The third annual Astroworld Festival hosted by Houston rapper Travis Scott went completely out of control after his performance when fans started a crowd surge to meet the star of the show. 2021’s Astroworld festival occurred on November 5th and the events of the night left eight casualties and hundreds injured.
Travis Scott is a popular artist who quickly rose to fame because of his unique sound and smooth lyrical storytelling. Astroworld festival has been a yearly two-day festival starting in 2018, named after Travis Scott’s Grammy-nominated studio album. Many artists featured in this year’s festival like Drake, Don Toliver, Roddy Ricch, Bad Bunny, Sheck Wes, and lots more came out and performed in his home city.
The gates to the festival opened around 1 p.m. with fans shortly after starting to rush towards the gates and crush past security. An estimated 50,000 people were in the venue when Travis Scott began performing. Videos and pictures of the show went viral on Twitter.
When the show commenced, fans caused a stampede to get towards the stage for Travis Scott to notice them. A surprise feature by Spotify’s artist of the decade, Drake made a guest appearance at the show which only added wood to the fire. Many reports of fans claimed they were unable to breathe and reports of people passing out left and right stirred up. This is when security poorly attempted to step in but was stopped by Travis’ fans attempting to see the artist. Medical units drove towards the crowd in an attempt to get passed out fan medical attention, but they could not get through the crowd because of the number of people who blocked the area, danced on top of the vehicle, and ran over people. At this point, the event was already spiraled out of anyone’s control.
Travis Scott paused his show several times, one time when he noticed a fan who had a seizure and was able to get pulled away from the crowd, and two other times when seeing people up close falling over but he continued with his show not long after. Because of this, the rapper is facing numerous backlash comments from his community. On November 6th, 1:50 a.m. it was announced that day two of the festival was canceled due to the injuries and fatalities.
The Houston police department made a press conference about the incident. Chief Samuel Peña confirms, “At the moment we know that we had eight at least eight confirmed fatalities tonight. Eight confirmed fatalities and we had scores of individuals that were injured here in this event.” The city of Houston, HPD, Houston Fire Department, and Travis Scott have been working to figure this situation out to the best of their ability.
Travis Scott posted a message about the events of the festival on his Instagram story stating, “I am honestly just devastated and I could never imagine anything like this just happening, I am going to do everything I can to keep you guys updated and keep you guys informed on what is going on. Love you all.” Travis Scott is also working with the Houston police department to search for the families of the fans who lost their lives during the Astroworld festival to help them out in any way possible.
Everyone needs to remember concert etiquette. If you see someone on the ground, help them up, make sure to not push or shove people around you, and drink plenty of water before, during, and after the show. Travis Scott had another message after the events of the Astroworld festival for all fans on Instagram, “You know my fans really mean the world to me, and I always just really want to leave them with a positive experience.” When you go out to a concert make sure to rage safely.
Sources:
https://www.astroworldfest.com/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/06/us/what-is-a-crowd-surge/index.html
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