by a concertgoer of a girl climbing onto the filming platform to alert one of the cameramen that someone was literally dying in the crowd, screaming for them to halt the concert, but her cries for help fell upon deaf ears. The cameramen ignored her concerns and I think tried to usher her away. I've also seen people defending Travis Scott, which I wholly disagree with. He did nothing to stop the concert as he saw the chaos in the crowd and has (I've yet to check this myself) encouraged hysterical behavior at his concerts in the past. I hope he and the concert venue managers are held responsible for this tragedy.
When I plan on attending any form of art presentation, I imagine a safe space where a group of people gather to share a love for whatever art form they are all gathering to see. Hearing about this deadly incident, that fantasy was immediately gone. There is not simply one person responsible for this, but different teams of people. Although I’m sure many peoples first thought was that it was the performer’s fault for not stopping (which partly it is because the situation intensified as the performer continued), but there are so many teams that were responsible for aspects of the set up that caused this incident to happen in the first place. I am not too familiar with a concert setting, but I know there were people who must have been responsible for the way the stage lined up with the audience members and other preventative planning and designing that could have taken place especially because this venue has had previous instances similar to this one.
I’ve seen a lot of different things about the astroworld concert tragedy and it’s absolutely horrifying. I was already afraid of concerts because of large crowds, and this just amplified the worst parts of it. There are so many elements to it that were not well thought out and it’s obvious that the risks taken were not worth it. I understand that at concerts and events that large, it’s likely that many a person or two could get hurt, but there are precautions in place to deal with those situations before they turn into mass casualty events. Even in mosh pits, there is an etiquette to stop and pick people up if you see someone go down. It is truly unacceptable that eight people died at the event and many more injured, likely more will die from complications due to injuries. There were not enough paramedics on scene, there was not enough security to control the crowd, and people selfish enough not to make way for medical vehicles trying to save people. Travis Scott is also to blame since he has an observed pattern of behavior inciting violence and chaos in crowds, as well as not stopping the concert despite so many people screaming for help. I hope the families of the victims get some kind of justice and maybe the lawsuits will create tighter venue laws.
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