We are having a societal breakdown:
At least eight people have died and 17 others, including a 10-year-old child, have been transported to the hospital after being trampled at a panic-fueled stampede Saturday night in Houston, Texas. The crush happened during the opening-night set of Astroworld Festival founder Travis Scott, whose livestream was halted as the panic ensued. More than 300 of the 50,000 people in attendance were reportedly treated at a field hospital on the grounds that day.Police say at least 11 of those hospitalized suffered cardiac arrest after trying to escape a yet unknown source of panic during Scott’s set, which featured a special appearance from Drake. “We had scores of individuals that were injured,” Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña told reporters early Saturday morning. He said the mass casualty incident happened at around 9:15 p.m. local time when the crowd began to “compress toward the front of the stage,” according to CNN. “People began to fall out, become unconscious and it created additional panic,” he added.
Chief Lt. Larry Satterwhite, who was working near the stage, described the scene to reporters. “It seems like it happened with just over the course of a few minutes. Suddenly we had several people down on the ground experiencing some type of cardiac arrest or some type of medical episode. We immediately started doing CPR.”
He said medical staff onsite were so overwhelmed they had to ask people in the crowd to administer CPR to revive injured concertgoers.
Earlier in the day Friday at around 2 p.m. local time, hundreds of eager and rowdy concertgoers had stampeded the entrance of the Astroworld Festival, just outside of NRG Park, knocking over fences and metal detectors ,and appearing to overwhelm understaffed security teams guarding the perimeter. No major injuries were reported from the rush.
This sounds like a living hell:
In a lengthy Instagram post, an attendee named Seanna said people were packed in so tightly that they struggled to breathe as soon as Scott’s performance began.
“Within the first 30 seconds of the first song, people began to drown — in other people… The rush of people became tighter and tighter. Breathing became something only a few were capable of. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick hot air.”
She said her friend began to “gasp for breath” and tried to leave but there was nowhere to go. “The shoving got harder and harder… People began to choke one another as the mass swayed. It became more and more violent. We began to scream for help.”
She said scores of people around her began screaming as they struggled to breathe, and some people collapsed. “We begged security to help us, for the performer to see us and know something was wrong. None of that came. We continued to drown… Once one [person] fell, a hole opened in the ground. It was like watching a Jenga Tower topple. Person after person were sucked down.”
She said more people were pushed or sucked into the pile of people and trampled on. Others were shrieking and had “terror in their eyes.” She managed to get to a filming platform to alert a cameraman that people were dying but he “told me to get off the platform, and continued filming.”
This isn’t the first time there has been a crush like this at a concert. When if happened back in the 1970s at a Who concert, they changed the rules and outlawed Festival seating. I don’t know when they started to allow it again but this was probably the inevitable result.
I don’t recall this kind of thing happening in that earlier incident, however:
Outrageous.