Tragedy At the Astroworld Festival
Image by Alexander Londoño
I woke up on Sunday, November 7 with headlines of Astroworld saturating my News app. Dozens of articles listed the same information, but some attached videos—gruesome, horrific, haunting videos that bear witness to the last moments of some people’s lives. Most of these videos played uncensored. Many were sans warnings and blurred boxes, so viewers digested the horror in real-time, completely unaware of what the next seconds lay in store for them. On November 6, 2021, Houston witnessed a devastating tragedy at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival. A crowd crush emerged during the concert, taking the lives of ten people and injuring hundreds more. This “mass casualty event” has stunned America, forcing people to reconsider Travis Scott as a public figure and the dangers of crowd crushes. But we are all stunned by the same question: How could this happen?
Security and staff expressed safety concerns in the days leading up to the concert, and Houston Police Chief Troy Finner confirmed that 528 police officers and 755 Live Nation security officers were on-scene that night. Additionally, ParaDocs, an emergency medical company, had “a main medical tent with two emergency room physicians, six registered nurses, two paramedics and nine emergency medical technicians.”
Although the venue could accommodate 200,000 people, Astroworld was limited to 50,000 attendees. Even without the venue completely filled, tragedy still arose. This festival bred a dangerous medley of hazards and restless anxiety. This annual music festival was canceled due to the COVID pandemic in 2020, so concertgoers were even more eager to attend this festival, making up for the time lost the previous year. Travis Scott is also notorious for enabling chaos. AstroFest is not the first Travis Scott concert under fire for reckless actions—in fact, it isn’t even the second.
In 2015, Travis Scott was arrested for reckless conduct after he encouraged his fans to jump barricades and climb onto the stage. In 2017, Scott was sued by a fan who said he was paralyzed after falling from a balcony at one of Scott’s concerts in Manhattan. However, AstroFest was even more dangerous. Eyewitness reports recount that the concert was “hectic from the beginning”, but it is still unclear why the crowd rushed to the stage, prompting the surge. The Houston PD is currently investigating the situation, but no new answers are guaranteed.
America’s relationship with death and injury has become more obvious because of the pandemic. Online, people want to blame Travis Scott, and I completely agree he is responsible for this disaster. But he does not carry all of the blame. Concert attendees rushed the stage like lions racing after gazelle. Respectability dissipated as the day drew to night, worsening when Travis Scott took to the stage. The concept is baffling to me. Our society’s obsession with celebrities, fame, and attention has turned concerts into mass casualty events. And coming off the pandemic, people are desensitized to the idea of death. Nearly 800,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19, but people became numb to the idea long before the 800,000th person passed. Human life has become largely disregarded in this individualistic world, and change is necessary.
Travis Scott’s concert is not the first concert that has seen mass casualties. Other notable concerts include a 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati. Eleven concertgoers died from asphyxiation after the crowd surged forward. Other countries have seen similar trends as well. At the second Woodstock festival in 1999, three people died. In 2000, nine people were killed at a Pearl Jam concert in Denmark. And twenty-one people died at the Love Parade in Germany in 2010 after thousands of fans tried to rush into a tunnel to enter the venue.
Travis Scott has released an apology and an apology video to his social media platforms, but accountability still needs to be taken. There has been concern that Houston may be lenient on Scott because it is his hometown. Such a process would be insulting to the deaths of his fans, and it would show public figures can get away with anything. He has released a statement noting he would cover all funeral costs for the victims, and there has been discussion of him refunding all of the tickets to his fans. But what needs to happen, more than anything, is an end to this madness. No individual should wonder if their life is in danger at a concert.
To help, you can donate to the links below to the victim’s families:
By Anjali Chanda
Vanderbilt student, writer, and lover of the night sky.