Travis Scott’s Tragic Festival

Travis Scott’s latest Astroworld concert was catastrophic, with at least eight people left dead and hundreds injured.

By Alec Krsek

Ever since COVID-19 ravaged our planet, restrictions have begun being slowly lifted. Music concerts have been non-existent since the beginning of COVID-19 and in recent months, festivals of these sorts have started reappearing. If the decision for the restrictions on concerts to be lifted in the past few months have been a good or bad choice, what happened at the Astroworld concert will forever be a cataclysmic mishap.

On November 5th, Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival premiered in Houston, Texas. In short, it was a tragedy. This festival ended with at least eight people dead and several injured. The deaths and injured all occurred due to a crowd surge. A crowd surge is when a large group of individuals make quick and sudden movements which cause people not to be able to move freely as well as lack oxygen or space to breathe. When people start becoming unable to breathe, it thus starts a panic which severely worsens the situation.

At around 9:15 p.m., the people at the front stage started compressing causing more mayhem and panic as well as some people getting hurt. Afterward, some people started to become unconscious which created additional panic on top of the overwhelming amount of panic. When 9:38 p.m. comes along, the Houston Fire Chief declares this situation a “mass casualty incident” due to the astounding number of victims. At this point, emergency responders were becoming overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims needing to be treated. There were at least twenty-three people were rushed to the hospital. Eleven of those twenty-three people headed to the hospital were in cardiac arrest. Around 300 more victims were being treated at a field hospital at the Astroworld festival. In the end, there were eight confirmed fatalities.

These horrifying events that happened during the Astroworld festival closely relate to a bigger image that corresponds to the psychology of individuals. The acts that occurred during this concert were mainly initiated because of the people not being aware of the consequences that their actions would hold. These individuals were ignorant of their choices, their thought process simply wasn’t rational or reasonable. What does this all mean? The Astroworld festival amounts to civil disobedience and neglecting the information from authoritative figures.

There could have been several reasons why this catastrophe happened. Several sources say that the Houston police chief, Troy Finner, personally warned Travis Scott about the safety concerns he had. “I expressed my concerns regarding public safety, in my 31 years of law enforcement experience I have never seen a time with more challenges facing citizens of all ages, to include a global pandemic and social tension throughout the nation” states Finner. Even though Travis Scott knew about the safety concerns, he still decided to continue the show without change.

Along with neglecting information from authoritative figures, the disobedience and discord among some of the individuals attending the festival could have started the crowd surge. In cramped and tight spaces, trying to move around suddenly and quickly is just a recipe for disaster. Just from a small group of people being restless and making poor choices, it can slowly build up to an event of mayhem.

A safety measure that has been introduced to prevent crown surges is cloud spotters. In these sorts of music events or festivals, there would be people that have noise-canceling headsets that pay close attention to monitoring the crowd. These cloud spotters can communicate to someone near the performer so they will be able to stop the event in case of a life-threatening situation such as a fire, structural collapse, active shooter, and of course a crowd surge. Evidence that there have been cloud spotters at the Astroworld festival is unknown. If there weren’t cloud spotters or poorly trained cloud spotters, this could have been another reason why this tragedy occurred.

The Astroworld festival was a tragedy, a disastrous event. How could we stop something like this from ever happening again? The simplest answer would be for individuals to think more rationally and consider what their actions can hold. This catastrophe stemmed from individuals being reckless and negligent. If these people thought about the effects of acting carelessly in an extremely tight environment, that could have changed the actions that they’ve done. Another way to prevent this from happening again is for people to monitor the wellbeing and safety of the crowd. Someone monitoring the crowd could have stopped the festival when the situation became life-threatening. The last answer to this question is to listen to authoritative figures. In this case, the Houston Police Chief knew about public safety concerns and told Travis Scott, from what we can tell, administrators of the Astroworld festival didn’t adhere to the safety concerns.

What does this disaster have to do with the “bigger picture”? This accident can give us more insight on how we can minimize more incidents like this from happening. Of course, we can’t totally prevent accidents, they are “accidents” They aren’t planned, they just happen. This tragedy as well as hundreds of other incidents involving public safety such as fires, riots, violent protests, etc. can possibly be prevented by simple, yet complicated concepts. For humans to think rationally and be conscious of information, not to neglect information.