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'It was like watching a Jenga tower topple':
At least 8 dead at Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival



Joey Guerra
St. John Barned-Smith
Staff writers
Nov. 6, 2021
Updated: Nov. 6, 2021 1:42 p.m.




Travis Scott performs at Astroworld Festival at
NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor




A drone image of the stage that Travis Scott was performing on during
his Astroworld event when the crowd surged and caused fatalities and
injuries the night before in Houston on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021.
Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer




A still pulled from KTRK video shows an aerial view at NRG Stadium
during the Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021.
Eight people are dead and dozens more injured after a sold-out crowd
surged during rapper Travis Scott's performance late Friday.
Courtesy/KTRK


At least eight people are dead and dozens more injured after a sold-out crowd
of roughly 50,000 surged during rapper Travis Scott's performance late Friday
at the Astroworld Festival outside NRG Park, overwhelming security forces and
resulting in one of the deadliest concerts in U.S. history.

As Scott's performance started shortly after 9 p.m., the chaotic crowd seemingly
swallowed everyone in it, Instagram user SeannaFaith wrote.

"The rush of people became tighter and tighter. .. Breathing became something
only a few were capable. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the
thick hot air," she wrote. "It was like watching a Jenga tower topple.
Person after person were sucked down.... You were at the mercy of the wave."

"We begged security to help us, for the performer to see us and know something
was wrong," she continued. "None of that came, we continued to drown."


Then, one person fell. And another.

"We had a mass casualty event here at Astroworld," Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.

Seventeen people were taken to the hospital, 11 of whom Peña described as being
in cardiac arrest. Eight are confirmed dead. Some of the victims might be children.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo called it an "extremely tragic night," as families
awaited word on whether their loved ones were safe. The Houston Police Department
is in the process of identifying victims at hospitals, and a reunification center was set
up at the Wyndham Houston Hotel at 8686 Kirby. People searching for loved ones
can also call 832-393-2991 or 832-393-2990.

“Our hearts are broken,” Hidalgo said. “People go to these events looking for a good time.
It’s not the kind of event where you expect to find out about fatalities.”

Festival organizers offered condolences just before 6 a.m. Saturday across their
social media accounts.

"Our hearts are with the Astroworld Festival family tonight -- especially those we
lost and their loved ones. We are focused on supporting local officials however
we can," it read. "As authorities mentioned in their press conference earlier, they
are looking into the series of cardiac arrests that took place. If you have any
relevant information on this, please reach out to Houston Police. Thank you to
our partners at the Houston Police Department, Fire Department and NRG Park
for their response and support.

HPD Chief Troy Finner said 367 police officers and 241 security officers were on
duty throughout the day as a sold-out crowd of 50,000 turned out for the planned
two-day event, an homage to Houston's shuttered Astroworld amusement park.

Thousands of fans stormed the entrance gates around 2 p.m., bypassing security
and metal detectors. Some were detained by security and mounted HPD officers,
but no serious injuries were reported. It was similar to the start of the 2019 event.

Scott, a Houston native, is known for high-octane performances and aggressive
audiences that he refers to as "ragers." Rapper Drake, who calls Houston a second
home, made a surprise appearance during Scott's set, further amping up the excitement.
The performance was streamed live on Apple Music in 167 countries and regions.

Around 9 p.m., the crowd for Scott's 75-minute closing performance began pushing
toward the stage, according to Peña, causing panic and injuries. Scott stopped
multiple times as he spotted fans in distress and asked security to help them out
of the crowd. Emergency vehicles, lights and sirens flashing, cut through the
crowd several times.

The mayhem escalated until 9:38 p.m., when the "mass-casualty incident" was
triggered. About 55 Houston Fire Department units respond and started performing
CPR on the unconscious. Videos taken at NRG Park began to surface on social media
overnight, showing the melee.

"It happened all at once," Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite said.
"It seemed like it happened over the course of just a few minutes."

One video circulated of paramedics driving on a vehicle like a golf cart, performing
chest compressions on a concertgoer who had fallen unconscious, as tens of
thousands of spectators continued partying in the background. A few concert-goers
can be seen climbing on top of the emergency vehicles that were trying to
navigate the crowd.

The majority of people transported were in their 20s, Satterwhite said.
"We have parents asking about teenagers," he said.
"We're still working through everything."

Earlier in the day, security had confronted people without tickets, breaking through
barricades and hoping to gain entry to the festival.

