Travis Scott performs at Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/Contributor
At least eight people are dead and dozens more injured after a sold-out crowd of roughly 50,000 surged during rapper Travis Scott's performance late Friday at the Astroworld Festival outside NRG Park, overwhelming security forces and resulting in one of the deadliest concerts in U.S. history.
As Scott's performance started shortly after 9 p.m., the chaotic crowd seemingly swallowed everyone in it, Instagram user SeannaFaith wrote.
"The rush of people became tighter and tighter. .. Breathing became something only a few were capable. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick hot air," she wrote. "It was like watching a Jenga tower topple. Person after person were sucked down.... You were at the mercy of the wave."
"We begged security to help us, for the performer to see us and know something was wrong," she continued. "None of that came, we continued to drown."
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Then, one person fell. And another.
"We had a mass casualty event here at Astroworld," Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.
Seventeen people were taken to the hospital, 11 of whom Peña described as being in cardiac arrest. Eight are confirmed dead. Some of the victims might be children.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo called it an "extremely tragic night," as families awaited word on whether their loved ones were safe. The Houston Police Department is in the process of identifying victims at hospitals, and a reunification center was set up at the Wyndham Houston Hotel at 8686 Kirby. People searching for loved ones can also call 832-393-2991 or 832-393-2990.
“Our hearts are broken,” Hidalgo said. “People go to these events looking for a good time. It’s not the kind of event where you expect to find out about fatalities.”
Festival organizers offered condolences just before 6 a.m. Saturday across their social media accounts.
"Our hearts are with the Astroworld Festival family tonight — especially those we lost and their loved ones. We are focused on supporting local officials however we can," it read. "As authorities mentioned in their press conference earlier, they are looking into the series of cardiac arrests that took place. If you have any relevant information on this, please reach out to Houston Police. Thank you to our partners at the Houston Police Department, Fire Department and NRG Park for their response and support.
HPD Chief Troy Finner said 367 police officers and 241 security officers were on duty throughout the day as a sold-out crowd of 50,000 turned out for the planned two-day event, an homage to Houston's shuttered Astroworld amusement park.
Thousands of fans stormed the entrance gates around 2 p.m., bypassing security and metal detectors. Some were detained by security and mounted HPD officers, but no serious injuries were reported. It was similar to the start of the 2019 event.
Scott, a Houston native, is known for high-octane performances and aggressive audiences that he refers to as "ragers." Rapper Drake, who calls Houston a second home, made a surprise appearance during Scott's set, further amping up the excitement. The performance was streamed live on Apple Music in 167 countries and regions.
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Around 9 p.m., the crowd for Scott's 75-minute closing performance began pushing toward the stage, according to Peña, causing panic and injuries. Scott stopped multiple times as he spotted fans in distress and asked security to help them out of the crowd. Emergency vehicles, lights and sirens flashing, cut through the crowd several times.
The mayhem escalated until 9:38 p.m., when the "mass-casualty incident" was triggered. About 55 Houston Fire Department units respond and started performing CPR on the unconscious. Videos taken at NRG Park began to surface on social media overnight, showing the melee.
"It happened all at once," Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite said. "It seemed like it happened over the course of just a few minutes."
One video circulated of paramedics driving on a vehicle like a golf cart, performing chest compressions on a concertgoer who had fallen unconscious, as tens of thousands of spectators continued partying in the background. A few concert-goers can be seen climbing on top of the emergency vehicles that were trying to navigate the crowd.
The majority of people transported were in their 20s, Satterwhite said. "We have parents asking about teenagers," he said. "We're still working through everything."
Earlier in the day, security had confronted people without tickets, breaking through barricades and hoping to gain entry to the festival.
"A lot of times, kids don't make the best decisions," Satterwhite said, "Because they're young and amped up.... I just think it was so many people -- and passion -- to see this entertainer. I don't know, and a lot of bad decisions"
More than 300 people were treated at the field hospital at NRG Park throughout the day because of heat exhaustion, alcohol poisoning and overdoses. The concert ended early "in the interest of public safety."
"Nobody could dream of this. But we're here, and I think it's very important that none of us speculate. Nobody has all the answers tonight," Finner said. He referenced "rumors of people injecting people (with) drugs."
"If you don't have facts, if you don't have evidence, I'm not going to speak against that. We have hurting families out here," he said.
Travis Scott performs at Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, November 5, 2021.
