By Hailey Bayne ~ Guest Writer
A chaotic crowd surge at the Houston music festival on Friday resulted in approximately 300 fans being injured, as well as 10 who died ranging in age from 9 to 27 years old.
Astroworld is a sold-out, two-day event hosted by rapper Travis Scott.
The event that took place in National Responsibility Group (NRG) Park had an estimated 50,000 people in attendance – approximately 25% of the maximum capacity for the arena.
Scott has recently announced that he will be covering all funeral costs for those who lost their lives at the concert, as well as offering free therapy for anyone who was affected by the events that took place.
A crowd surge, an event where the crowd starts getting shoved forward, is currently the primary cause for the injuries and deaths.
University of Lynchburg senior Destiny Todd has been in a crowd surge at a different concert in the past. “This one concert that I went to was both standing and general admission (seating). The first 30 minutes of the concert I was standing, but those crowd surges made me feel very uncomfortable and made my anxiety so high that I had a panic attack and had to leave the standing area.”
However, some people are starting to think that the incident could have been avoided had they been more prepared for the atmosphere of the crowd.
It was released that the venue was only at 25% capacity, so density did not appear to be an issue. Social media has been buzzing with conspiracies, but one consistency in these theories is that the venue was unprepared and understaffed.
“I actually saw a news article where people were saying there weren’t enough medical resources for the people when they realized (what was going on),” stated Terra Funk. “The fact they only had one AED is so ridiculous, that definitely is cutting corners for sure in terms of what’s supposed to be there … When you have people surging or moshing you should have medical personnel there anyways because there is a danger associated with it, and you’re not gonna stop people from doing it, so you might as well just have people there who will intervene when they need to.”
Many are outraged at Scott’s handling of the situation after being accused of not stopping the show after bodies began being pulled from the crowd.
Videos have gone viral on social media depicting concertgoers begging the camera crew to stop the show, the crowd chanting, “stop the show,” and videos that appear to show Scott glancing at and ignoring an injured fan.
Destiny Todd stated, “I feel like at some point people were just doing their job, especially in an environment like that I .. can see the cameraman just thinking that it was just some people just f*****g around. Like, didn’t even realize it with the environment he was in.”