"A lot of times, kids don't make the best decisions," Satterwhite said,
"Because they're young and amped up.... I just think it was so many
people -- and passion -- to see this entertainer. I don't know, and a lot of
bad decisions"

More than 300 people were treated at the field hospital at NRG Park throughout
the day because of heat exhaustion, alcohol poisoning and overdoses.
The concert ended early "in the interest of public safety."

"Nobody could dream of this. But we're here, and I think it's very important
that none of us speculate. Nobody has all the answers tonight," Finner said.
He referenced "rumors of people injecting people (with) drugs."

"If you don't have facts, if you don't have evidence, I'm not going to speak
against that. We have hurting families out here," he said.




Travis Scott performs at Astroworld Festival at
NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor




A still pulled from KTRK video shows an aerial view of Travis Scott
performing at NRG Stadium during the Astroworld Festival at NRG
park on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. Eight people are dead and dozens
more injured after a sold-out crowd surged during rapper
Travis Scott's performance late Friday.
Courtesy/KTRK


Concert-goer Steven Gutierrez Gutierrez, 26, watched in horror as
people flooded toward the stage.

"It got to the point people were stepping on other people," said Gutierrez,
who traveled from upstate New York to Houston for the event with his friends,
Angel Colon from New Jersey, and Kevin Rosario and Andrew Delgado,
both from Florida.

Fans pressed up against each other, moving almost as one unit in the mosh pit,
he said. In some places, people were so crammed together that they started
hyperventilating or struggling to leave.

"We were hanging on to each other to avoid getting separated," he said.
"If you let go, you could easily drift apart."

They have gone to other festivals, but Astroworld was different.

"It's scary to think we had a great time and for other people it was the last time
they were alive," said Rosario.

Gutierrez added: "As humans, we have to do better."

One woman who attended called the crowd aggressive and said she
got hit multiple times.

"I had never been to a music festival with so many angry people," she said.

Billy Nasser, a 24-year-old DJ who said he had attended about 50 Scott shows,
arrived at the festival about 1:30 p.m. He walked around different stages,
seeing Scott's DJ, checking out SZA and then walking to the main act of the evening.

The first four or five songs, Nasser said, were fine. Then the crowd started
surging, and people started falling.

"Everyone in the front was getting crushed," Nasser recounted early Saturday
over the telephone. "The crowd was moving so hard, people were falling over
and then tripping over the people on the ground."

People started calling over Nasser, who wears doctor scrubs as his DJ outfit,
for help, he said. He tried helping up one kid who was on the floor. Some people
kept dancing, seemingly not realizing what was happening. The kid he picked
up stumbled around and fell on a pile of others.

Nasser said he realized there was a pile building up, people likely dying,
and he started panicking.

Eric Daniels watched the concert with his son from the disabled section, where
they saw several people from a mosh pit being trampled and suffocated.
Daniels said he was concerned by lack of security guards or police at the main stage.

"The only two visible security guards tried their best to pull people over a
security fence as they were being smashed up against it," he said in an email.
"People then passed lifeless-limp bodies to paramedics where they tried
unsuccessfully to revive four different people. All the while, battling crowds
trampling over the bodies lying in the walkway."

Concertgoer Christian Souza tried to help up people who had fallen. He said he
and others lifted one unconscious man over a barricade, then watched paramedics
spend 20 minutes trying to revive him.

"He was definitely unconscious. I quickly looked for a felt... I didn't feel anything,"
he said. "I saw some girl just laying there. And I never really seen some dead
people instantly like that, like fresh dead. But it looked like she was not alive."

Another Instagram user, whose name was listed as Madeline Eskins, said she
passed out because people were pushing up against her and she could not breathe.

Concertgoers crowdsurfed her unconscious body to a security guard.
When she woke, she said she had a water bottle on her lap and no recollect
of what happened.

She looked around. People were getting carried out with their eyes rolled back,
some bleeding.

A guard asked her to help when she yelled if anyone had checked their pulses.

She started trying to help people, checking pulses herself and helping move
bodies onto stretchers.

“People were trampled, crushed,” Eskins wrote, adding she is an ICU nurse.
“There was no cell service to call for more help.”

Des Gary, another concertgoer who had attended previous Astroworld festivals,
thought security at Friday’s show was the tightest he had observed yet when
he entered the grounds.

By afternoon, however, he began to see panic and anxiety in the faces of others,
overwhelmed in rough crowds.

It appeared to him that some were becoming dehydrated. He said he counted
two water refill stations.

When Scott took the stage at night, the crowd started pushing toward the stage.
He started observing people get trampled and worried eyes soon turned into
fearful eyes scanning for a way out of the mass of people. Emergency medical carts
tried to help people but moved slowly through the crowd. Some jumped on the
dragging carts carrying the ill.

