Updated 1:35pm October 2, 2017
A shooting last night in Las Vegas during the Route 91 Harvest Festival while Jason Aldean was performing is being called the largest mass shooting in US history, leaving dozens dead and more than 400 injured. Aldean issued a statement this morning via social media that he and his crew are safe.
Jessi Cybulski, operations manager for LDI, reached out to IATSE Local 720 in Las Vegas, and updates us that "as far as they know, all people associated with the event are accounted for. They said that they have been following members social media pages in case there were people working that they were unaware of, and so far, accountability is positive."
Patrick Dierson, production designer and founder of The Activity, lives in Las Vegas and was home during the incident. He has reported in, "The Aldean camp is safe and accounted for as is the team from 3G who were lighting vendors for the festival. The extremely rapid response by Las Vegas Metro Police Department, its SWAT teams, all other emergency care units, and support from Nellis Air Force Base was an unprecedented force to watch coordinate on little to no notice. It was crystal clear that these are all teams of people who had extensively trained for just such a tragedy. From the neutralizing the threat and systematically locking down the adjacent areas to clearly organizing emergency care in the midst of absolute chaos, I can not imagine how much worse this event would have been in any other metropolitan area."
Athan Antoniadis, a touring technician at Solotech who is currently working on the Lady Gaga tour, has ME'd the festival the last three years but wasn't working on it this year, though he was in Las Vegas for a gig at the MGM Grand and staying at New York-New York. He has reported, "Keith Hoaglund, Jason Aldean's LD is a good friend of mine. He and all theirs are okay. I spoke to a friend on local crew, and he said luckily they're okay too...We got off at 10pm, and four of us were walking out of the casino to cross the strip when the gunfire started. I heard it and at first thought it was a truck engine brake, but it kept going. I said to my friend it sounds like automatic gunfire. There was a pause in the shots. Within minutes dozens of police cars started coming down the road followed by fire and ambulances. The shots started again, and unfortunately it really was what I thought."
Chris Lisle, production designer for Aldean, has confirmed that he was not onsite, but that he has heard from several crew who are, indeed, safe.
Bandit Lites, which has supplied equipment for Aldean's production, has also confirmed its crew members at the show have not been injured.
Many locals and visitors in the area are marking themselves "safe" on Facebook here at The Violent Incident In Las Vegas, Nevada.
Stay tuned for continuing coverage today.