Jamaal Ellis/ContributorConcert-goer Steven Gutierrez, 26, watched in horror as people flooded toward the stage.
"It got to the point people were stepping on other people," said Gutierrez, who traveled from upstate New York to Houston for the event with his friends, Angel Colon from New Jersey, and Kevin Rosario and Andrew Delgado, both from Florida.
Fans pressed up against each other, moving almost as one unit in the mosh pit, he said. In some places, people were so crammed together that they started hyperventilating or struggling to leave.
"We were hanging on to each other to avoid getting separated," he said. "If you let go, you could easily drift apart."
They have gone to other festivals, but Astroworld was different.
"It's scary to think we had a great time and for other people it was the last time they were alive," said Rosario.
Gutierrez added: "As humans, we have to do better."
One woman who attended called the crowd aggressive and said she got hit multiple times.
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"I had never been to a music festival with so many angry people," she said.
Billy Nasser, a 24-year-old DJ who said he had attended about 50 Scott shows, arrived at the festival about 1:30 p.m. He walked around different stages, seeing Scott's DJ, checking out SZA and then walking to the main act of the evening.
The first four or five songs, Nasser said, were fine. Then the crowd started surging, and people started falling.
"Everyone in the front was getting crushed," Nasser recounted early Saturday over the telephone. "The crowd was moving so hard, people were falling over and then tripping over the people on the ground."
People started calling over Nasser, who wears doctor scrubs as his DJ outfit, for help, he said. He tried helping up one kid who was on the floor. Some people kept dancing, seemingly not realizing what was happening. The kid he picked up stumbled around and fell on a pile of others.
Nasser said he realized there was a pile building up, people likely dying, and he started panicking.
"I have never seen anything like it," he said. "I have been to so many festivals. I have never seen anything like this before."
Eric Daniels watched the concert with his son from the disabled section, where they saw several people from a mosh pit being trampled and suffocated. Daniels said he was concerned by lack of security guards or police at the main stage.
"The only two visible security guards tried their best to pull people over a security fence as they were being smashed up against it," he said in an email. "People then passed lifeless-limp bodies to paramedics where they tried unsuccessfully to revive four different people. All the while, battling crowds trampling over the bodies lying in the walkway."
Concertgoer Christian Souza tried to help up people who had fallen. He said he and others lifted one unconscious man over a barricade, then watched paramedics spend 20 minutes trying to revive him.
"He was definitely unconscious. I quickly looked for a pulse ... I didn't feel anything," he said. "I saw some girl just laying there. And I never really seen some dead people instantly like that, like fresh dead. But it looked like she was not alive."
Another Instagram user, whose name was listed as Madeline Eskins, said she passed out because people were pushing up against her and she could not breathe.
Concertgoers crowdsurfed her unconscious body to a security guard. When she woke, she said she had a water bottle on her lap and no recollect of what happened.
She looked around. People were getting carried out with their eyes rolled back, some bleeding.
A guard asked her to help when she yelled if anyone had checked their pulses.
She started trying to help people, checking pulses herself and helping move bodies onto stretchers.
“People were trampled, crushed,” Eskins wrote, adding she is an ICU nurse. “There was no cell service to call for more help.”
Des Gary, another concertgoer who had attended previous Astroworld festivals, thought security at Friday’s show was the tightest he had observed yet when he entered the grounds.
By afternoon, however, he began to see panic and anxiety in the faces of others, overwhelmed in rough crowds.
It appeared to him that some were becoming dehydrated. He said he counted two water refill stations.
When Scott took the stage at night, the crowd started pushing toward the stage. He started observing people get trampled and worried eyes soon turned into fearful eyes scanning for a way out of the mass of people. Emergency medical carts tried to help people but moved slowly through the crowd. Some jumped on the dragging carts carrying the ill.
“It was just a mix of people on two different pages,” he said. “There was so much pushing and shoving.”
He searched the festival on Twitter when he got home and learned the second day had been canceled. Then he saw eight people had died, and was swept by a wave of sadness.
“It hurt,” he recounted, remembering one cart that struggled wading through the audience. What if he had done anything to try helping clear a path for it? “I just felt guilty.”
Day 2 of the festival, scheduled for Saturday, was to feature Latin superstar Bad Bunny, Earth, Wind & Fire and Beaumont native Teezo Touchdown.
Staff writer Alejandro Serrano, Nicole Hensley and Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report.
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