“It was just a mix of people on two different pages,” he said.
“There was so much pushing and shoving.”

He searched the festival on Twitter when he got home and learned the second day
had been canceled. Then he saw eight people had died, and was swept by a
wave of sadness.

“It hurt,” he recounted, remembering one cart that struggled wading through the
audience. What if he had done anything to try helping clear a path for it? “I just felt guilty.”

Day 2 of the festival, scheduled for Saturday, was to feature Latin superstar
Bad Bunny, Earth, Wind & Fire and Beaumont native Teezo Touchdown.



Staff writer Alejandro Serrano,
Nicole Hensley and
Gabrielle Banks
contributed to this report.

Quote:

Written By
Joey Guerra

Joey Guerra is the music critic for the Houston Chronicle.
He also covers various aspects of pop culture. He has
reviewed hundreds of concerts and interviewed hundreds
of celebrities, from Justin Bieber to Dolly Parton to Beyonce.
He's appeared as a regular correspondent on Fox26 and was
head judge and director of the Pride Superstar singing
competition for a decade. He has been named journalist of
the year multiple times by both OutSmart Magazine and
the FACE Awards. He also covers various aspects of pop culture,
including the local drag scene and "RuPaul's Drag Race."

Quote:

Written By
St. John Barned-Smith

St. John "Sinjin" Barned-Smith joined the Houston Chronicle
in 2014 and covers public safety. Sinjin started his career in
Philadelphia, spent two years in Paraguay in the Peace Corps,
and prior to moving to Texas, worked at a small paper in Maryland.
Follow him on Twitter or email tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.

Too soon ???

‘No exits, no lights, no air.’
Did Astroworld security failures put thousands at risk?



Eyewitnesses and experts question issues on the
festival grounds that may have contributed to a stampede.


Nov. 17, 2021
Updated: Nov. 17, 2021 12:19 p.m.



Festival goers are seen on day one of the Astroworld Music Festival
at NRG Park on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021, in Houston, Texas.
(Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)



Jacob Hickey knew something was wrong the moment he walked through the turnstiles at
Astroworld last Friday night. Having attended more than 50 shows since the age of 12, and
having just returned from a weekend with his girlfriend at Outside Lands Music Festival in
San Francisco, Hickey felt he was immediately able to recognize hazards in the layout.

“Nothing made sense,” says Hickey, 30, a California native earning a PhD in chemistry from
the University of Houston. At Astroworld’s main stage, there were limited stanchions dividing
the crowd and containing its movement, only one narrow aisle for security and medical
personnel to access the center of the crowd, few water stations set up for patrons and limited
exit points from the festival’s main venue. “You could tell right away that it wouldn’t hold the
crowd", he said.

With the countdown clock to Travis Scott’s headlining performance clicking closer to showtime,
festival attendees at side stages watching the likes of artists including Yves Tumor and Don Toliver
began compressing in from all angles on the already waiting and rowdy mainstage crowd.
“One side was the stage, on the opposite end were concession stands, and the walls of crowds
were pushing in from the sides,” says Mason Rodriguez, 23, who strategically found a position
behind a tree for himself and his girlfriend once they recognized the show might get out of hand.
“You were fenced in. There was no getting out,” he adds.



Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor



“We were super close,” says Jonathan Garza, 19, who was attending his first ever concert and
arrived early with his girlfriend hoping to stake out a prime spot for Scott’s headline performance.
“About an hour before the show even started, I had a gut feeling we should leave. Everyone was
pushing and throwing things. When they started the 30-minute countdown at 8:30 p.m., everything
went crazy. Just like that, we couldn’t move. We were stuck, we were scared and we knew we had
to get out of there.”

As thousands jockeyed for position and a better view of the stage, the group of 50,000-plus swirled
to form a precarious, mass of bodies, creating panic and causing a surge that has so far left hundreds
injured and at least 10 dead, including 9-year-old Ezra Blount, who was watching the show from his
father’s shoulders before the two were trampled. Many on hand believe breakdowns in security and
failures in how the festival grounds were set up, especially the lack of signage, exits and clear paths
for security and medical personnel, are largely to blame for the tragedy.
As of press time, festival organizers did not return requests for comment.

“How is anyone able to respond to [a crisis] if there's no way to access the people in the center?”
says AJ Faber, co-owner of Tourniquet, which operates logistics, production and staffing for live
concert events, and who has worked for more than a decade as tour manager for acts including
The National and Grimes. “[The setup] clearly wasn’t enough. They did the minimum, but ideally
it would be nice for there to be another corral for security between the sections,” she said, which
would have divided the crowd into manageable quadrants.



