by Angie Liew
Travis Scott’s annual ASTROWORLD festival this year was supposed to be a breath of fresh air: finally, 5th of November, a new excitement after months of lockdowns and isolation. With tickets sold out, over 50,000 people showed up with hopes for a day of fun and the anticipated headline performance by Scott himself.
You may have already seen social media recordings of the concert’s massive crowds surging towards the stage. Everything might have looked and sounded as expected of a show of this scale from far. That is, until you listen closely:
“Somebody’s dying. Somebody’s gonna die.”
Drowned out by the overwhelming roar of the unknown crowd behind, fans in the front rushed closer to the stage as the countdown to Scott’s performance hit zero. Shouts of terror erupted as those in the front were physically slammed forward by the domino weight of thousands behind them. Footage showed their faces twisting in terror and panic as people were engulfed by the sheer momentum of the unstoppable human wave. Pressed against everyone else around them, it was clear that nobody had room to move, and for the unlucky few, there was simply no room to breathe.
The desperate cries from the front were futile. Over the next hour, many fans frantically tried to escape the crowd as the compression soon caused clustered collapses, and the constant pushing made it a scramble to regain footing. In video recordings, you can see several individuals unconscious or struggling to get up while the chaotic shouting continues.
While Scott did pause the performance upon noticing an unresponsive woman near the stage, the concert continued after he asked everyone to “put a middle finger in the sky” as if they were not distraught. Things only got worse from here. About an hour into the show, several people climbed on a camera platform and begged the cameraman to alert the officials that someone in the crowd had died. Medics found senior Bharti Shahani without a pulse on the ground. While her lips turned blue and her skin grayed, the thundering music continued to shake the ground.
Unfortunately, she was not the only one. Desperate attendees trapped in the crowds made at least five more 911 calls pertaining to unconscious individuals. In a scramble to locate and perform CPR on them, the medical personnel stationed at the event became overwhelmed, with more patients rushed in with stopped hearts. The medics were simply unprepared for the severity of injuries present on site. Without equipment such as defibrillators or oxygen bags, patients had to be rushed to hospital emergency rooms. They were fast, but not fast enough.
“Compression asphyxia” was the determined cause of death for the ten fatalities that night. Ten people were trampled, crushed, and suffocated. Within 2 hours of Scott’s entrance, Rudy Pena, Mirza Baig, Madison Dubiski, Brianna Rodriguez, John Hilgert, Jacob Jurinek, Axel Acosta, and Franco Patino were the first eight declared deaths in the emergency rooms. After a week, Shahani and 9-year-old Ezra Blount would pass away from injuries.
This event was a tragedy—a tragedy that could have been prevented. Deaths in concerts have happened in the past. For an event at this scale, preparations were suboptimal. Security breaches of the barricades into the concert area were easily bypassed, allowing an estimated over 200 more individuals to enter. The Houston fire officials reported the utter lack of communication from the safety officials at the venue. Amidst the chaos and panic, the two-way radios and mobile numbers to contact the ParaDoc medics received no response. Worse still, the event management team had warned Scott to end the show about an hour and a half into the performance. Not only did he not take immediate action, but he also continued the program by bringing Drake as a guest performer on stage. The new excitement amplified the crowd surges, and some fans jumped on the roof of ambulances that were urgently searching the dense crowd for the injured.
Almost 300 lawsuits have been filed since the festival, but Scott and other defendants denied the allegations. In an interview after the tragedy, Scott said:
“I’m the face of the festival, I’m the artist, so the media wants to put it on me, but at the end of the day I don’t think it’s more so about that, it’s more so about stepping up to figure out what the problem is. And I could take that. I could take stepping out to figure out what the problem is, I could take stepping up to figure out what the solution is so that it never happens again.”
He faced massive backlash for the lack of accountability and safety precautions despite Astroworld’s history of concert accidents and high-energy crowds. Many fans flooded the internet with furious anecdotes and blamed the rapper’s decision to continue the performance after seeing the ambulances and fallen attendees. Full refunds were provided, counseling services offered, and funeral fees compensated, but they can never reverse the trauma of victims nor return the lives lost that day.