The death toll in the horrific Astroworld tragedy has now reached nine, with dozens more festival goers injured. According to a story in The Washington Post, there was a litany of safety and security violations reported in the stadium in the hours leading up to the November 5th concert, including crowd members bypassing Covid testing stations and a whopping 262 festival goers reporting to the on-site medical facility even before the show started. Once Travis Scott went onstage, there was enough evidence that something was very wrong for the Houston Fire Department to declare the event a mass casualty incident and call in additional firefighters at 9:52pm, a full 19 minutes before the performance ended.
While an official investigation has been launched into the decisions that lead to the fatalities, there is one video clip that should be of particular concern to live events professionals. In it, a young woman climbs onto the camera platform and begs the operator to stop the show. There is no need link to the clip here, it has been viewed more than one million times, but it is necessary to point out that criticism of the operator is unjustified. Focused on the stage, he is certainly unaware of what is unfolding below and probably can’t hear what the woman is saying over the music and the director talking over headphones. But the clip shows that he is completely vulnerable, the young woman and another crowd member successfully climb up to his position and are present behind him before he knows they are there, and no security personnel arrive to remove them. Thankfully their intentions were good, but if a live production fails to protect its own front-of-house personnel, there is very little chance it can successfully protect members of the audience. And allowing a security situation which puts entertainment professionals on the front line of crowd control is dangerous and unlikely to end well.
The Event Safety Alliance and ESTA’s ANSI ES1.9 guide to crowd management was published to prevent exactly this type of incident, and Steve Adelman, vice president of the Event Safety Alliance, wrote this post immediately following the tragedy. It outlines some of the questions we should ask to ensure that it does not happen again. From how many security staff were on the property, how much training they had, and where they were deployed, to how barricades were configured and whether the performer incited crowd behavior. Adelman suggests that in this instance, finding out whether the event met the NFPA 101 requirement of one trained crowd manager per 250 people present may not be as important as asking, "What did the people closest to the incident understand about crowd dynamics, and what were they prepared to do to keep guests safe?"
For lighting, sound, and video professionals working front of house, the answers to these questions for future productions can be a good indication of how seriously event management takes safety issues.
Crowd fatalities at concerts have, thankfully, been few and far between, but the issues that lead to 11 audience deaths before a concert by The Who in Cincinnati in 1979 should have been planned for, and addressed, at every live entertainment event since then. Nineteen seventy-nine should have been the last time this happened, let’s work to make sure Astroworld is.