The Astroworld main stage where Travis Scott was performing Friday evening
when what authorities described as a "mass casualty" incident that left
10 people dead, sits full of debris from the concert in a parking lot at
NRG Center on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, in Houston.
Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer



Faber says a center aisle—which should be about 10-feet wide for two-way traffic so staff can move
from front to back of house, and includes ledges long the rails to provide security a higher vantage
and easy access to break up fights and offer emergency assistance in the crowd—is standard for
events the size of Astroworld. Stanchions throughout a crowd also help limit the snowballing effect
of a surge. “Split barricades effectively eliminate how far a rush can move,” she says.
“If people start falling and eventually fall into a barricade, that sucks. You’ve avoided calamity.
But at least they’re not smashing into 10,000 people, which is a much harder incident to deal with.”

Security breakdowns started early in the day, according to an activity log kept by the Houston Fire Department (HFD)
and obtained by USA Today. As early as 8:15 a.m. Friday there were reports of lively crowds gathered
at the security borders that prompted a police lieutenant to request riot gear, according to the log.
There were at least 10 incidents of people breaking through the gates, including some participants
using bolt cutters and approximately 150 people rushing the gate at Kirby and Westridge at 12:17 p.m.

“I heard a lot of side chit chat — people bragging about paying off security to get in for free,”
Rodriguez says. “A lot of people who weren’t supposed to be there were, so I’m sure they were
over capacity.” Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said during a press conference Saturday that the
festival grounds could have handled “over 200,000” people, but festival organizers estimate at
least 5,000 people without tickets found their way into the event.

Hickey said he saw numerous concertgoers without wristbands streaming unchecked through the
front gates. He noted that, unlike other concerts he’s attended, no one was patted down.
“People were carrying in flasks of liquor — you could actually see the bottle shapes in their
pockets — and plenty of drugs.” Hickey said the merch area was chaotic, lacking staff to direct
people or monitor lines. The deluge of people, unencumbered by standard security measures,
created a situation where once people entered the main stage area, they were trapped.




Lil Baby performs at at performs at Astroworld Festival at
NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor



From Hickey’s position in an accessible viewing area for disabled concert-goers near the back
of the venue, he and his girlfriend were on a raised platform that offered them a bird’s-eye
view of the scene. Before the concert started, Hickey watched as the space below filled to
overflowing. “About 50 to 60 people climbed up the back of the projection screens and nobody
stopped them,” he said. “There they were, two stories up on exposed electronics, and I didn’t
see a single security guard tell them to get down.”

Hickey describes the concert as immediately out of control. “The entire time, people were trying
to get out and other attendees were pulling them to safety over the back gates,” he says.
“Everyone was desperate to get out. You could see their faces. They wanted no part of it.”

Hickey watched a paramedic perform CPR on a girl in front of his section. “It lasted about 30 minutes
until the concert stopped because there was no way for anyone to pick her up and get her to
an ambulance.” Hickey remembers that Travis stopped the concert “for a minute, one time, and
only one time,” before telling the crowd to “Point your middle fingers to the sky” and returning
to his performance. Other concert-goers suggested he paused the show at least three times.




Travis Scott performs at Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor



On “CBS Mornings,” Travis Scott spokesperson Stephanie Rawlings-Blake pointed to the festival’s
security operations plan, arguing that “it clearly says the only two people that are, have the authority
to stop the concert, were the executive producer and the concert producer,” adding that Scott
“was not responsible for this, but he wants to be responsible for the solution.”

Out of desperation, people began climbing over barriers into the section for disabled concert-goers,
Hickey says, overcrowding the area. “Imagine people are pushing to the center from both sides.
You can’t swim against that current to get out, so the only way out was to fight your way to the back,”
he says. By concert’s end, he says he knew one thing: “There’s no way we’re ever doing this again.
We were safer than anyone else at the concert and we still didn’t feel safe.”




Ten people have died from injuries sustained at the Nov. 5 Astroworld Festival at NRG park.
Jamaal Ellis, Houston Chronicle / Contributor


Garza and his girlfriend weren't as lucky. Willing to forgo some of Friday’s earlier shows for a prime spot
at Travis Scott’s headlining performance, the two walked over to the main stage four hours ahead of schedule,
at roughly 5 p.m. They chose a location just to the left of center barricade, about four-people deep from
a section at the front fenced off for VIPs. But before Scott even came to the stage they decided to leave
and began forcing their way to the exit. “The crowds were pushing in on us, surging forward,” he says.

Garza only made it 10 steps before he fell. “I could see other people frantically trying to get out,” he says.
“Melissa and I fell down to our knees, and people piled on top of us, all their weight on our legs. Our phones
went flying and we got separated. At that point, I realized I was in trouble. I was starting to get frantic.
There was no way for us to stay together, no way to communicate.”

Garza stood and started shoving against the crowd, tumbling again and a third time as he fought a current
of bodies. “Twice, I landed on a pile of people, all of them screaming for help,” he said. “The first time,
I was able to climb off. The second, I needed to be pulled off. I was losing energy.” The third time he fell,
Garza said he was smothered by a mass who fell on top of him. “I could feel people walking over my arms
and legs. I was struggling to breathe. I had nothing left.”

He fell one more time, landing on top of someone who was lying face down until someone grabbed him
and pulled him up. “I’m embarrassed to say that I stepped on that other guy to get out,” Garza admits.
“But I was 100 percent panicked. I thought I was going to die.”




Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor



Garza says it took him 30 minutes to navigate his way through the crowd. He describes a venue with no
clear exits, no lights leading the way out. “I could barely breathe. It was hot, the place was filled with
smoke, I couldn’t see. It was this feeling of being encased,” he says. “When I got to the gate, I folded
over it and others pushed me [to safety]. I saw paramedics only after I got out.”

Looking through Astroworld’s 56-page security document, obtained by CNN, Faber says it’s limited in scope
and seems “very randomly put together and kind of last minute,” compared with booklets and maps
provided by Coachella and other festivals at which she’s worked throughout her career. Unlike concert venues,
where security infrastructure is in place for every show and where security staff is often well-trained and
full time, she says, security at festivals typically consists of people wanting to “catch a free show.”

Though the level of training Astroworld staff went through before the event is unclear, guard Darius Williams
told TMZ that he felt unprepared given that he’d only earned the state’s level II security licensing requirement
the night before during an open-book test, and said he felt even early on Friday morning that the event was
understaffed. Faber says there’s often little-to-no instruction given to short-term security staff and few are
given radios to call for help; they are often unable to answer basic questions; and they rarely even know
the names of supervisors. The pat down process is often “theatrical,” she says, with minimal real effort to
check bags.

In case of evacuation, Faber points to the Astroworld protocol document's promise that “Paths leading to
the Main Entrance will be clearly marked, brightly lit and easily accessible for all guests of the festival.”
Which is great, she says, but it only really offers staff ideas of what to do in an emergency without concrete
plans of how to execute it. “Is there a map [describing how to evacuate]? How many paths? How wide are
the paths? Are they one-way paths? That they're clearly marked is one thing, but are trained people helping
to direct the traffic? Because there are 50,000-plus people and they're all showing up at the same time.”




Ten people have died from injuries sustained at the Nov. 5 Astroworld Festival at NRG park.
Jamaal Ellis, Houston Chronicle / Contributor



Hickey said he never received a map of the venue, not when he purchased his tickets, nor when he
arrived at the festival. He said he never saw anyone carrying a map and was in fact asked multiple
times if he knew where the restrooms and water stations were. 

Garza spent the length of Scott’s performance searching for his girlfriend, Melissa, outside the main venue.
Without a map, he needed assistance to locate the medical tent. Once there, he wasn’t permitted to
enter and begged a security guard to look for someone with Melissa’s build, hair and eye color.
“The guard was overwhelmed, so I knew he wouldn’t be any help,” he said. “Then I saw a body being
carried out and for a split second, I thought it might be Melissa.That was one of the worst experiences of my life.”

After the show, Garza returned to the spot where they’d been standing before the melee, saw Melissa,
and called out to her. They ran into each other’s arms and for a long time, they just held each other.
Garza says he can’t get over the lack of security presence and the lack of concern he witnessed from
festival organizers, and from Scott. “At any time, he could have taken a breather and come back so
people could get the help they needed. Everyone there was so unprepared.” Faber says artists typically
will have an earpiece that allows festival staff to communicate issues to them via a talkback mic,
but it’s unclear whether or not Scott or other performers on stage with him were wearing these types of devices.

When Rodriguez and his girlfriend eventually left the concert physically unscathed but emotionally distressed,
they faced a mile-long walk to their car. It had been about 90 minutes since frantic 911 calls had been made
from the festival grounds, begging for help for people who were being crushed and suffocated.

Only then, Rodriguez said, did they hear the sirens.



Earlier video shows crowd rushing
through gates at Astroworld Festival


KPRC 2 Click2Houston





$750 million lawsuit filed
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/ho...628345.php